The Women's History Month Winner is....

So I posted over a week ago that I was going to give away some reading materials. I've picked the winners and I'm excited to get them their packages.

I decided to pick 3 winners instead of two. Winners were randomly selected by the computer using King Sumo.

The winners are ....

Rosemary Rowland
Gaynol Fales
Marie Capaldi

Congratulations! 

Thank you to everyone who entered and read my blog. I appreciate you!

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Genealogy Resources Part 2

Image by Tami Osmer Mize, Conference Keeper

So the real question after a month of suffrage posts is, "where do you find the records?" The answer is they can be anywhere and nowhere.

I hate that answer but it's the reality of historical research.

First, we are looking for a variety of records. Yes, voting registers. But also poll tax receipts. If your ancestor was a suffragist than there are records for that too in archival collections.  And don't forget newspapers. They provide everything from mentions of your ancestors to social history which is so important to telling a story. 

Second, records are housed in all kinds of repositories including genealogy websites and archives. Start with the FamilySearch Catalog and conduct a Place search. Don't forget their Digital Library.  Then go to Ancestry (or your other favorite subscription websites) and do a location search to see what records they have for your ancestor's location (For Ancestry, click on Search at the top black toolbar then All Collections then scroll to bottom and choose a place from the map).

Below I've listed  a few more resources to peruse.

To close out Women's History Month I want to say that research is a process. Researching women requires us to look at all aspects of her life. It is a lot of work. But in the end, it allows us to truly understand her.

Good luck!

Digital Collections

Library of Congress – Digital Collections – Suffrage 
Women’s Vote Centennial

Libraries and Archives

ArchiveGrid
Digital Public Library of America
FamilySearch Research Wiki – United States Genealogy – Voter Records
FamilySearch Research Wiki – United States Genealogy –United States Taxation
LibGuides Community
LSE Digital Library – Women’s Rights Collection
WorldCat

Newspapers

Accessible Archives – Women’s Suffrage
Chronicling America
Fulton NY History
GenealogyBank
Newspapers.com
Online Historical Newspapers
The Ancestor Hunt

Digitized Books and Periodical Indexes

Google Books
Google Scholar
Hathi Trust
Internet Archive
JSTOR
PERSI

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Genealogy Resources Part 1

Lucky for us we live in an era where we have bountiful resources for our genealogical research, both online and off. I want to start discussing resources by sharing one book that I think is a must for everyone. In fact, I'm a big fan of all of this author's books.

The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women's Genealogy by Christina K. Schaefer. (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1999)

Ok, so you're saying "But Gena that book is OLD!" Yes, I guess it is but it has resources you need to do a better job researching your female ancestors. This isn't a book of websites, instead it's a reference book of states, timelines, and what records you can expect to find for women. It takes into consideration how the laws of the time impacted women's appearances in certain genealogical records.

This book is organized by state. Here are the pages for Colorado.

Now you may notice that my copy has a coil binding. It doesn't come this way, I did this so I could lay the book flat. If you're interested in doing this to some of your genealogy books, you take the book to your local print place (I went to an big box office supply store) and ask them to cut the book's binding off and coil bind it. You can also ask them to add a plastic cover and back if you want. 

Do you have this book? It's a vital US genealogy resource because it not only provides info about suffrage but it also takes into consideration other records and women's place in society during different time periods.

Women's History Month 2020: Not Everyone Voted: More Considerations

Schlesinger Library, Flickr the Commons

We've covered quite a bit this month and this week has been important because whether or not she had the right to vote and then could vote determines if you can find genealogically relevant records.

As we've explored this week  there are reasons why you might not find record of her voting. She may have had lost her citizenship as a result of her marriage. She may not have been able to pass the required literacy test. Paying a poll tax could have been beyond her means. She may have been denied the vote because she was living in a US territory or she was Native American. Native Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924 and then, according to the Library of Congress website, "it still took over forty years for all fifty states to allow Native Americans to vote. For example, Maine was one of the last states to comply with the Indian Citizenship Act, even though it had granted tax paying Native Americans the right to vote in its original 1819 state constitution...Even with the lawful right to vote in every state, Native Americans suffered from the same mechanisms and strategies, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation, that kept African Americans from exercising that right." [1]

Now even if she could vote and did vote, you still may not be able to access records. Not all voting registers are extant. That's why looking at poll tax records might be important. So it's important to do a thorough search of the catalogs for  FamilySearch, historical societies, and archives as well as digitized book websites Internet Archive, Google Books, and Hathi Trust. Don't forget to look at the FamilySearch Research Wiki to find articles on possible voting records. 

So as you start thinking about your female ancestors and their vote, consider their situation and where they lived. Then identify what records exist. 




