Because Women Have No Vote...
Yesterday, New Jersey women (some women) and their brief ability to vote in elections was discussed in this series. As you can imagine those women were most likely not happy to be disenfranchised.
Not surprisingly, they were not the only women who were stripped of the vote. Years later, Utah women also faced this issue.
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| Lucy Stone, Wikimedia Commons |
Lucy Stone (1818-1893), 50 years after women are disenfranchised refuses to pay her taxes to Orange, New Jersey. Why? She claims "taxation without representation." [1] In 1867 she goes on to start the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association and after that publishes a pamphlet (Reasons Why the Women of New Jersey Should Vote) and petitions the New Jersey government for women to have the right to vote. [2]
But here's the thing. It isn't just about the right to vote. It's that married women deserve fair inheritance laws, they deserve to own their own property, and they deserve custody of their own children. Marriage should not be an unequal institution that makes women dependents. She uses the pamphlet Reasons Why the Women of New Jersey Should Vote to explain that married women deserve some equality. Yes, voting was important but it wasn't the only thing.
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| Reasons Why the Women of New Jersey Should Vote, Internet Archive, pg 4 |
The sacred relation of marriage, instead of being a noble and permanent partnership of equals,. with reciprocal rights and duties, is degraded into a mercenary and unequal bond between Superior and Dependent, injurious to both. [3]
She reiterates this idea of married women's rights and the vote when she and Antoinette B. Blackwell petition for a state constitutional amendment in 1868.
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| 1868 Stone and Blackwell Petition, New Jersey State Library |
It's all about the power that the vote provides. It means you're not at the mercy of others who supposedly have your best interests in mind.
By the way, Lucy Stone and her family moved to Boston shortly after this and she did register to vote in Massachusetts in 1879 "since the state allowed women’s suffrage in some local elections, but she was removed from the rolls because she did not use her husband’s surname." [4] Yes, while women traditionally in the US have taken their husband's name when they marry not everyone did and Lucy Stone is an example.
So when we research our married female ancestors in the 19th century, what do we learn about how married life was for her?
If her husband predeceased her, what can you learn about her life afterwards?
- Did he have a will?
- How is she named in it?
- Did she have minor children?
- How did she survive financially afterwards?
Resources
Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia by Karin Wulf
National Women's History Museum - Lucy Stone
Google Books - Married Women's Property search
[1] "New Jersey Suffrage Timeline," New Jersey State Library (https://libguides.njstatelib.org/votesforwomen/timeline: accessed 3 March 2020).
[2] Ibid.
[4] "Lucy Stone," National Women's History Museum (https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/lucy-stone:accessed 3 March 2020).
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