High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853–1925), born Alice Chenoweth, was an American author, rationalist public intellectual, political activist, and government functionary. Gardener produced many lectures, articles, and books during the 1880s and 1890s and is remembered today for her role in the freethought and women`s suffrage movements and for her place as a pioneering female in the top echelon of the American civil service.