[1] "Voting Records for Native Americans," Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/elections/voting-rights-native-americans.html: accessed 28 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Not Everyone Voted: Women's Citizenship Part 2

Thu, Nov 30, 1922 – 9 · The Chase Register (Chase, Kansas) · Newspapers.com

Yesterday we discussed women's derivative citizenship and how at one time marriage may have meant a woman losing her US citizenship. Now prior to the passage of the 19th amendment, that might not have been a big deal since women had few rights. But once women have the right to vote, that changes. Suffragists knew that securing the vote didn't mean their job was done. Especially since some of the women who fought for the right to vote couldn't because of their husband's citizenship.

"Federal lawmakers, sensing the existence of wide support for independent citizenship among the newly enfranchised female population, did not wish to alienate these new and numerous voters. The month the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, female citizens gained not only the Constitutional right to vote but also pledges from both  major political parties to support independent citizenship for resident women." [1]

The Married Women's Independent Citizenship Act, or more commonly known as The Cable Act, didn't solve everything. Yes, it ended derivative citizenship which meant that American women were no longer penalized for whom they decided to marry.

Remember that we are focusing this week on who couldn't vote. The Cable Act is passed in 1922 but it was not until 1936 that these women could reapply for their citizenship. And the Cable Act only applied to American women who married men who had been eligible for citizenship. For American women married to men who were racially ineligible for American citizenship, such as Asian men, the law still did not allow them to regain their citizenship.

Starting in 1936, women who lost their citizenship were able to apply for repatriation but only after the death or divorce of their alien husband. Finally in 1940, women who were still married to a non-citizen could petition to have their citizenship reinstated. The Cable Act did not automatically reinstate these women's US citizenship. They still had to take the oath and provide documentation that they were US citizens prior to marriage. 

1939 Application to Take Oath...for Mae Tell. San Bernardino County, California Archives. Photo by Gena Philibert-Ortega

"Those marital expatriates residing in the United States and married to resident men eligible for naturalization profited significantly from the Cable Act's provisions for repatriation. In contrast, women of color, citizen or alien, who had married a man ineligible for citizenship could not even stand in that benefit's line."[2]

In the research I've done in the records of these women who applied for their citizenship after the Cable Act, they are still applying into the 1960s and beyond.  In some cases, women may not have been aware that they had lost their citizenship. 

How did these women learn of their "alien" status? They might have learned about their non-citizen status when the 1920 census enumerator  marked her as "Al" for Alien in the naturalization column on the census (census enumerator instructions include this). She might have read the newspaper articles about the Cable Act. She might have encountered issues when applying for government benefits or a passport.

One last note. These women lost their citizenship which means they would not have been able to vote. However, I have had a few descendants tell me that their grandmother (or other female ancestor), despite losing her citizenship, did vote. Obviously, that is possible. So voting does not automatically mean she reapplied for her citizenship after the Cable Act's passage.

US Naturalization Records, Ancestry.

This is all part of a longer discussion that we don't have room for here but you can find evidence of women's naturalization in naturalization records online. They are also part of the National Archives collection, RG 21  and I have found them in county court archives. 





[1] Bredbenner, Candice Lewis. A Nationality of Her Own. Women, Marriage and the Law of Citizenship. University of California Press, 1988. pg 81
[2] p. 148

Women's History Month 2020: Not Everyone Voted: Women's Citizenship Part 1

Good by 12th NY, Library of Congress via Flickr the Commons

Love. Who doesn't like a good love story? Love sometimes means making sacrifices. Between 1907-1922  for women it sometimes meant giving up your citizenship.

1920 marks the 19th amendment and women, but not all women, can vote. Who couldn't? I posted about Puerto Rican women yesterday and for the next two days I want to talk about an even larger population of women who couldn't vote in 1920.

The American women who lost their citizenship because of who they married.*

First, let me set the scene.

Between the years 1907-1922 women who married men who were not citizens lost their US citizenship. Her citizenship was derivative, meaning it derived from her husband. If he was a Canadian citizen, then upon marriage, the US saw her as a Canadian citizen. 

Now, if she was a non-citizen but her husband was a US citizen she automatically became a US citizen. 

Now what does this mean for the American women who married a non-citizen? Well in 1920 when women gain the right to vote, these American women did not. Because the US didn't acknowledge these women as citizens even though they were born here. (And quite frankly, they were also not necessarily seen as citizens for their husband's country of origin either).


In a Report by the Secretary of State on the topic of citizenship it states: “That an American woman who married a foreigner shall take, during coverture, the nationality of her husband…” It goes on to detail that a foreign born woman who married an American man would become a citizen of the United States through that marriage and that citizenship status would not change upon the termination of that marriage. [1]

How many women did this law affect?  It’s hard to come up with a precise number but according to author Ann Marie Nicolosi in her article, "We Do Not Want Our Girls to Marry Foreigners: Gender, Race, and American Citizenship, a look at the 1920 U.S. Census" suggests that around 89 per thousand children were born to American mothers and foreign born men. In the 1910 census, nearly 6 million children had one native born parent and one foreign born parent.

