The Scientific Humanitarian Commitee was founded in Berlin-Charlottenburg, a locality of Berlin, Germany. This organization published emancipation literature, sponsored rallies, and campaigned for legal reform all throughout Germany and other countries as well. Berlin is the largest city in Germany and it was in 1933 that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party came to power within it.

Worcester is located in Massachusetts and was founded in 1722 as a town and was later made into a city in 1848. It sits at the center of Massachusetts and is often referred to as the 'heart of the Commonwealth'" ("Worcester History"). It is where the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence was in 1776 as well as the First National Women's Rights Convention in 1850 were many delegates gathered to advocate for equal rights for women. Many people say that the city was named after the UK's Battle of Worcester.

Please see the previous brief historical description of New York. Deciding to expose Ethel to civilization and her countrypeople, Lodore begins a journey back home. They stop in New York which, we soon learn, is as far as Lodore makes it before dying in a duel. Dueling had declined greatly in the Eastern United States in the 19th century, so Shelley’s choice to have Lodore’s death occur through these means seems a particularly interesting choice.

The European population in Illinois started growing in the western part of the state, near the Mississippi River. It also received settlers from the south in the late 1700s, after the Revolutionary War. It became a state in 1818. Illinois’s prairie land made it an attraction for agriculture, with immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden settling there. There was also a lot of activity here in relation to slavery/abolition, wars with Native American tribes (like the Black Hawk War), and severe winter storms.