"SHE FLIES WITH HER OWN WINGS"

Although more broadly an outgrowth of the religious and moral awakenings of the first half of the nineteenth century, including the abolitionist and woman’s rights movements, the origin of the woman’s club movement traditionally is given as March, 1868: When columnist Jennie June was denied a ticket to a New York Press Club dinner feting Charles Dickens, she and four friends resolved to organize “a club composed of women only, that should manage its own affairs, represent as far as possible the active interests of women, and create a bond of fellowship between them, which many women, as well as men, thought at that time it would be impossible to establish.” Thus was founded Sorosis.¹

The movement spread far and wide, by the end of the century representing a real social, civic and political force.  Although the clubs’ stated purposes were varied (and evolving), including study (of literary and other topics), philanthropy, reform, and improved conditions for women and children, their underlying purposes were to give women an avenue to public life and, especially in the West, to offset economic development imperatives by making cultural and social concerns a part of community priorities.²

Scott Duniway came to believe that woman’s clubs were, “consciously or not, great recruiting grounds for the Woman Suffrage cause,” and “enthusiastically” embraced the new device to cultivate public-mindedness, even among upper-class and conservative women who couldn’t yet abide the thought of voting. She was a charter member of the Portland Woman’s Club and second vice-president of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, comprising eighteen clubs from throughout the state and representing over six hundred members, from the latter’s founding in October, 1899, until 1902. The Equal Suffrage Association cooperated with club organizations even though many club members opposed suffrage, and even though Abigail’s enemies in the suffrage cause would attempt to use the Portland club against her. Club work also gave Scott Duniway entré to the upper crust of Portland society women who previously had ignored or spurned her.³

This speech, which Scott Duniway delivered on the final night of the state federation’s inaugural biennial convention, meeting in Pendleton,⁴ is in two parts. The first and longer part is aptly described by the speech’s title, and is classically epideictic. In this section, Scott Duniway recounts her personal impressions of numerous well-known women, in particular those who have influenced her own life. Her praise of these women and their accomplishments is uniformly glowing, including even Frances Willard of the W.C.T.U. This section is of historical interest (see, for example, her comments about Charlotte Emerson Brown and the origins of the club movement) and illustrates the importance of networks of personal relationships and influence in a mass movement. The most surprising revelation is that Abigail’s first “eminent” acquaintance wasn’t Susan B. Anthony but, rather, attorney Myra Colby Bradwell, of Illinois.

The Federation met on the eve of the 1900 vote on an equal suffrage amendment; Abigail spoke on Friday, with the election just three days hence. Thus, at its end her address turns deliberative as she argues for women’s enfranchisement. While she sounds familiar themes of Oregon’s exceptionalism and its “chivalrous” men, Abigail also includes uncontroversial expediency arguments, attributing improved sanitation and public libraries–key concerns of clubwomen⁵–to women’s efforts.

These two parts are not so disparate as they may appear initially: The first, in celebrating a wide variety of women “path breakers,” implicitly proves that women deserve the vote and, thus, is further evidence in support of the second’s deliberative claim.

So highly anticipated was this address that the convention removed from its meeting-place (a local church) to the courthouse. Following “several delightful musical numbers,” Abigail rose to speak. The Club Woman later reported:

As she, in her happy, fluent manner, recalled one after another of this host of eminent women, telling of their personal appearance, their voice or gesture, some whom the younger members of the audience almost thought belonged to a past age–women like Harriet Beecher Stow, whose names are household idols, but of whom any personal recollection has almost passed away, a feeling of awe and reverence pervaded the audience which must have communicated itself to the speaker, for as she went from one to the other, telling of how they had helped and encouraged her in her early struggles, courage and strength was imparted to more than one of her listeners. Neither Mrs. Duniway’s ready wit nor apropos story was wanting, as was manifest by the roars of laughter and bursts of applause that frequently greeted her remarks. All went away feeling that the hour she spoke was far too short, and another hour might have been profitably spent in listening to her.⁶

An edited typescript of this speech can be found in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers.⁷ The following text relies on the version published in the Morning Oregonian on June 2, 1900. Most of the hand-written changes in the typescript are reflected in the published version, suggesting that these revisions were made prior to delivery or, at least, prior to publication. Most differences between the versions are typographical and cosmetic, with two notable exceptions: The typescript contains a paragraph missing from the published version and the published version contains the speech’s conclusion, missing from the typescript due to lost page(s). Material found only in the typescript is denoted by “[]”, while material found only in the Oregonian is denoted by “<>”.

Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen: While it has been exceedingly difficult for me to so arrange my work during this, the busiest and most important week of my life, [that I could come to this convention,] such is my estimate of the good that is to accrue from this gathering of representative women in our State Federation of Women’s Clubs, that I gladly trust the votes of men, who are to decide a grave question for us at the ballot-box next Monday, to bring before you a brief review of a few of the eminent women with whom my busy life has brought me into personal acquaintance during the last 30 years.

The first woman of National reputation whose personal acquaintance I recall, was the late Myra Bradwell⁸, <of Chicago,> editor of the Chicago Legal News, a great law journal, of which she was for many years the head. Mrs. Bradwell was, at the time our acquaintance began, and as I now recall her, a beautiful, stately matron, in the prime of life, and even then a recognized authority on legal jurisprudence for the State of Illinois, a position she held with honor at the time of her death. She was as proud of her good husband, Judge Bradwell⁹, who survives her, and of her gifted children, as was Solomon’s ideal woman, of whom it is written, “her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband, also, and he praiseth her.”

Never shall I forget my first impression of this modern Portia.¹⁰ I was a young pioneer mother of many children. I had been taught from childhood that it was woman’s duty to suppress the struggling desire for knowledge, for utterance and all opportunity for expanding usefulness, of which this Federation of Women’s Clubs is today a significant exponent. I had been taught, and tried hard to believe, that my spirit’s demand to hear and be heard in the world was an unfeminine something, which women must stifle at any cost. So I was striving hard to be an “anti,” and a consistent one at that, for I was keeping myself out of the newspapers and struggling to make myself believe that my constant ill health was a wise dispensation of Providence.

Mrs. Bradwell opened to my anxious mind an illimitable vista of previously undiscovered opportunity. “You are young yet,” she said, cheerily; “and when woman shall have discovered herself, all women will be ashamed of being invalids.” She then went on to explain a truth which thousands of women have since verified, that the primal cause of so much ill health among women¹¹ was the divine discontent created by repressed mentality, which, under the conditions that then held sway, made dolls of society women, vassals of most wives, and hopeless drudges of the rest. And, while she said she sympathized with women in bad health, she said¹² she was a whole lot sorrier for their husbands, who had yet to learn that woman’s greatest need was mental vent. She said that health depended upon happiness, and happiness upon environment. Then she turned, oh, so lovingly, to the¹³ teething baby, gave a simple prescription for its swollen gums, and added: “I repeat, you are young yet. By and by, when these babies are men, you will still be a young woman.” And, when she spoke, with beaming countenance, of the day that was even then dawning for awakened womanhood (Though I knew it not), she left me pressing my throbbing temples, but inhaling the inspiration of many a new idea. And so it came to pass that I had a vision, even when I needed it most, of the good time coming, and now here, when women could occasionally turn aside, as men have always done, to seek relief from daily cares and congregate themselves in clubs, to restore their health and spirits through the needed relaxation afforded by a brief opportunity to exchange opinions, and thus expand their understanding.