Although, the Married Women’s Independent Citizenship Act of 1922 (commonly referred to as the Cable Act) ended derivative citizenship for American born women, it was not until 1936 that these women could reapply for their citizenship. The Cable Act only applied to American women who married men who had been eligible for citizenship. For American women married to men who were racially ineligible for American citizenship, for example Asian men, the law still did not allow them to regain their citizenship.

To learn more about naturalization laws that affected women, see:

•  The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration and Citizenship, 1870-1965 by Martha Gardner
• A Nationality of her Own: Women, Marriage and the Law of Citizenship by Candice Lewis Bredbenner
• Christina K. Schaefer's, The Hidden Half of the Family: A Sourcebook for Women’s Genealogy
• Loretto Dennis Szucs’ They Became Americans: Finding Naturalization Records and Ethnic Origins
• Christine K. Schaefer’s Guide to Naturalization Records of the United States
• Meg Hacker's article, When Saying "I Do" Meant Giving Up Your US Citizenship 

This law and its affects on women illustrate two important lessons for genealogists. First, when researching your ancestor, do not downplay the role history had on their lives.  This is especially important in considering the lives of women.  Laws regarding property, inheritance and citizenship all played factors in woman’s lives and what documentation may  be available. Second, although a situation like this one described may not pertain to your genealogy you may want to consider how immigration, naturalization or citizenship affected the ancestors in your family tree.  When we make assumptions about our ancestor’s lives based on our knowledge of the way the world works, we miss out on rich sources that can lead us to knowing more about our ancestors.


* Canadian women also lost their citizenship when they married non-citizens. 

[1]Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and Protection Abroad, 1906.

Women's History Month 2020: Not Everyone Voted: Puerto Rican Women

Puerto Rico. The island became a US territory in 1917. Because they are a territory and not a state they did not ratify the 19th amendment. And when the time came, Puerto Rican women living on the island  were not granted suffrage.

Yes, Puerto Ricans are US citizens and those who live on the island do vote, just not for president. But when the 19th amendment passed, Puerto Rican women were not granted suffrage. The men in charge preferred women in their traditional roles and denied women the vote. Puerto Rican women of the early 20th century were actively demanding equal rights by getting an education, working in previously male dominated fields, and organizing around issues such as labor rights. "As in most countries, women were not allowed to vote in public elections. The University of Puerto Rico graduated many women who became interested in improving female influence in civic and political areas. This resulted in a significant increase in women who became teachers and educators but also in the emergence of female leaders in the suffragist and women rights movements."[1]

Puerto Rican Suffragist Milagros Benet de Newton, Wikimedia Commons

One Puerto Rican suffragist was Mialgros Benet de Newton who was "was active in the struggle for women's enfranchisement and joined the first suffragist organization Liga Femínea Puertorriqueña in 1917. When U.S. women gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, Benet led the push to extend its coverage to Puerto Rico. In 1924, she filed a lawsuit challenging the right of the electoral board to refuse to register women as they were U.S. citizens. The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico ruled that states and territories have the right to determine who can vote and denied her claim." [2]

Throughout the 1920s (1919, 1921, 1923, 1927) Puerto Rican women activists fought and submitted suffrage bills to the island's legislature but were continually denied their rights. It wasn't until 1929 with pressure from the US Congress that literate women on the island were allowed to vote. Six years later in 1935, all Puerto Rican women were granted suffrage. [3]

So did your Puerto Rican female ancestor vote? It matters. If she lived on the US mainland after 1920, then yes, she could have. If she lived on the island, her literacy level determines when she would have been granted suffrage. 






[1]"History of Women in Puerto Rico," Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_women_in_Puerto_Rico: accessed 24 March 2020).
[2] "Mialgros Benet de Newton," Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milagros_Benet_de_Mewton: accessed 24 March 2020).
[3] "Women's Suffragist Movement (1896-1935)," Enciclopedia De Puerto Rico (https://enciclopediapr.org/en/encyclopedia/womens-suffragist-movement-1896-1935/: accessed 24 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Not Everyone Voted: Poll Taxes

Wikipedia Commons

Not everyone voted after the passage of the 19th amendment because voting wasn't as easy as just going to the polls. Poll taxes (as well as literacy tests) made it difficult to impossible for the poor (regardless of gender or race), women, and African Americans to vote. Now that shouldn't be interpreted to mean that poll taxes were invented in the 1900s, they actually have been around since America's early years. (You can read more about this in my GenealogyBank Blog post on Poll Taxes.) It's easy to understand that being required to pay in order to vote, if you have no money, is a deterrent.

