A woman ran for political office nearly 50 years before women got the vote.

Victoria Woodhull rose from poor and eccentric origins (as children, she and her sister Tennessee Claflin gave psychic readings and healing sessions in a traveling family show) to become one of the most colorful and vivid figures of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. In 1870, with backing from railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, the sisters opened a stock brokerage firm. They used their Wall Street profits to bankroll a controversial newspaper, which supported such causes as legalized prostitution and free love. Victoria won increased respect from women’s rights activists when she argued on behalf of female suffrage in front of the House Judiciary Committee in early 1871, and the following year the Equal Rights Party nominated her for president of the United States. By the time of the general election in 1872, Woodhull’s enemies had gotten the better of her temporarily, and she spent Election Day in jail after publishing an article that accused the popular preacher Henry Ward Beecher of adultery. She was eventually acquitted of all charges, moved to England and married a wealthy banker.