➡ 

Transcription:

			Name	Address
Ex-teacher	X	Miss	Nettie Warren	Downsville
	X	Mrs.	Maggie     “	“
		“	Jennie Wilburn	Colchester
	X	“	May Young	“
	X	“	Susan Francisco	“
	X	“	Phebe Young	“
		“	Marian Gregory	“
		“	“
		“	“
Teacher		Sara A. Conlon
Teacher		“	Phebe H. Conlon	“
Teacher		Mrs.	Mary E. Wolcott	“
Ex-Teacher	X	“	Lucy Bull	“
	X	“	Addie Horton	“
	X	“	Minda Radeker	“
	X	“	Myra G Radeker	“
Ex-Teacher	X	“	Laura Radeker	“
	X	“	Elizabeth Hoyt	“
		“	Ann Hawks	Downsville
		“	Louissa Fuller	“
	X	“	Frances Suttle	“
	X	“	Annis Fuller	“
	X	“	Rachel Fuller	“
	X	“	Augusta Fuller	“
	X	“	Rosetta Baxter	“
		“	Elizabeth Bogard	“
Teacher	X	Miss	Mary L. Conklin	“
		Mrs.	Lottie Green	“

Next Saturday- Part 2

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Letter in possession of author, purchased on eBay. Seller stated that she bought it from a woman who bought a lot of old furniture in New England/New York, and the letter was found in an old desk. She listed it under ‘woman suffrage.’ It would be so interesting to know what the letter written to these women was about. Many of the local election groups went on to work for state or federal suffrage for women, but this could also have been about a particular issue important to teachers as well as mothers that was coming up for a vote. Looks like more research is needed.

2) Yes, I do need to learn how to stitch together scans- it’s on the list. I have been struggling with getting tables to work properly in WordPress instead (which are really needed for transcriptions), and as you can see by the formatting in the post, tables are still not working properly. This is plug-in number four for tables that I have tried- the first three were even worse. It looked great in my preview, as did the others, but changed when published. I thought of just adding an image of my MSWord document, but then the names would not be picked up by search engines, so this will have to do. Sorry- if any part is unclear due to formatting, please contact me.

 

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Today is an apt day to begin exploring the topic of women’s suffrage on the blog: 137 years ago today, on 10 January 1878, what became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was introduced to Congress. It was the first legal step to enfranchising over 50% of the population, but took 72 years before passage in Congress and ratification by 36 states.

On 26 August 1920, the ratification was certified- our female ancestors finally had the right to vote in all elections throughout the United States of America.

It is a simple, short amendment:

Amendment XIX

1) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

2) Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

 

Getting to this point, however, was not simple, nor was it short. The beginning of the national movement for women’s rights, including the right to vote, began long before the amendment was introduced at our nation’s Capitol. The Seneca Falls Convention in July, 1848 discussed the “…social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.” Sadly, none of the original activists of that time period, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, lived to see the fruits of their labors, nor ever legally cast their vote in an election.

Women- and men too- worked diligently through the years after 1848 to educate the public, Congress, and even the President of the United States that women should have the right to vote. Their work left us letters and banners, ribbons and buttons, and a wide variety of artifacts that were used to promote their political agenda. I would like to share some of these artifacts  through this blog topic.

None of these items have been passed down in our family that I know of, but our ancestors had to be aware of the women’s suffrage movement- I wonder which side they were on?

“Votes for Women Pinback”

This pin was commissioned by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in the early 1900s to stimulate interest in the cause and start what we now would call, “a national conversation.” We know that this design was in use by at least 1912, when Rosalie Livingston Jonas campaigned for women’s rights across Nassau County, New York with a pony and cart. She sold these buttons, suffrage literature, cake, and tea, and was accompanied by Elizabeth Freeman, an American who had been jailed with British women protesting for the vote in London.

These simple black-on-gold buttons were given out or sold for a penny (or sometimes a nickel) to help fund the movement across New York and other states. Lapel pins were definitely effective in promoting their message- in 1917 women in New York gained the right to vote in state elections after one million of these buttons were handed out. (Of course, it took a lot more than just a button…)

Bastian Brothers Company in Rochester, New York manufactured this particular pin; Whitehead and Hoag were the other manufacturers commissioned by the NAWSA. Additionally, local companies may have produced similar pins for other groups, and sometimes the groups had the paper on the reverse printed with their name.