It's also easy to see that a husband who doesn't want his wife to vote, may also not want to pay a poll tax for her to vote, if required.

According to the article Illusion of Suffrage: Female Voting Rights and the Women's Poll Tax Repeal Movement after the Nineteenth Amendment by Ronnie L Podolefsky, available here, "The Southern poll tax, a charge of one or two dollars required for registering to vote, resulted in the disproportionate disfranchisement of millions of women. Evidence shows that women were actively fighting the effects of the poll tax by 1922." 

The fight for suffrage didn't end the fight for women's rights, instead the fight took on other issues, including voting rights and the poll tax.

You can learn more about poll taxes in the place your ancestor lived by reading historical newspapers. You can find poll tax  records in places like FamilySearch.

Women's History Month 2020: A Suffrage P.S.

If you are a loyal daily reader, you may have noticed something went amiss. I missed a few daily posts. I had something that came up that needed to be taken care of.  But everything is now back to normal.

This week we will explore what happened after the 19th amendment passes. A great achievement but still not everyone could vote.

And just because, it's time to give away some reading materials. Who wouldn't love to read more about researching female ancestors? I am giving away 2 packages that include:

• My book From the Family Kitchen (or you can choose my book Cemeteries of the Eastern Sierra)
• 2 volumes of Tracing Female Ancestors
• My latest special edition from the Tracing Your Ancestors series, Tips and Tricks for Online Genealogy Research
• A few surprise magazines

Go to https://kingsumo.com/g/d5wex0/womens-history-month-2020-giveaway and enter the Women's History Month 2020 Giveaway. All it takes is an email address. 

I'll announce the winners in 7 days.

Women's History Month 2020: Not Everyone Voted: Anti-Suffrage Women

Library of Congress

Woman suffrage must ultimately fail. It is based upon a fallacy, and no fallacy has ever made a permanent conquest over mankind. --Alice N George*

Women should have the right to vote! Well not everyone in the 19th and 20th centuries believed so. It might not surprise you to know that many men, not all,  didn't agree with female suffrage. It also shouldn't surprise you that there were a number of women who didn't want the right to vote. 

Yes, in some cases those who don't have a right don't want that right.  

Anti-suffrage groups were led by women and included women in their membership. Why did they not want the vote? We could do a semester length course on this topic with  all of the historical and philosophical reasons why but some general reasons include:

• The belief that women had a "place" and that place was only in the home
• Women should stay out of politics
• Women's votes could "cancel out" or double their husband's votes
• Men conduct business and make decisions on behalf of both men and women
• Most women don't want the vote
• Suffragists are radicals that don't speak for women
• Suffrage states didn't protect women in the same ways as states without women's suffrage

Really there are many more reasons. But suffice it to say, not everyone wanted the right to vote. Those who didn't, formed anti-suffrage groups, held meetings, debated, wrote pamphlets and  books such as this one by Massachusetts women. The introduction is by a male Harvard professor and the book is dedicated to men.

Gratefully Dedicated to the 295, 939 Massachusetts Men Who, on Election Day, 1915 Endorsed the Anti-Suffrage Sentiments of the Women of Massachusetts**


 


So what does this mean for genealogists? Anti-suffrage beliefs could explain a female ancestors absence from voting records (but it's not the only reason as we will explore this week). It could also mean that you should look at manuscript collections for local anti-suffrage organizations. Don't forget to also look at her church's stance on suffrage, which also may shed light on her suffrage beliefs.

Resources

ArchiveGrid - search on Anti-Suffrage
Atlas Obscura - Why Women Led Anti-Suffrage Campaigns Against Themselves
National Women's History Museum - National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage






*Alice N George, "Suffrage Falicies" in Anti-Suffrage Essays by Massachusetts Women

**Gena's snarky comment...yes, indeed...thanks men...how kind of you

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage in Kansas

Female Suffrage in Kansas, Wikimedia Commons

Five  territories granted suffrage before statehood (Wyoming, Utah, Washington, Montana and Alaska). And while they granted suffrage before statehood, some states made female suffrage a priority at the start of statehood.

Kansas became a state in 1861. In that same year, women were granted suffrage rights in school elections. [1]  In 1867 the young state of Kansas voted on a referendum to allow citizens (white men) to vote on women's suffrage (impartial, without regard to sex or color). [2] [3]

The referendum was defeated. No suffrage rights for women. They tried again in 1893 for a constitutional amendment but it again failed to pass. [4]

In 1887,  women's suffrage in local elections was passed in Kansas. Giving white women some voting rights. Accounts of the 1887 election by county as reported by newspapers can be found on the Kansas Memory website (Woman Suffrage in Kansas: An Account of the Municipal Elections in Kansas in 1887.) 

