During the late 19th century, society viewed young Blanche Van Leuven Browne’s disability as a life sentence. But, as her collection at the Bentley Historical Library shows, the activist’s drive changed perceptions and opened doors— first for herself, and then for hundreds of children under her care.

“WE HAVE TURNED THE WARD INTO SCOTLAND, AND WE ARE ALL LADIES AND KNIGHTS AND CHIEFS,” wrote Blanche Van Leuven Browne in an 1898 journal entry, describing not a bunch of bed-ridden children in St. Luke’s Hospital, in Chicago, but a world of possibility. Paralyzed on the right side from a fever at the age of three, Van Leuven Browne spent her formative years in a series of more than 50 plaster casts. But her journal from this time, part of a collection at the Bentley Historical Library, reflects a singular belief that she would become the hero in her own story.

It was in these days, at St. Luke’s, that 17-year-old Van Leuven Browne defined her life’s goal. “I determined that when I grew up, if I should ever become well enough to do anything worthwhile in this world, that I would make a haven of refuge for the cripple,” she wrote.