This pin is only about 5/8″ in diameter and made from celluloid, a ‘new’ material first used for political campaign buttons in 1876. The image was printed on the celluloid initially, but it proved too brittle to be useful. The process was perfected 15-20 years later when the image was printed on paper, covered with celluloid, and the button attached  to a metal support with pin. Millions of political campaign, advertising, and other pins were made with this process for many years, as it produced colorful and inexpensive  buttons.

Buttons like this, or ones similar, were probably worn by our ancestor Edward B. Payne and his second wife Ninetta Wiley Eames Payne. They both worked for the women’s suffrage movement in California, especially around 1896. California’s women lost that referendum, but the suffrage bill was passed in 1911, making California the sixth and largest state to give women the right to vote. A little gold button was probably a part of that success.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) “Our Documents- 19th Amendment to the Constitution:” http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=63

2) Remember ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ and “How a Bill Becomes a Law”?  See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otbml6WIQPo and “The Constitution” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzAJyK0ovo8. Passing and ratifying an amendment to our Constitution is a bit more complicated, but these videos are a fun blast from the past.

3) See also my post “The Anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Birth” at http://heritageramblings.net/2014/11/12/the-anniversary-of-elizabeth-cady-stantons-birth/

4) “The Seneca Falls Convention” on the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian website: http://www.npg.si.edu/col/seneca/senfalls1.htm

5) The Bastian Brothers Company began in 1895 and is still in business today making advertising novelties. See their website at http://www.bastiancompany.com/about.shtml.

6) Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: an illustrated historical study. (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013) 31-34.

 

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Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.

 

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Quick- who is Elizabeth Cady Stanton?

No, she is not a relative of mine. (I wish!)

You may have dozed off during the maybe two minutes of your high school history class that focused on her and the movement which she helped found.

If you are female in America, or African-American (male or female), you owe many of your rights to her tireless work for suffrage and abolition.

If you are male, she helped gain rights for your sister, mother, wife, and daughters, and helped make all persons in our society more equal, which benefits all.

 

Today is the anniversary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birth. She was born to Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady on 12 Nov 1815 in Johnstown, New York. Her father was an attorney and state Supreme Court judge, and Elizabeth was formally educated in a time when few women had that privilege. Despite her father owning slaves, she also was an abolitionist, temperance worker, and a leader of the early women’s rights movement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the principal author of the “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments,” first presented in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention. Based on the Declaration of Independence, it listed the ways that women did not have equal rights in the United States of America: they were taxed without representation, subject to laws they were unable to have a voice in, etc.- the same as the grievances colonists had with Great Britain around 1776. The Oneida Whig stated later that the convention’s ‘Declaration’ was “the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity.”

Elizabeth was different from many in the women’s movement because she addressed other women’s issues, not just suffrage: divorce and custody (men automatically got the children in the few divorces of the time, even if they were bad parents), work and income, property rights, and even birth control. She worked closely with Susan B. Anthony who is now the better known suffragist. They had an equal partnership, however, with Elizabeth writing speeches and Susan delivering them, since she was unmarried and had no children and could travel more easily than Stanton, who had seven children.

So why is a post about Elizabeth Cady Stanton on this blog? Yes, she is one of my heroes, but her work affects all the women in our family who came after. Edith Roberts was in college the year women got the right to vote- I once asked her what she remembered about it, did she go out and exercise her right to suffrage right after it became law, did she also protest and write to get women suffrage? She replied that she didn’t even remember the event, as she was so busy in school and with her sorority. (I was disappointed.)

Also, Edward B. Payne, our McMurray ancestor, was active in the woman’s suffrage movement in Berkeley, California in the 1890s. More about this in a future post.

Although she married, Elizabeth had the phrase, “I promise to obey” removed from her portion of the vows, later writing, “I obstinately refused to obey one with whom I supposed I was entering into an equal relation.”

Over 70 years after the beginnings of the women’s suffrage movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton died  on 26 Oct 1902 without ever having voted in the United States of America.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Wikipedia article on Elizabeth Cady Stanton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cady_Stanton 

2) North Star, July 28, 1848, as quoted in Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights, Philip S. Foner, ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1992, pp. 49-51; originally published in 1976, cited in Wikipedia article on ‘Declaration of Sentiments’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Sentiments

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.