Beulah Brinton

Beulah Brinton (1836–1928) was an American social worker who opened her Milwaukee, Wisconsin home to the families of Bay View’s immigrant rolling mill workers in the 1870s. Her teaching of reading, music, English, cooking, and sewing to the iron men’s children and wives and occasional service as midwife predated the celebrated work of settlement houses in London and New York. Recalled as “perhaps the outstanding woman of Bay View’s history” and the “real literary leader of the early community,” Brinton pursued community-building efforts that transcended ordinary neighborliness, prompted by an expansive religious faith and sense of duty to “her fellow men.”

Early life and marriage She was born in New York in 1836 as Bulah Tobey, at a time when spelling was more fluid than it would become.

Before coming to Milwaukee, the Brintons lived in Wyandotte, Michigan, site of the Eureka Iron & Steel Works, established in 1853 by Beulah’s cousin Eber Brock Ward. A former Great Lakes ship captain, Ward had incorporated the Milwaukee Iron Company in 1867. Warren served the Milwaukee works for two decades as weighmaster, timekeeper, and paymaster.

A lending library that Brinton started outgrew her parlor, moved to a room at the rolling mill, then a neighborhood school, and became the nucleus of Milwaukee’s first branch library. She helped organize the Bay View Literary Society, which frequently met in Puddlers Hall, a union hall on Saint Clair Street. The family’s time in Missouri was recalled in 'Man is Love', Beulah’s somber Civil War novel, published by Lippincott in 1874. She later published a book of mystical poems, 'Behold the Woman', while editing a village newspaper, The Bay View Herald. Brinton came from Chicago to speak at its dedication; a proclamation for the event and a portrait of Brinton grace the lobby of a newer Beulah Brinton Center on Bay Street. in Milwaukee County is also named after Brinton.