11/13/2025
When her husband died in 1889, they told her to sell the business and grieve quietly. Instead, she became America's first female CEO—and changed labor rights forever.
The whispers started immediately. "Sell the company." "Go home." "Let the men handle this." "A widow's place is in mourning, not in the boardroom."
Anna Bissell heard every word. She had just lost her husband, Melville, suddenly and far too young. She had five children to raise—one already buried. She had a manufacturing company on the brink. She had every reason to step aside.
Instead, she stepped forward.
In 1889, no woman had ever led a major American manufacturing company. But Anna Bissell looked at the business her husband left behind and made a decision that would change American industry forever:
"I do not intend to sit in the corner and sew."
The Teacher Who Saw Beyond the Classroom
Born Anna Sutherland in 1846 in Nova Scotia, she wasn't born into wealth or privilege. But she was born with something more valuable: ambition paired with competence.
By sixteen, she was teaching—managing classrooms before most women her age were allowed to dream beyond marriage. She was smart, organized, and unafraid of responsibility.
At nineteen, she married Melville Bissell, a man as entrepreneurial as she was capable. Together, they ran a small crockery shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
It should have been simple. Sell dishes, make a living, raise a family.
But fate intervened in the form of sawdust.
When Dust Created Destiny
Shipping crates arrived packed with sawdust. It clung stubbornly to their store's carpets, impossible to remove. Worse, Melville was allergic to it.
So he did what tinkerers do—he invented something. A simple mechanical device with rotating brushes that could sweep carpets clean. A carpet sweeper.
Most inventors stop at the prototype. Anna saw further.
"Melville created it," she would later say, "but I knew how to make the world want it."
While Melville refined the mechanics, Anna became the face of the business. She hit the road—alone, which was scandalous for a woman in the 1870s—traveling to demonstrate the sweeper to skeptical store owners and homemakers.
She didn't sell with charm. She sold with conviction.
She showed them how their lives could be cleaner, easier, better. She transformed a simple tool into a necessity. When department store magnate John Wanamaker agreed to stock Bissell sweepers, it was Anna who closed the deal.
The business grew. Then came disaster.
When Everything Burned
The factory burned to the ground.
Melville was devastated, ready to quit. The insurance barely covered losses. Starting over seemed impossible.
Anna wasn't ready to quit.
She walked into banks—a woman, asking for business loans—and secured financing on nothing but her word and her vision. In three weeks, the factory was rebuilt and operating.
"Failure," she told her children, "is only final when you stop trying."
Five years later, Melville died suddenly at age 45.
The Choice That Changed Everything
Anna Bissell stood at an impossible crossroads.
Five children to raise. A company on the brink. And a society that had no space for a woman in the boardroom.
Board members and advisors lined up with the same message: sell the company, take the money, go home and grieve properly.
Anna had a different idea.
She became president of the Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company—one of the first women to lead a major American manufacturing company. Not as a temporary caretaker. As the CEO.
"They expected me to fail," she later reflected. "I decided to make them regret their expectations."
Building an Empire With Compassion
What followed was revolutionary—not just in business success, but in how business was conducted.
Anna protected patents fiercely, understanding that innovation required defense. She branded Bissell with sophistication, turning a household tool into a status symbol. She took the company global, exporting to Europe and beyond.
By 1899, Bissell carpet sweepers were used in homes across Europe. Palace households adopted them. The product became so ubiquitous that "bisselling" became a verb—like "hoovering" would later become.
But Anna's genius wasn't just in growth. It was in grace.
At a time when factories were sweatshops—when workers were expendable and injuries were simply the cost of doing business—Anna implemented revolutionary policies:
✓ Pension plans for employees
✓ Injury compensation decades before workers' comp laws
✓ Paid vacations when the concept barely existed
✓ Fair wages and reasonable hours
When the Panic of 1893 devastated American industry, companies everywhere fired workers by the thousands. Anna refused to fire a single employee.
"We are a family," she told them. "And families don't abandon each other."
Her workers adored her. The Bissell Company never saw a strike—not in its entire history under her leadership. Not because unions were suppressed, but because workers didn't need to strike. They were already treated fairly.
Beyond the Boardroom
Anna didn't stop at business innovation. She used her wealth and influence to change lives:
Built homes for orphans
Founded the Bissell House, providing housing and support for immigrant women
Became the first female trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church
Championed women's education and economic independence
"Her joy," her son remembered, "was in finding others a place to belong."
She proved that business success and social conscience weren't opposites. They were partners.
The Legacy That Lasts
By the time Anna Bissell died in 1934 at age 88, she had transformed grief into greatness.
She had built a global empire from a small crockery shop. She had raised a family while revolutionizing an industry. She had treated workers with dignity when it was neither required nor expected. She had opened doors for women in business that had been welded shut by tradition.
She didn't just keep her husband's dream alive—she made it immortal.
Today, the Bissell name still means cleaning innovation. But few people know the woman behind the brand. Few know that every Bissell product carries the legacy of a widow who refused to disappear.
The Lesson She Swept Into History
In 1889, society told Anna Bissell her story was over. Her husband was dead. Her place was in mourning.
She decided to write a different ending.
She proved that competence has no gender. That compassionate leadership builds stronger companies than exploitation. That one person's refusal to accept "impossible" can change an entire industry.
Anna Bissell didn't wait for permission. She didn't ask if women were allowed in the boardroom. She just walked in, sat down, and got to work.
She swept away more than dust. She swept away assumptions about what women could do, what leaders should be, and how businesses could treat people.
In 1889, they told her to grieve quietly and fade away.
Instead, she swept the dust off history itself—and built an empire that's still standing.
The next time you see a Bissell product, remember: it bears the name of a woman who turned tragedy into triumph, who chose courage over convention, and who proved that the best way to honor someone's memory isn't to preserve it in amber—
It's to take what they started and make it shine.