Finally, in 1912 Kansas women received full suffrage rights 8 years prior to the 19th amendment. [5]

Resources

League of Women Voters Kansas (Timelines)
Kansas Historical Society - League of Women Voters of Kansas Records
FamilySearch Catalog- Registration of voters, 1867 Leavenworth, Kansas







[1]"LWVK History," League of Women Voters Kansas (v: accessed 19 March 2020).
[2]"Women's Suffrage," Kansas Historical Society (https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/women-s-suffrage/14524: accessed 19 March 2020).
[3] "Kansas and the 19th Amendment," NPS (kansas-and-the-19th-amendment.htm: accessed 19 March 2020).
[4] "LWVK History," League of Women Voters Kansas (v: accessed 19 March 2020).
[5] Kansas and the 19th Amendment," NPS (kansas-and-the-19th-amendment.htm: accessed 19 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage in Colorado

Men and women outside a polling station in Colorado 1893.

Many years ago I was at a conference and another speaker announced that Colorado was the first state to grant women's suffrage.

Of course, I rushed up to her later and let her know that she was wrong.

I then explained how even if we looked at full suffrage rights and ignored New Jersey's early female suffrage, she was still wrong.

Remember the equality state, Wyoming? Or that Utah women had the right to vote before Wyoming women voted and although that was taken away it was brought back?

So no.

But if you want to get into semantics, maybe Colorado was the first "state" to grant suffrage. Colorado achieved statehood in 1876. Wyoming granted suffrage rights before this but they were a territory. Utah also granted suffrage before this but they also were a territory. 

"Colorado held a referendum on November 7, 1893 on the subject of women’s suffrage. The proposed amendment was passed, making it the first time in U.S. history that a popular vote passed women’s suffrage into law (as opposed to an executive order or a legislative amendment), and the first time in U.S. history that a state granted women’s suffrage while being a state." [1]

Ok, so Colorado was officially a state when it granted suffrage. 

Tomato, towmato.

What's important is that it was granted. And it was the 3rd place in the US to grant suffrage or the 2nd if you don't count Utah's initial plunge into women's suffrage.




[1] "Which State Had Women’s Suffrage First?," History Colorado (https://www.historycolorado.org/story/womens-history/2019/07/25/which-state-had-womens-suffrage-first: accessed 17 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage in California

Western states were some of the first to grant women’s suffrage. We’ve already discussed Wyoming  and Utah suffrage. Now let's take a look at California. 

California suffrage began in 1911 but like other suffragists, they knew that real change wouldn’t come until all women could vote in all elections, especially in electing the president of the United States. California women, while happy to have gained some rights were still invested in the longer fight for women’s suffrage.

One California suffragist, Selina Solomons (1862-1942)  left a written record of the California suffrage movement and how suffrage was won. Solomons’ book, How We Won the Vote in California: A True Story of the Campaign of 1911 (1912) details the fight for women’s suffrage in the Golden State. In this work, aside from providing a history of the movement, she names women who worked to ensure the success of the passage of women’s suffrage as well as the names of some of the beneficiaries including a  90-year-old Los Angeles woman who cast her first vote while confined to a wheelchair. “Mrs. Sabella C. Pease was wheeled to the polls in an invalid's chair and cast her first ballot at the age of ninety, which was indeed to enjoy an "honored old age!"” 

This book is available for free from Internet Archive and you can browse or search it for a specific name.

Now, here's my favorite part about finding those early California women voters. Some of the records  are online.

To find California Voter Registrations, go to Ancestry.com. Click on Search at the top black toolbar. In the drop-down menu click on All Collections. Now scroll to the bottom and click on California in the map. You will see this page.

You can now peruse any database that has to do with California including voter records. 

1914 San Diego County. California State Library, available on Ancestry.com.

These records provide you a name, occupation, address and political affiliation. For women, they provide marital status (though you wouldn't know if she's actually a widow) with the addition of Mrs. and Miss.

You can learn more about this collection on Ancestry.com from the California State Library. 

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage in Utah

 Western suffragists, including Utahns Martha Hughes Cannon, Sarah M. Kimball, Emmeline B. Wells, and Zina D. H. Young, pose with national suffrage leaders Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw at the 1895 Rocky Mountain Suffrage Meeting in Salt Lake City. Wikimedia Commons

So Wyoming is the Equality State but Utah women beat the Wyoming women to the polls. "On February 14, 1870, several women voted in the Salt Lake City municipal election, becoming the first women to legally cast a vote in a United States election under an equal suffrage law." They had just been granted equal suffrage 4 days earlier and approximately 2,000 women voted in the territorial elections in August.[1]

Many years ago I spoke at a conference on the topic of 19th century women's views on Mormon polygamy and the non-history crowd was outraged that I would suggest that Mormon women, even under polygamy, had in some cases more freedoms than other American women of their time. Am I saying that I think polygamy is the way to go? No. But I knew that in Utah, Mormon women were encouraged to have their own publications, to go to medical school, to divorce if they needed to, and to vote. And Mormon women were active in the suffrage movement and had even worked closely with Susan B Anthony.