Time passed, and my next eminent acquaintance was Susan B. Anthony¹⁴. I was then living in Portland; and having entered the arena of journalism with all the audacity of inexperience, I plunged along with so much perseverance that I made a success of my venture.

That was in 1871¹⁵, and Miss Anthony was 50 years old. I had heard so many dreadful things about Miss Anthony’s alleged ante-deluvian age and angularity of disposition that I felt more than half afraid of her. But she soon dispelled all prejudice by her womanly ways. Never have I met a more motherly woman, or one who could enter more heartily into the spirit of a busy household. Her visit, like Mrs. Bradwell’s, was both a revelation and an inspiration. Her intimate acquaintance with eminent men and women of whom I had all my life been reading, brought them for the first time into my very atmosphere. Her reminiscences of Horace Greeley¹⁶ and his gifted but eccentric wife¹⁷, of James¹⁸ and Lucretia Mott¹⁹, of Lucy Stone²⁰ and Henry B. Blackwell²¹, of Henry Ward Beecher²² and his famous sisters, Isabella Beecher Hooker²³ and Harriet Beecher Stowe²⁴, of Colonel Ingersoll²⁵ and his happy home life, of William Lloyd Garrison²⁶, Wendell Phillips²⁷, Garrett [sic] Smith²⁸, Elizabeth Cady Stanton²⁹ and their families, and many others of note, with whom I afterwards became personally well acquainted, and of all of whom she spoke with as tender deference as though they had all been absent members of her own family, [it] was to me as a revelation from heaven. She did it all so unconsciously, too, as though repeating the ordinary sayings and doings of one’s every-day neighbors, that when in after years I met and knew them all, it was as if I had known them from childhood.

With Miss Anthony’s public career, since her first visit to the Pacific Coast, in 1871, the most of you are familiar. But you have not had much opportunity to know of her social life, which now, and for the past 10 years, has brought her into contact with the most eminent men and women of this most eminent era, all of whom delight to do her honor.

My next eminent woman acquaintance was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was in the Summer of 1871 that I first met her, as a guest at her beautiful home in the blue hills of Jersey.³⁰ To Mrs. Stanton belongs the honor of being the first woman in history to make a successful demand for the recognition of the property rights of married women, who, prior to that time, [in] 1848, had lived entirely under the dominion of the old common law of England, the law that, where not repealed, still makes a personal death-warrant of a woman’s covenant at the marriage altar by merging her existence into that of her husband, making, under the law, the husband and wife one, and the husband that one. My friends, it is well for the race that men, through all the ages, have been better, as men, than the laws that were compiled to govern women by the men who preceded them.

There were men living in the great State of New York in 1848 whose daughter<s> had inherited vast wealth; and those fathers, seeing the danger that was menacing this wealth by improvident suitors, who were ready, as men still are, to marry a competence, aided Mrs. Stanton in her efforts to secure the property rights of wives–rights which some women, known as “antis,” are using today in a vain endeavor to beat back the further progress of other women’s freedom, with as much success as was achieved by Dame Partington when she tried to stop the progress of the waves of the Atlantic Ocean with her broom³¹; a progress that finds new and irresistible impulse in the State and National Federations of Women’s Clubs.

Mrs. Stanton is, in personal appearance, the opposite of Miss Anthony. The latter is tall, not spare, like the typical old maid of a past era, but as well rounded, though not as plumply stomached, as the modern well-to-do bachelor of the sterner sex; while Mrs. Stanton is short, plump, pretty and roly-poly, in figure much like Queen Victoria³², but in features far handsomer. Miss Anthony combs her iron-gray hair smoothly over her Webster-like head, while Mrs. Stanton’s snow-white locks are rolled in fluffy abundance and garden row regularly over her classic forehead³³. Both women are domestic, social and dressy, and move in the foremost literary and intellectual circles everywhere. I have only time to say of them further, in this connection, that the older our clubwomen grow, and the further they advance in knowledge and in understanding, the more will they appreciate and honor the self-denying zeal of the originators of this woman movement, whose echoes reach today across the continent and re-echo back with a larger utterance from the singing shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Eastern seas.

My next eminent woman acquaintance was the late Dr. Clemence Lozier³⁴. Imagine a little, plump, pretty, gentle-voiced lady, with short, white curls framing a face as classic as the Madonna’s, the occupant and owner of a commodious downtown residence in New York; one of those “brown stone huts” made famous by the “wants” of Oliver Wendell Holmes³⁵. Imagine this little woman, who hesitated not to combine the wisdom of Aesculapius³⁶ and of Hahnemann³⁷ in her very extensive practice, with the skill and dexterity of a Pasteur³⁸ or a Koch³⁹; imagine her great mansion filled, as it always was, with illustrious guests and many patients from afar and anear, all gathered in her spacious dining-room for morning devotion[s], led by the gentle doctor, assisted by her gifted son⁴⁰, an Army surgeon, and his able wife⁴¹, herself a physician of repute, and one-time president of Sorosis, whose pretty children complete the group, and you have a composite picture of domestic life and family wisdom such as will soon prevail wherever the enlightened clubwoman’s influence can be felt. Then there were other noted physicians often present, among them Dr. Rachel Bodly [sic]⁴², now deceased, and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacoby [sic]⁴³, whose masterly argument before the New York Constitutional Convention a few years ago can never be resisted or overcome by anything but vice, conservatism and ignorance, which always pull together against the best interests of the race. There was Elizabeth D. [sic] Curtis⁴⁴, daughter of the late George William Curtis⁴⁵, who represented her gifted father in the same convention, whom no member tried to answer except with a dogged negative vote, but whose argument will live when every voter who recorded himself against her demand for liberty and progress will have been forgotten.

The next eminent woman I recall is Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell⁴⁶, the pioneer woman physician, with a strong English face and a passion for methodical system in her profession that has made her fame worldwide. Dr. Blackwell braved the scorn, obloquy and organized opposition of the whole medical world that she might acquaint herself with the highest medical knowledge and open the way for all time to come to the great and useful army of physicians for whom she broke the Austrian-like phalanx of organized despotism that had previously debarred her sex from her now acknowledged realm.

