Eleanor Poorman Hamilton papers

Born Eleanor Poorman in Portland in 1909, Hamilton grew up in Oregon. While a college student, she decided to devote her life to improving women's experiences with love and sex. After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1930, she spent a career as an educator and psychologist in New York and California. She helped young women get contraceptives in the 1940s, arranged private, semi-open adoptions long before they became legal, participated in the Kinsey report on Americans' sex lives, and studied the work of Wilhelm Reich. She wrote a sex-and-love column for Modern Bride magazine in the 1960s, published several books (Partners in Love, Sex Before Marriage), and talked about sexuality on television talk shows including Phil Donahue and Johnny Carson. In 1932, she married Albert Edward Hamilton who nicknamed her Ranger. They raised children. After he died in 1969, she moved to California and had two relationships with women. She returned to Oregon in 1995 and died in 2008.