But as we discussed in the post Suffrage and Polygamy, the relationship between Mormon women and other suffragists was not always an easy one. And many suffragists didn't like that Mormon women enjoyed full suffrage but lived a lifestyle that was less than ideal for women. 

Utah women didn't have suffrage for long. Americans were outraged over polygamy. They started to ask Congress to do something. The Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887 not only took suffrage rights away from Mormon women but it disenfranchised all women in Utah. These women, understandably were less than happy since they had had voting rights for 17 years. Once the Mormon church disavowed polygamy, and became a state, Utah women were given back the right to suffrage in 1896.[2]

While overall the western states were early adapters to women's suffrage not all followed Wyoming and Utah's examples of giving women the right to vote in the 19th century. Some granted suffrage earlier than 1920 but not much earlier. We will look at one of those examples tomorrow.






















[1]"First to Vote," Church History Museum (https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/training/museum/first-to-vote?lang=eng: accessed 17 March 2020).
[2] "GAINING, LOSING, AND WINNING BACK THE VOTE: THE STORY OF UTAH WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE," Utah Woman History (https://www.utahwomenshistory.org/2018/02/receiving-losing-and-winning-back-the-vote-the-story-of-utah-womens-suffrage/: accessed 17 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage in Wyoming

Women Suffrage in Wyoming Territory. Scene at the polls in Cheyenne. Wikimedia Commons

The Equality State, that's Wyoming's nickname. Why? The story goes something like that the men of Wyoming  told the federal government that they were not going to become a state without their women and so they entered statehood with suffrage.

The end.

That's a great story but like any story there's more to it then that. And the truth is probably not as heartwarming as that summary.

It's a long story that you can read in full at the WyoHistory website. But it involves racism and politics and then the hope that the party that gave women the vote would get votes by those same women. And of course the fact that there were more men than women in the territory and that suffrage may attract women to move there didn't hurt. Suffrage was only one such act that provided rights for women in Wyoming at a time where women were demanding equal rights. 

"The Legislature met in October 1869 in Cheyenne. All those Democrats seem to have had it on their mind not to protect black people’s rights, like the Republicans wanted to do, but to protect women’s rights. They passed a resolution allowing women to sit inside the special space where the lawmakers sat. They passed a law guaranteeing that teachers—most of whom were women—would be paid the same whether they were men or women. And they passed a bill guaranteeing married women property rights separate from their husbands." [1]

Louisa A. Swain, Wikipedia

So white women over the age of 21 were given the right to vote in Wyoming Territory in December 1869. Attempts to enfranchise African American and Native American women failed. But there was also an attempt to disenfranchise white women since it didn't really seem like a good idea in the first place to some men,  but that effort failed. [2] 

It's estimated that 1,000 women went to the polls in 1870, the first opportunity for women to exercise their new right.[3] The honor of the title of the first female voter goes to "Louisa Swain of Laramie, about 70 years old, cast the first documented vote by a woman in Wyoming on September 6, 1870. According to the Laramie and Cheyenne newspapers, Swain beat Augusta C. Howe, the 27-year-old wife of the U.S. Marshall Church Howe of Cheyenne, to the polls by 30 minutes."[4]

So yes, Wyoming gave their female citizens suffrage 50 years before the 19th amendment and 20 years before statehood. But those women were not the first to vote.

The women who were the first to vote (other than the limited suffrage we talked about a few weeks ago) are the women we will discuss tomorrow. 

Resources

WyoHistory.org - Women's Suffrage and Women's Rights
Women's Suffrage in Wyoming: Definitions and Firsts
JSTOR - Woman Suffrage in Wyoming
Cheyenne  Suffragette Trail




[1] "Right Choice, Wrong Reasons: Wyoming Women Win the Right to Vote," WyoHistory.org (https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/right-choice-wrong-reasons-wyoming-women-win-right-vote: accessed 15 March 2020).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[3] "Who Cast The First Vote," WyoHistory.org (https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/who-cast-first-vote: accessed 15 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Resources

Library of Congress, Flickr the Commons

For today's post here's a short  bibliography of suffrage books that you may find helpful as you place your ancestor in time.

Cassidy, Tina. Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote. United States, Simon & Schuster, 2019.

DuBois, Ellen C. Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights. New York: New York University Press, 1998. 