Then comes Frances E. Willard⁴⁷, with her winsome grace and wondrous eloquence, who alone of all orthodox women could lead the more devout of her sex away from the barred walls of conservatism and let them see that, outside the church, as well as in it, the true fatherhood of God and brotherhood of <man> abounds [for]evermore. There was Lillie Devereaux Blake⁴⁸, stately, handsome and gifted, an author and orator of renown; there was Margaret Parker⁴⁹, of Dundee, Scotland, who has often crossed the Atlantic Seas to hold wise converse with the eminent women of Manhattan, and many, many others whom I have met at the home of Dr. Lozier, each of whom deserves a more extended notice than time permits.

Among the sweetest-voiced, dearest, kindliest women I have ever met was Lucy Stone, who, finding in her girlhood no opening for a woman to enter college [in the East], worked her way to the then new West, to Oberlin, O[hio]., and who, like her good husband, Henry B. Blackwell, who survives her, has left the sweet influence of a spotless life upon this busy age. Her gentle voice was always raised in sympathy with everything good and noble, and her memory will live in the hearts of her countrywomen as long as woman’s work for liberty appeals to human sympathy.

Now passes before my mental vision the motherly face and venerable figure of Julia Ward Howe⁵⁰, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and now comes Mary A. Livermore⁵¹, the great manager of the famous sanitary commission of our Civil War. And here is Harriet Beecher Stowe, in whose consecrated presence I have sat for hours, listening like a fascinated child to her recitals of her ante-bellum experiences in the South upon which many parts of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were founded, and of which it would require a whole evening to tell you half.

Return with me now to New York, and we will visit Jenny June⁵², the winsome, dainty and companionable author, the Mrs. C. [sic] G.⁵³ Croly of the social world, who is now a venerable matron, with a life crowned with honor, whose achievements in journalism are widely known, and of whose home life I can only pause to say that, like that of all the others mentioned, it is most exemplary.

Often, when sojourning in Philadelphia, I have enjoyed delightful visits with the late James and Lucretia Mott, in their happy and hospitable Quaker home, where the primmest neatness did not preclude the keenest enjoyment of the many luxuries with which their home abounded. Lucretia Mott was the stateliest, handsomest “old lady” I ever saw. As straight as an Indian warrior and as graceful as a swan, her classic face always framed by the sheerest and smartest of snowy caps, her sloping shoulders covered with an immaculate and dainty shawl, crossed over her bosom after the manner of our grandmothers’ days, she was the charming prototype of the club woman of today, who, while finding time to consider the well-being of the wide, wide world, “looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.”

Of the eminent women I have met I must not forget to mention Mrs. Henrotin⁵⁴, whom we all delight to honor, nor Mrs. Potter Palmer⁵⁵, of world-wide fame; nor Dr. Anna Howard Shaw⁵⁶, nor Carrie Chapman Catt⁵⁷, nor Laura Clay⁵⁸, nor Mrs. Keating⁵⁹, nor Emily B. Ketchum⁶⁰, nor Josephine K. Henry⁶¹, nor Virginia D. Young⁶². I wish I might give you a pen picture of one⁶³ and all of these women and tarry with you at⁶⁴ their pleasant homes. But I see I cannot; <so> go with me now to the Nation’s capital, and let us look in for a while upon a woman’s convention. It is one of the earlier meetings of what is now the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. It is not one of the great biennials that have grown <up> of late into such great⁶⁵ proportions as to seem to men unwieldy; but a meeting in which the center of attraction is the eminent founder of the Woman’s Club movement, the late, lamented Charlotte Emerson Brown⁶⁶. This noted woman, having discovered that the general tendency of woman’s organizations was toward a crystallization, rather than a correlation of forces, originated the woman’s club idea. She was the wife of a noted physician⁶⁷, possessed of ample means, and an ardent friend of the equal rights movement. But she saw that many women who had not yet embraced the equal rights idea and had become congealed, so to speak, against avowing its principles, needed the club movement to fill a long-felt want. So like our own Mrs. A. H. H. Stuart⁶⁸, the honored mother of the woman’s club movement in our fair metropolis, who began her public work in the equal suffrage movement, Mrs. Brown resolved to circumvent the prejudices that hedged so many women against their own interests, and give them an outlook, from another direction, at the broader horizon they had hitherto failed to observe.

The woman’s club movement is flourishing in a manner that attests the wisdom and foresight of Abby H. H. Stuart and Charlotte Emerson Brown. In its wise determination to eschew the consideration of all partisan and sectarian questions, upon which men and women naturally differ (though none can settle them), thus leaving our clubs⁶⁹ to grow freely into the broader spirit of “diversity in unity” that alone can extend our intellectual horizon along every line, moral, religious and patriotic, we owe more to the two eminent women just mentioned than most of us will soon realize. As became Mrs. Brown’s exalted station, she lived elegantly and entertained handsomely. Her home was the center of education, refinement and philanthropy, and its atmosphere was permeated with an exalted spirit of politeness[, piety] and patriotism. In the midst of her usefulness she fell asleep. But, though she rests from her labors her works do follow her.

At a brilliant reception given in February last, at the Corcoran Art Gallery, in the city of Washington, I had the pleasure of once more meeting Grace Greenwood⁷⁰, the well-known author and journalist, now far along in years; Olive Logan⁷¹, the famous actress of our war era, now quite deaf, but otherwise well preserved; May Wright Sewall⁷², the accomplished president of the International Council of Women, founded in America in 1886, by the mother of all these movements, Susan B. Anthony, of whom Mrs. Sewall has been a staunch ally for many years; the charming and intelligent daughters of Lucy Stone⁷³, Elizabeth Cady Stanton⁷⁴ and Julia Ward Howe⁷⁵, each of whom was taking part in the festivities in honor of her noble mother, and wearing her mantle royally. There, also, I again met the now venerable Charlotte R. Wilbour⁷⁶, a noted philanthropist of New York, widow of the famous Egyptologist who spent 20-odd years under the shadow of the Pyramids⁷⁷, and who speaks fluently a dozen languages; and last, but by no means least, except in stature, Clara Barton⁷⁸, the eminent philanthropist, and president of the International Red Cross Society, who commissioned me to present to every Red Cross woman and every club woman in the State of Oregon her love and compliments and ask them to read and circulate her “Plea to Voters,” urging them to vote for the enfranchisement of the mothers, wives and sweethearts of her soldier boys. I have so diligently complied with her request that I have distributed many thousands of leaflets containing the plea, and now have only a few of them left. Take all that are left, club women. Read them, circulate them and ask your chivalrous gentlemen friends to read them before they cast their ballots next Monday.

Clara Barton, though the heroine of a hundred cataclysms, wherein, womanlike, she distinguished herself by preserving life, and not by destroying it, is not a striking woman to look at. She is diminutive in stature, dresses plainly, <combs her hair smoothly> and speaks timidly. But she has more power to save life at her command than Queen Victoria⁷⁹, who is her warm personal friend; more than the President of the United States⁸⁰; more than that of the army and navy combined. But like Mary A. Livermore, the famous heroine of the great Sanitary Commission, she is the political vassal of an aristocracy of sex.

