The Umzoowees were a club consisting of single Oregon ladies that was established in in the summer of 1897. Most of their meetings and celebrations were held on McKenney Island, also known as Elm Isle south of Oregon. The island today is known as Railroad Isle and it is owned by the city of Oregon.

"From 1897 into at least the late 1920s, if you were an upper-class, unmarried woman with a bit of a rebellious streak, there was only one thing to do. You would join the Umzoowees, created as Oregon, Illinois' feminine alternative to the Owls, Oregon's premier bachelor's club. The Umzoowees chose their name from a native American word meaning 'seekers of pleasure' - a show of cultural appreciation quite fashionable for the time. Women's social clubs were growing in popularity across America at this time, with a superabundance of goals, from charity work to networking with the most powerful families around. However, the Umzoowees seem to have one objective in mind: show up the Oregon bachelor's club "The Owls" and all the other men, declaring their feminine independence in a time of overwhelming and repressive expectations for women.

"The Umzoowee’ women were famous, or perhaps infamous; their picnics on McKenney Island were the subject of many local newspaper columns. Creating a space for women to be empowered without the male presence was vital at this point in history, making the Umzoowees more than a mere social club to its members. At the society's founding, women in Illinois could not vote, had extremely limited options for careers that would quickly dissolve upon marriage and little social power within the marriage. To have an organization run by women, challenging the masculine values and feminine ideals meant a space where these women could for once feel in a place of power as individuals and as a gender. The Umzoowees worked together to format this space. In this space, they found humor and wit regarding the men they dealt with, but also a way to cope with very real social issues."

An article entitled Well Behaved Women Rarely Joined The Umzoowees was written by our intern, Kasia Majewski for the April, 2017 Newsletter, The Gazette

Courtesy Ogle Co. Historical Society

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