DuBois, Ellen C. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019

Foner, Philip S.. Women and the American Labor Movement. United States, Haymarket Books, 2018.

Free, Laura E.. Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era. United States: Cornell University Press, 2015.

Gordon, Ann D, and Bettye Collier-Thomas. African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. 

MacConnaughy, Corrine M. The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Prtess, 2015. 

Spruill, Marjorie J. One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement. Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995.

Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Tyrrell, Ian. Woman's World/Woman's Empire: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective, 1880-1930. United States, University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

Von Drehle, David. Triangle: The Fire that Changed America. United States, Grove Press, 2004.

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and World War I

Life, 1 July 1915

In the decade right before the passing of the 19th amendment something happened that would have a profound affect on the fight for suffrage. World War I broke out.

Wars require a country's population to work together, especially on the home front, as changes to life occur and people are required to make sacrifices to their every day lives. World War I was no exception.

World War I required suffragists to basically put away their ongoing protest of the Wilson administration and help with the war effort. And that's what those suffrage groups did. Though many suffrage leaders were pacifists they enlisted the help of members and went to work on the home front.

"In Cleveland the Suffrage party converted its club room into a Red Cross center; and their leading member, Belle Sherwin, served as chairman of the local Council of National Defense." Most of the county chairmen of the Council of National Defense in Minnesota were suffragists, and others devoted time to Red Cross work and knitting." Suffrage leaders started reporting that they didn't have time for suffrage work because they were too busy helping organizations like the Red Cross. [1]

Even though suffragists were helping the war effort in the US and abroad, anti-suffragists still criticized them as being "conditional patriots" and likened suffrage to  socialism and feminism as three branches of the same tree of Social Revolution."[2]

President "Woodrow Wilson, after years of opposition, finally supported the suffrage amendment in January 1918, endorsing it as a war measure." "..He wrote that the war could not have been prosecuted without the women, and the nation's debt of gratitude could be paid by granting suffrage. " [3]

Resources

Interested in filling in the genealogy and social history of your female ancestors that lived during World War I? I explored 30 days of records for that period during  Women's History Month 2017. You can read those posts here.

The National World War I Museum - Women's Suffrage 
World War One Centennial Comission - Alice Paul and the Suffrage Movement during World War I
Library of Congress - Suffrage and World War I





[1] Lemons, J S. The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990. pr. 7
[2] Ibid, pg. 10
[3] Ibid, pg. 13.

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Racism

Ida B Wells, Wikipedia

Earlier this month I mentioned African American Suffrage Groups. These were vital because white suffrage leaders, even those in the abolition movement,  really weren't as interested in doing something about the racism that African Americans faced as they were in making sure women like themselves had the vote. Some white suffragists were not happy that the 15th amendment didn't include women.

African American women knew especially after the passage of the 15th amendment* that it wasn't enough to just get the right to vote, people had to be able to exercise that right without intimidation. Racism resulted in discrimination and violence against  African Americans. 

An issue that plagued the country, aside from the lack of voting rights, was lynching. Ida B Wells brought attention not only to suffrage but also to lynching. "Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women’s suffrage organizations in the United States."[1]

Hall, Jacquelyn Down. Revolt Against Chivalry. Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching

Voting is really an issue that one must study in relation to time and place. And voting isn't simply about the physical act of voting. It's influenced by all kinds of other issues including abolition, temperance, labor unions, polygamy, and racism. Women in various social movements, with different religious beliefs, and working at various jobs had their reasons to support or not support suffrage rights.

All of this should help to inform your search for your female ancestors activities and records.

Resources

YouTube - Black ProGen Live 
YouTube - Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit
AfriGeneas




*prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude)

[1] "Ida B Wells-Barnett, National Women's History Museum (https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett: accessed 13 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Polygamy

Wives of Brigham Young, and Himself Wikipedia

Suffrage. It seems like a very pro-woman, early feminist idea. The radical notion that women should  have equal citizenship rights with men. But what perplexed 19th century suffragists was that women in Utah were some of the earliest to claim suffrage rights even though they lived a principle that appeared to be in total opposition to equal rights. In fact, they believed that Mormon women were enslaved by Mormon men's lust and desire. Many of those Utah women who could vote were living as polygamous wives. 

Nineteenth century, anti-Mormon books were penned by non-Mormon and ex-Mormon women. Authors such as  Jennie Froiseth and Fanny Stenhouse,  whose tell-all book introduction was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, likened polygamy to slavery and insisted that Mormon women were the slaves of Mormondom. Jennie Froiseth, a suffragist,  toured the country and lectured about the evils of polygamy and encouraged membership in the Anti-Polygamy Society. 