Nobody accuses her⁸¹ of being out of her sphere, but the mothers of our soldier boys are speaking her name with a reverence that is born of love, and an admiration inspired by gratitude.

[If time permitted, I would gladly tell you of Kate Field⁸², the modern woman journalist, who was preparing to attend our Oregon Congress of Women at the time of her death, which occurred two years ago in Honolulu; of Sarah B. Cooper⁸³, the late lamented humanitarian of San Francisco, whose tragic death we yet mourn; of Clara S. Foltz⁸⁴, the California lawyer who once lived in Oregon, who has twice crossed the Atlantic in the interest of wealthy clients; of Frances Fuller Victor⁸⁵, the eminent historian, also a former resident of Oregon, now of San Francisco. But I must hasten to a close, omitting hundreds of eminent women, young and old, the equals of any yet mentioned.]

Madam President⁸⁶: With your permission I come now to speak, not of politics–for that is a question we do not discuss; but of patriotism, our fundamental principle of woman’s clubdom. It is of the question of fundamental government, of individual citizenship, of which I would speak, a question which vitally concerns every <patriotic> woman at this particular time; a question as far above partisan politics as the heavens are above [the] earth. I allude, of course, to the fundamental⁸⁷ question of self government which men are to decide for us next Monday–permanently if in the affirmative, but temporarily if in the negative. Our great club leader, Sarah B. Platt⁸⁸, of Colorado, has tasted of the sweets of citizenship and pronounces it good. Through her and her co-workers, the leading women of Denver and the best element among the men of that city, who could accomplish nothing in the way of municipal reform till aided by the women’s votes, the great inter-mountain center of the mighty West has inaugurated sanitary conditions that have already transformed the city from an abode of disease to a haven of health. In like manner, through the help of the votes of tax-paying women, the public-spirited citizens of New Orleans have cleansed their city of the yellow fever scourge, by a system of sewage that men alone were unable to vote into being. In Lewiston, and in Boise, Idaho, the same improvement prevails, including the successful establishment of our Portland Woman’s Club pet enterprise, a free library system in the interest of all the people. And to you, men and brethren, whom we are proud to welcome to these councils, I want to say, with my profoundest bow, that the eyes of the world are turned today toward Oregon. “As goes Oregon, so goes the Union.” Last February⁸⁹ it was my privilege to sit among the veterans of a great mass meeting in the great city of Washington, under the shadow of the Goddess of Liberty. Does it seem strange to you, gentlemen, that Liberty is always represented by a woman? I account for this anomaly by the reflection that men in all ages have builded from ideals that in time were to be realized. As I sat in the great meeting just mentioned, Susan B. Anthony, the heroine of the occasion, arose, and said:

“I see a face that recalls the roar of the Pacific ocean; that recalls mighty forests of giant evergreens, with their pointed tops piercing the misty sky; that recalls long ranges of mighty mountains with their highest peaks crowned with perpetual snow; that recalls broad uplands, stretching away toward the mountain mines; that recalls verdant valleys, dotted with pretty villages and peaceful homes; that recalls mighty rivers, moving ever onward to the sea! All of this means Oregon! At the apex of all this sits Oregon. I am told that Oregon annually expends tens of thousands of dollars to advertise her virgin resources through her Boards of Trade, <her Chambers of Commerce, her advertising bureaus and what not. Now, if the men of Oregon are as wide-awake as the one delegate from her borders says they are, they will adopt the equal suffrage amendment and the state will advertise herself, as Colorado and Idaho did when the men of those young, vigorous growing states made their women free and equal with themselves.”

I was proud of Oregon that day; prouder yet of being an Oregon pioneer; and when you, the chivalrous men of this mighty state, shall prove yourselves worthy of our great expectations by your votes for our amendment next Monday, you will rise higher than ever in the estimation of club women, who already like you and you cannot help it.

And to you, Madam President, to whose patriotic foresight I am indebted for the opportunity to make this appeal in this first annual meeting of our State Federation of Women’s Clubs, permit me to say there are many thousands of women in Oregon who join me in the thanks that well from overflowing hearts. Continue in your glorious work.

Mount up the heights of wisdom,
And crush each error low.
Keep back no words of knowledge
That human hearts should know.
Be faithful to thy neighbor,
In service of thy Lord.
And then a golden chaplet
Will be thy just reward.>⁹⁰

NOTES

1. Croly 15-16. In its immediate exigence–exclusion from the public (which is to say, men’s) sphere–the club movement thus parallels the woman suffrage movement, which had been provoked by the exclusion of female delegates at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. [↩]
2. Haarsager 3-4; Blair, Clubwoman. In its account of the third meeting of the infant Portland Woman’s Club, the Pacific Empire–which actively catered to woman’s clubbers–testifies to the club’s importance as an incubator of the skills of public participation: “Much harmony and good feeling characterized the entire proceedings, showing that Club women are quite as adept at reconciling each other’s differences of opinion, and abiding by the decisions of the majority as men. A number of bright women, hitherto unknown to fame, have already developed marked ability as thinkers, speakers and debaters. The Woman’s Club developes [sic] new opportunities and its results cannot be otherwise than beneficial to all who participated in its deliberations” (23 Jan. 1896). [↩]
3. A. Duniway, Path Breaking 122; Moynihan, Rebel 195-96, 213, 215; Writer’s Project; Morning Oregonian 2 June 1900; Haarsager 265. Until she was awakened in the mid-1890s to the potential for advancing the suffrage cause among more conservative, upper class women, Scott Duniway disdained these clubs as idle diversions for the leisured. When Cunningham Croly lost a reelection bid as its president in 1886, Scott Duniway gleefully declared that “Sorosis has been captured by the Woman Suffragists,” observing: “A majority of the brilliant women of Sorosis are fitted for weightier things than the discussion of the nice, placid topics to which they have heretofore been confined, and we look for them to exert a powerful influence in the near future on the great question of equal rights” (New Northwest 1 Apr. 1886; “Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association (1880)“). Like all of her predictions, this would prove to be overly optimistic. Nationally, one sign of equal suffrage’s continuing tenuous position in club circles is that the General Federation, founded in 1890, did not consider the subject until its 1910 convention and, even then, did so “in such a way that neither advocate nor opponent could have reason to object”: Kate M. Gordon, vice-president of N.A.W.S.A., spoke in favor, Alice Hill Chittenden of New York against, and a paper on restricted suffrage by Rudolph Blankenburg of Pennsylvania was read. No resolution, aye or nay, was proposed (Wood 265-66). [↩]
4. Pendleton was home to Oregon’s “mother club,” the Thursday Afternoon Club, founded by Adelia D. Wade and the first in the state to be admitted to the General Federation (in 1894); Mrs. Wade at this time also was the (first) president of the state federation (Croly 1011-16). [↩]
5. In 1899, Sarah A. Evans chaired a committee of the Portland Woman’s Club that obtained permissive legislation enabling Oregon municipalities to establish taxing districts for free public libraries, and established the first such district in the state. The Club also was deeply interested in sanitary improvements, and Evans also was the city market inspector for many years (Writer’s Project). Earlier on the day of this speech, the Federation “set on foot” a movement to obtain state monies for free traveling libraries (Morning Oregonian 2 June 1900). [↩]
6. Sept. 1900: 217 [↩]
7. I found the first eight pages in Scrapbook #2, and four remaining pages in Scrapbook #1. [↩]
8. Myra Colby Bradwell (1831-1894): nation’s preeminent woman lawyer; abolitionist; first woman member of Illinois Bar Association and Illinois Press Association; born Manchester, Vermont; educated Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Elgin, Illinois; taught school, Memphis, Tennessee; married James B. Bradwell, 1852; in Northwestern Sanitary Commission during Civil War; president, Soldier’s Aid Society; founding editor, weekly Chicago Legal News, 1868, which became most important legal publication west of Alleghenies, her editorials influential in molding legal opinion and passing legislation; lobbied Illinois state constitutional convention on behalf of woman suffrage, 1869; helped organize American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; agitated particularly for removal of women’s legal disabilities; applied for admission to Illinois bar, 1869, but not admitted until 1890; admitted to practice before U.S. Supreme Court, 1892 (Thomas, “Bradwell”; Willard and Livermore 1: 115; “Myra Bradwell: Practicing Law is No Place for a Lady“). [↩]
9. James Bolesworth Bradwell (1828-1907): eminent Chicago attorney, particularly expert in probate; temporary chair, first American Woman Suffrage Association convention, 1869; Illinois state legislator responsible for legislation making women eligible for school offices, office of notary public, and equal guardianship of children. [↩]
10. Portia is the wealthy heiress from Belmont in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, who is as intelligent and clever as she is beautiful. Disguised as a young law clerk, she saves Antonio from Shylock’s knife and contrives to marry her true love, Bassanio, while bound by a clause in her father’s will that requires her to marry whatever suitor chooses correctly from among three caskets.

    The evidence from this address tends to support (but not conclusively) Moynihan’s speculation that Scott Duniway met Colby Bradwell during her winter, 1870-71, trip to the California Woman Suffrage Association convention in San Francisco, where she also visited Laura de Force Gordon and Emily Pitts Stevens, whose Pioneer inspired her to launch the New Northwest (Rebel 86). Abigail says here that she was the mother of “many” children and had baby boys, one of whom was teething. At this time, she had six children; Clyde had just turned four; and Ralph was an infant (and so assuredly would have accompanied his mother to California, where Colby Bradwell would have had the opportunity to offer her “simple prescription for . . . swollen gums”).  Also, Abigail here describes Colby Bradwell as a “matron, in the prime of life” and a “recognized authority on legal jurisprudence”; in the winter of 1870-71, Colby Bradwell turned 40 and the Chicago Legal News was in its third year of publication. On the other hand, Abigail compares Colby Bradwell’s “visit” to Susan B. Anthony’s, which could suggest that the former came to Oregon (the Duniway family was living in Albany in the winter of 1870-71), just as the latter did later in 1871. But this is not conclusive because “visit” is ambiguous: Scott Duniway could have visited with Colby Bradwell (in San Francisco) and still been visited by Anthony later in the year. [↩]

11. Typescript: “them” [↩]
12. Typescript: “added that” [↩]
13. Typescript: “my” [↩]
14. Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). [↩]
15. September (Edwards, Sowing 14). [↩]
16. (1811-1872): journalist, politician; founded widely-read New York Tribune, 1841; served briefly in U.S. House of Representatives, 1848-49, thereafter failing several attempts at election to Congress; abolitionist; free soil sympathizer; prominent Republican who bucked public opinion by opposing Lincoln’s renomination, 1864, and signing bail bond for jailed former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, 1867; nominated for President by anti-Grant Republicans, and endorsed by Democrats, 1872, but lost conclusively (Nevins; Ashley, 1690-1872 256-72). [↩]
17. Mary Youngs Cheney Greeley: born in Connecticut; married July 5, 1836; seven children, only two daughters surviving to adulthood (Nevins 528, 531). [↩]
18. James Mott (1788-1868): Quaker reformer and abolitionist; born Long Island, New York; moved to Philadelphia, 1810; c. 1830 abandoned cotton commission business so as not to support slavery even indirectly; founding member, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833; delegate, World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840; presided over some sessions of Seneca Falls, New York, woman’s rights convention, 1848; accompanied his wife on her preaching and lecturing tours, thereby sparing her reprobation. [↩]
19. Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer). [↩]
20. (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). [↩]
21. Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909): born Bristol, England; Cincinnati hardware merchant and abolitionist; one of earliest advocates of woman suffrage in America, making first speech in its favor in Cleveland, 1853; married Lucy Stone, 1855; co-edited Woman’s Journal. [↩]
22. (1813-1887): liberal Congregational minister, one of the most influential Protestant speakers of his time; opposed slavery; supported moderate Reconstruction policy; favored Grover Cleveland for President, 1884: advocated woman suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific biblical criticism; in events that scandalized nation, sued by Theodore Tilton for alleged adultery with his wife, 1874 (Ashley, 1690-1872 23-30). [↩]
23. (1822-1907): born Litchfield, Connecticut; daughter of Rev. Lyman Beecher and half sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher and Catharine Esther Beecher; in 1841 married John Hooker, lawyer and Spiritualist who died, 1901; converted to woman’s rights cause by writings of John Stuart Mill, esp. “The Enfranchisement of Women,” 1861; co-founded New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became nationally known when she addressed second N.W.S.A. convention, 1870; lobbied Connecticut legislature vigorously in favor of married women’s property bill drafted by her husband; supporter of Victoria Claflin Woodhull, including latter’s allegations of adultery against brother Henry; fascinated by Spiritualism and believed in matriarchal revolution; active in N.A.W.S.A. for many years; advocated “federal” route to woman suffrage; published Womanhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities, 1874; Board of Lady Managers, 1893 Columbian Exposition; president, Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association until 1905; died in Hartford (Tyler, “Hooker”; “Isabella Beecher Hooker”; “Isabella Beecher Hooker“). [↩]
24. (1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe“). [↩]
25. Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899): politician and orator known as “the great agnostic,” advocating higher criticism of Bible, humanism, and scientific rationalism; Illinois Attorney General, 1867-69; staunch Republican. [↩]
26. (1805-1879): crusading journalist; publisher of abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, 1831-65; founded New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832; helped found American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833. [↩]
27. (1811-1884): Harvard Law School graduate who sacrificed promising future to join abolitionist movement; close associate of William Lloyd Garrison; powerful orator; succeeded Garrison as president of American Anti-Slavery Society, 1865; after Civil War, also agitated for temperance, woman’s rights, universal suffrage, and Greenback Party (Ashley, 1690-1872 232-47). [↩]
28. Gerrit Smith (1797-1874): philanthropist and reformer; cousin of Elizabeth Cady Stanton; born Utica, New York; gave both land and money to indigent women and blacks in New York; advocated Sunday School reform, vegetarianism, dress reform, woman suffrage, prison reform, and abolition; opposed Masons, tobacco and alcohol use, and capital punishment; vice-president, American Peace Society; probably provided moral and financial support for John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry; active politically for fifty years; helped form Liberty party, running for Governor of New York on its ticket, 1840; Congress (independent), 1853-54; ran for Governor on “People’s State” ticket, 1858; campaigned for Lincoln’s reelection, 1864, and for Grant, 1868. [↩]
29. (1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”). [↩]
30. Actually in May, 1872, during her maiden trip to a national suffrage convention, held in New York; a handwritten correction of the year appears in the typescript. This was the convention at which Victoria Claflin Woodhull broke with N.W.S.A. and declared her candidacy for President as head of her own Equal Rights Party. From Cady Stanton’s desk, Abigail reported her encounter with Claflin Woodhull, conceding the latter to be “a woman of exceedingly fine form and presence” who “possesses a sort of magnetic power over the ignorant rabble who flock to the standard”; the next day, she concluded: “Now that Woodhull and her infatuated followers have sloughed and run off from the legitimate work of Woman Suffrage and National Reform, we shall have opportunity to work, untrammeled by the extreme views of avowed free loveists and the ignorant marauds of rabid Internationals” (New Northwest 31 May 1872). [↩]