An Unsightly Object, Wikipedia

Not surprisingly,  Froiseth and other writers used the slavery analogy to paint a picture that polygamy caused the total degradation of Mormon women. First wives were seen as slaves and victims to their husbands who took younger women as subsequent wives. Subsequent wives blamed the first wife for poor treatment including a lack of basic necessities like food. Slave imagery was used by writers to implore their readers that it was their duty to "free" Mormon women. 

In the fight against polygamy, it was an early belief that enfranchising Mormon women would lead to their voting out Mormon men in power and the practice of polygamy. Many anti-Mormons took this stance as a way to get rid of the "twin-relic of barbarism (slavery and polygamy). Instead, Mormon women used the power of suffrage to vote much like their male spouses and kin did as they supported pro-polygamy candidates. Later, the rally cry of anti-Mormons was that Mormon women could not save themselves, they had to be saved by non-Mormons. "Froiseth, a long time believer in the enfranchisement of women and later the vice president of the Utah Women's Suffrage Association (1888), firmly believed Mormon women should not have the right to vote—at least until polygamy was outlawed. She recognized this was inconsistent with her beliefs about women's rights but concluded, by her own judgement, that Mormon women were too heavily influenced to make voting decisions for themselves" [1]

It would be an understatement to say that Mormon polygamy shook up Victorian America. Polygamy was a scandal second only to slavery. The white, Victorian family was seen as essential to American civilization. American Protestants of the 19th century were outraged by various religious groups an warned of their slavish adherence to leaders like Joseph Smith in the US, and outside the US, the Pope. These groups were the enemy.

Polygamy provided much fodder for women's rights activists in the nineteenth century. In a time when women were rebelling against the repressiveness of Victorianism, Mormonism represented the very worse of American culture- extreme male dominance. 

Resources

"Utah and the 19th Amendment," National Park Service (https://www.nps.gov/articles/utah-women-s-history.htm: accessed 11 March 2020). 

Sisters for Suffrage, Church History Museum (https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/landing/museum/sisters-for-suffrage?lang=eng: accessed 11 March 2020). 










Information not cited is from Gena Philibert-Ortega's MAR Thesis, Barbarism and Divine Principle: Women's Responses to Nineteenth Century Mormon Polygamy. (Claremont School of Theology (1998)
[1] "Jennie Anderson Froiseth," Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennie_Anderson_Froiseth: accessed 11 March 2020).

Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Labor Movements

Library of Congress via Flickr the Commons

Yes, women have always worked. It's a myth that our female ancestors didn't work. Unless your family was well-off financially, chances are the women in the family worked. The 19th century saw even young women, including young girls, going to work to help support their family.

25 March 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory produced women's blouses, or as they were then called shirtwaists, in Manhattan. The Factory took up three floors of a building (8th-10th) now known as the Brown Building. A fire that started in a scrap bin would result in the death of 146 garment workers, 123 of which were women. This occupational tragedy is one of the deadliest in US history. What happened? Stairwell doors and exits were locked to stop employees from taking unauthorized breaks. When the fire broke out, workers were either killed because they were trapped or because they jumped out of windows. [1]

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Wikipedia

The Women's Trade Union League founded in 1903 fought to stop sweatshop conditions. An obvious outgrowth of this, especially after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, is that women needed the vote to protect themselves and to advocate for better work conditions. But women were organizing long before 1903. Lowell Mill Girls were organizing, gathering signatures for petitions, and more in an era (early 19th century) when women didn't have the right to vote.[2][ (Well, some Massachusetts women had school suffrage rights as I posted last week.)

In the 20th century, female labor "leaders among the dramatically increasing group of working women argued that wage-earning women needed the vote. Only with suffrage, they insisted, could working women hope for equal pay, safe work places, and humane hours. In 1909, working-class suffragists generated a major debate about their cause within New York’s labor community, and in 1911 they formed the Wage Earners’ League for Woman Suffrage. One of the league’s flyers asked, “Why are you paid less than a man? Why do you work in a fire trap? Why are your hours so long?” The answer: Because you are a woman and have no vote. Votes make the law. The law controls conditions. Women who want better conditions must vote"[3]

Did your female ancestor work in a factory? If so, what was the history of that factory? What did she do? Was there a danger involved? Was she a member of a union? Was that union involved in the fight for suffrage? 

Resources

Yale University - Working Women 1800-1930















[1] "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire," Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire: accessed 10 March 2020).
[2]"Lowell Mill Women Create the First Union of Working Women," AFL-CIO (https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/lowell-mill-women-form-union: accessed 10 march 2020).
[3] "The Necessity of Other Social Movements to the Struggle for Woman Suffrage," National Park Service (https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-necessity-of-other-social-movements-to-the-struggle-for-woman-suffrage.htm: accessed 10 March 2020).