31. A well-known figure in antebellum American folklore, Ruth Partington was said to inhabit a beach cottage in Sidmouth, Devonshire. Her fame was made by English clergyman, political reformer and wit, Sydney Smith, in a 1831 speech to a crowd angry over the defeat of a parliamentary reform bill in the House of Lords, in which he compared the Lords’ resistance to public outrage to Dame Partington’s dogged but futile determination to resist a gale: “In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.” American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber picked up the character in the Boston Post in 1847; the popular Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington appeared in 1854 (James M. Cornelius, “Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Partington“; cf. “4879. Sydney Smith. 1771-1845. John Bartlett, comp. 1919. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed“). [↩]
32. Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901): Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901; also became Empress of India, 1876. [↩]
33. Typescript: “brow” [↩]
34. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier (1812-1888): physician, reformer; born Plainfield, New Jersey; orphaned, 1824; married Abraham Witton Lozier, 1830; conducted charity work for poor in Albany after husband’s death, 1837; graduated from Syracuse Eclectic College with medical degree, 1853; successfully lobbied for first woman’s medical school in New York State, Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, funded by proceeds of her practice, 1863; president, New York City Woman Suffrage Society, 1873-86; president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1877-78; died of angina pectoris (Cantor; “Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier“; “Clemence Sophia Lozier”). [↩]
35. (1809-1894): physician who publicized the contagiousness of puerperal fever, 1843; married Amelia Lee Jackson; father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes; humorist and poet, winning national acclaim for “Old Ironsides,” 1830, and author of “Breakfast-Table” essays in Atlantic Monthly, beginning 1857 (Who was Who 582). [↩]
36. Also Asclepius: Greco-Roman god of medicine, son of Apollo (god of healing, truth, and prophecy) and the nymph Coronis. [↩]
37. (Christian Friedrich) Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843): German physician; founder of homeopathy, the principle of which is that “likes are cured by likes,” that is, diseases are cured by drugs that produce disease-like symptoms in healthy subjects. [↩]
38. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): French chemist and microbiologist who proved that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease, originated vaccines for rabies, anthrax and chicken cholera, invented the purification-by-heat process known as pasteurization, and, by applying these discoveries, saved the wine, beer, and silk industries. [↩]
39. (Heinrich Hermann) Robert Koch (1843-1910): German physician; a founder of bacteriology who discovered tubercle bacillus, 1882, and cholera bacillus, 1883; awarded Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1905. [↩]
40. Abraham Witton Lozier (1838-1896): born New York; graduated New York City College, 1859; graduated, College of Physicians and Surgeons; surgeon, Sanitary Commission, Civil War; married Charlotte Irene Denman in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1866; president, Orange YMCA; active in temperance and Sunday School work; died of heart disease, New York (“Abraham Witton Lozier, M.D.“; “Descendants of Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“). [↩]
41. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier (1844-1870): born New Jersey; daughter of Jacob Denman and Selina Lyon; family moved to Galena, Illinois, then Winona, Minnesota, 1852; married Abraham Lozier in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1866; doctor, New York Medical College and Hospital for Women; vice-president, National Workingwomen’s Association; died New York (“Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“; “Descendants of Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“). [↩]
42. Rachel Littler Bodley (1831-1888): chemist; botanist; born Cincinnati, Ohio; graduated Wesleyan Female College, 1849; studied two years in physics and chemistry, Philadelphia Polytechnic College; professor of natural sciences, Cincinnati Female Seminary; chair of chemistry and toxicology, Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1865; dean, 1874-88 (Alsop; Willard and Livermore 1: 100-01). [↩]
43. Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906): leading female physician in America who supported arguments for woman’s rights with scientific proofs; born London; moved to New York, 1848; graduate, Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1864; practiced at New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston; first woman admitted and second to graduate from the Ecole de Médicine, Paris, 1867-71; Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women, 1871-89; married Dr. Abraham Jacobi, “father of American pediatrics,” 1873; winner, Boylston Prize, Harvard, 1876; first woman member, New York Academy of Medicine; authored over 120 scientific articles and 9 books, including Common Sense Applied to Women’s Suffrage, 1894 (Lubove; Who was Who 625). [↩]
44. Typescript: “B.” Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (c. 1862-1914): Staten Island, New York; daughter of Anna Shaw Curtis and George William Curtis; organized several working girl’s clubs; longtime president, Samaritan Circle of King’s Daughters; president, St. Cecelia Society of Staten Island; officer, Charity Organization Society; staunch suffragist; frequent speaker at New York state suffrage conventions and before legislature (New York Times 13 May 1894, 8 June 1894, 8 Nov. 1895, 10 Nov. 1895, 10 Oct. 1897, 7 Mar. 1914). [↩]
45. (1824-1892): writer and reformer who became known for “Easy Chair” pieces in Harper’s Weekly; spoke out on public affairs as lecturer and, from 1863, as editor for Harper’s, advocating abolitionism, woman’s rights, civil service reform, and restraint of corporate power; refused ambassadorship to England to remain at Harper’s, 1877. [↩]
46. (1821-1910): born Bristol, England; moved to New York, 1832, and to Cincinnati, Ohio, 1838; earned medical degree from Geneva College, 1849; barred from practice in most European and American hospitals, 1850-58; private practice in New York City, 1851; lectured on public hygiene and founded New York Infirmary for Women and Children, 1857; lecturing in England, 1858-59, first female physician listed in Medical Register of the United Kingdom; helped found U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1861; founded Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, 1868-69; moved to London, 1869, founding National Health Society and helping organize London School of Medicine for Women; anti-vivisectionist; author of several important medical and scientific works (Thomson; Willard and Livermore 1: 91-92; Who was Who 102). [↩]
47. Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839-1898): teacher, temperance advocate; corresponding secretary (1874-77) and president (1879-98), Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; president, World W.C.T.U., 1891-98; supported woman suffrage as means to temperance; advocated partisan approach, linking temperance to “Home Protection” and other political parties (Dillon; Dow, “Frances E. Willard”). [↩]
48. Elizabeth Johnson Devereux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Taylor; Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97). [↩]
49. Margaret V. (E.?) Parker: Scottish suffragist; speaker on boat chartered by New York state suffrage association during dedication of Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, 1886; author of resolution formally organizing International Council of Women, March, 1888, during gathering of the same name in Washington, D.C., pursuant to a previous call (June, 1887) by N.W.S.A. for assemblage in celebration of fortieth anniversary of Seneca Falls convention (Sewall 34-35, 60-61; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 124, 840). [↩]
50. (1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim). [↩]
51. Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim). [↩]
52. Jane Cunningham Croly (1829-1901): born Market-Harborough, Leicestershire, England; came to U.S. with family, 1841; pen name “Jennie June”; created first syndicated woman’s column, “Parlor and Side-walk Gossip,” 1857; managed woman’s department, New York World, 1862-72; chief staff writer, Demorests’ women’s magazines, 1860-87; published Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, 1866; advocated women’s financial independence and economic equality, insisting that women must earn their rights through work; instrumental in woman’s club movement; after she was refused entrance to New York Press Club’s “men-only” reception for Charles Dickens, founded “Sorosis,” first woman’s club, 1868; president, 1870, 1875-86; called national convention that resulted in formation of General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1889; founded and became president, Women’s Press Club of New York, 1889; authored History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, 1898; professor, journalism and literature, Rutgers University; died New York City (Schlesinger, “Croly”; Ashley, 1873-1900 67-69; “Jane Cunningham Croly“). [↩]
53. Should be “D. G.”, for David Goodman Croly (1829-1889). [↩]
54. Ellen Martin Henrotin (1847-1922): labor and social reformer, woman’s club leader; Chicago society woman, joined Fortnightly Club, 1847, co-founded Friday Club, 1887, and joined reform-minded Chicago Woman’s Club, early 1880s; instrumental in organizing Woman’s Branch of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; president, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894-98, during period of rapid growth; president, National Women’s Trade Union League, 1904-07, advocating unionization of women workers and improved working conditions; advocated sex hygiene training in public schools to reduce “social evil” (prostitution) (Boyer, “Henrotin”). [↩]
55. Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918): queen of Chicago society; musician, linguist, writer, philanthropist, art collector; born and raised Louisville, Kentucky; married financial giant Potter Palmer (owner of celebrated Palmer House hotel), 1871; president, Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; regular at Jane Addam’s Hull House; supporter of Women’s Trade Union League; mildly supportive of woman suffrage but strongly opposed to militancy; retired to Sarasota, Florida, where her property “The Oaks” became bay-front community for rich and famous, and her farm “Meadowcrest Pastures” became Myakka River State Park (I. Ross, “Palmer”; Patricia Chadwick, “Historical Biography: Bertha Honore Palmer”). [↩]
56. (1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A..; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexner, “Shaw”; Linkugel). [↩]
57. Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-04, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63). [↩]
58. (1849-1941): president, Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association, 1881-88, reorganized as Kentucky Equal Rights Association, 1888-1912; Democrat, supported states’ rights and opposed Negro suffrage; became estranged from mainstream woman’s movement as it turned to federal solution; vice-president, Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, 1913, which promoted state suffrage; resigned from both N.A.W.S.A. and state Equal Rights Association, 1919; life-long W.C.T.U. member campaigned for repeal of Prohibition on states’ rights grounds (Boyer, “Clay”; Murphy). [↩]
59. Martha Adalaide Cook Keating (1848-1942): club woman; born Hillsdale, Michigan; daughter of Betsy Wolford Cook and John Potter Cook, pioneer banker and lumberman who helped draft state constitution; graduate, Hillsdale College; married Loftus Nano Keating, attorney, 1869; co-founder, Muskegon Woman’s Club, 1890, and president, 1892-93; founder, class in parliamentary procedure, 1904, and club parliamentarian until death; charter member and president, Michigan State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899-1900; notable successes during her two terms as president included seating of women on state boards of control, employment of women physicians at state institutions having female inmates, and approval of Woman’s Building at Michigan Agricultural College. She had welcomed delegates to the previous year’s N.A.W.S.A. convention in Grand Rapids, at which Scott Duniway delivered “How to Win the Ballot.” Abigail probably met both Cook Keating and Emily Burton Ketcham (infra, n. 59) at this convention (History of the Michigan State Federation 29-32, 198-99; Harley and MacDowell 2: 63; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 323-24; Croly 702-03, 710, 716). [↩]
60. Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907): born Grand Rapids, Michigan; daughter of Josiah and Elizabeth Freeman Burton; educated in public schools and St. Mark’s College, Grand Rapids, Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen’s school for girls, Rochester, New York; married Smith B. Ketcham of Farmington, New York; teacher; outspoken advocate of women’s political equality and enfranchisement for thirty years; charter member and four-time president, Michigan state suffrage organization; principally responsible for bringing N.A.W.S.A. convention to Grand Rapids, 1899; president, Women’s Civic League and Woman’s and Children’s Protective League (Eagle 361-64; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 755-71, passim, 5: 204; “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Jo Ellyn Clary, “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Woman’s Tribune 26 Jan. 1907). [↩]
61. Josephine Kirby Williamson Henry (1846-?): born Newport, Kentucky; married Confederate Captain William Henry, 1868; superintendent, legislative and petition work, Kentucky Equal Rights Association; leader, Kentucky Woman Suffrage party; “the only woman in the South who ever ran for a State office,” she was Prohibition party candidate, clerk, Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1890; published over three hundred articles on women’s property rights; instrumental in General Assembly’s passage of Married Woman’s Property Act, 1894; nominee, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1894; discussed as possible Presidential candidate, 1900; accomplished musician (Willard and Livermore 1: 372-73; “Josephine K. Henry“). [↩]
62. Virginia Durant Young (?-1906): of Fairfax, South Carolina; owner/editor, Enterprise; participated in first suffrage meeting in South Carolina, in Greenville, 1890; addressed W.C.T.U. of Beaufort, 1891; petitioned legislature for her personal enfranchisement, 1892; petitioned state constitutional convention for amendment granting suffrage to tax-paying women, 1895; petitioned legislature for Presidential suffrage, 1896; founded state suffrage association; president, 1900; active in state press association (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 922-24, 5: 35, 204). [↩]
63. Typescript: “each” [↩]
64. Typescript: “in” [↩]
65. Typescript: “big” [↩]
66. (1838-1895): club-woman and organizer; born Andover, Massachusetts; educated in Andover and abroad, studying particularly music and languages; moved to Rockford, Illinois, where founded musical and French clubs and Rockford Conservatory of Music; following marriage to Rev. William B. Brown, 1880, and three years abroad, settled in East Orange, New Jersey, where elected president of Woman’s Club; one of committee of seven that formed General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, and its first president, 1890 (Bowerman; cf. Willard and Livermore 1: 125-26). [↩]
67. Actually, William B. Brown, to whom Charlotte was married on July 27, 1880, was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Newark, New Jersey (Bowerman 110). [↩]
68. Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart (1839-1902): Washington suffragist inspired by Anthony’s and Scott Duniway’s 1871 visit to territorial legislature; chair, Washington Territory Board of Immigration, c. 1875-80; prominent clubwoman; founder, on March 10, 1883, and first president of Woman’s Club of Olympia (first woman’s club in Washington and second on Pacific Coast); chair, Constitution Committee, Washington State Federation of Woman’s Clubs organizing convention, September, 1896; treasurer, State Federation, 1898; wife of Robert G. Stuart; spoke at organizing meeting of Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895, becoming member, 1899; died at 62 in San Francisco, January 6 (M. Andrews 7; Beard 63; Croly 1132-34, 1144-46, 1149; Haarsager 59, 135, 191; “Third [sic: fourth] Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 16, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Library Association of Portland Newspaper Index microfiche, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project). [↩]
69. Typescript: “sex” [↩]
70. Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (1823-1904): born Pompey, New York; daughter of Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke and Deborah Baker Clarke; descendant of renowned preacher and theologian Rev. Jonathan Edwards; moved to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 1842; graduate, Greenwood Institute; popular columnist and correspondent for leading newspapers and magazines of day, including antislavery National Era, Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s Monthly, New York Times, Lady’s Home Journal; pen name “Grace Greenwood”; published Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters, 1850; married Leander Lippincott, 1853 (later divorced); published Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe and History of My Pets, 1854; supported abolition and woman’s rights; founded Little Pilgrim, one of first children’s magazines, and wrote children’s books; living in Washington, D.C., raised money for North during Civil War; Lincoln called her “the little patriot”; lectured on peace, prison reform, and capital punishment on lyceum circuit; died New Rochelle, New York (Welter, “Lippincott”; Ashley, 1690-1872 303-09; “Sara Jane Clarke (Grace Greenwood)“). [↩]
71. (1839-1909): actress, author, lecturer; born Elmira, New York; educated Methodist Female Seminary and Academy of the Sacred Heart, Cincinnati; gave up theatre by 1868 to become lecturer on popular subjects; attended American Equal Rights Association convention, 1869; married William Wirt Sikes, 1872, then James O’Neill Logan, 1892; supported suffrage in articles and lectures; wrote and translated plays (A. Johnson; Who was Who 741). [↩]
72. May Eliza Wright Sewall (1844-1920): educator, founded Girls’ Classical School, Indianapolis, introducing dress reforms and physical education, and adopting rigorous college preparatory curriculum; co-founded Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society, 1878, affiliated with N.W.S.A.; key force in 1881-83 campaign for state suffrage, which nearly succeeded; president, National (1897-99) and International Council of Women (1899-1904), attempts to unify women’s organizations of all types; U.S. Representative, Paris Exposition, 1900; called and presided over International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace, at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (Phillips, “Sewall”). [↩]
73. Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for thirty-five years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost twenty years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim). [↩]
74. Cady Stanton had two daughters: 1. Margaret Stanton (1852-?). 2. Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (1856-1940): born Seneca Falls, New York; graduated Vassar College, 1878; assisted her mother and Susan B. Anthony with monumental History of Woman Suffrage and authored concluding chapter of second volume, on rival A.W.S.A., 1881; married William H. Blatch and moved to England, 1882; granted M.A. degree by Vassar for study of England’s rural poor, 1894; returned to U.S., 1902; organized mass meetings at Cooper Union and annual Suffrage Day parades in New York City, beginning 1908; organized Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, 1907, which became Women’s Political Union, 1910, and merged with Alice Paul’s and Lucy Burns’ Congressional Union, 1916, then Woman’s Party, 1917; championed unsuccessful New York suffrage amendment, 1915 (similar measure passed, 1917); published Mobilizing Woman Power, supporting war as providing equal work for women, 1918; head, Speakers Bureau, Wartime Food Administration; director, Women’s Land Army; published autobiography, Challenging Years, 1940; promoted her mother’s and her woman’s rights work in later years; retired and died, Greenwich, Connecticut (Flexner, “Blatch”; Jacqueline Clement, “Harriot Stanton Blatch”). [↩]
75. Ward Howe had four daughters: 1. Julia Romana (1844-?); 2. Florence Marion (1845-?); 3. Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (1850-1943), best known as a writer of stories, nursery and nonsense rhymes, books for young girls, and regional novels (E. Johnson); and 4. Maud Howe Elliott (1854-1948), a writer of novels, newspaper art criticism, travel narratives, and biographies, and a founding member of the Progressive Party (Levenson). [↩]
76. Charlotte Beebe Wilbour (1830-?): born Norwich, Connecticut; educated at Wilbraham, Massachusetts; corresponding secretary, Loyal Women’s National League, an abolitionist group, 1864; with “Kate” (Mary Katherine Keemle) Field and “Jennie June” (Jane Cunningham Croly), founded Sorosis, the first woman’s club, in New York, 1868; six terms as president, beginning 1870; instituted lecture series on health and dress reform; as president, “crowning work” was organization of Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873; helped organize New York state suffrage society, 1869; first president, New York City Society, 1870; speaker, second N.W.S.A. convention in Washington, D.C., 1870; moved to Paris, 1874; helped revise Woman’s Bible, 1895; honorary president, Rhode Island state suffrage association, 1903; speaker, N.A.W.S.A. convention in Portland, 1905 (History of Woman Suffrage 2: 80, 421, 424, 3: 396, 403, 405, 6: 566; Croly 15-29; Oregonian 28 June 1905; “Charles Edwin Wilbour”). [↩]
77. Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-?): first American Egyptologist; born Little, Rhode Island; classical education included Brown; reporter, New York Tribune, 1854; admitted to New York bar, 1859; began study of Egyptian antiquities, 1872; associated with Heinrich Karl Brugsch (Brugsch Bey) and Gaston C. C. Maspero, accompanying latter on five winter expeditions up Nile, then on own; Brooklyn Museum Library of Egyptology named for him (“Charles Edwin Wilbour”). [↩]
78. (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62). [↩]
79. Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901): Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901; also became Empress of India, 1876. [↩]
80. William McKinley [↩]
81. Typescript: “Clara Barton” [↩]
82. Mary Katherine Keemle Field (1838-1896): successful journalist and lyceum lecturer who also aspired to be singer, actress, playwright, and literary critic; born St. Louis; launched thirty-five-year career in journalism by writing travel letters from Italy to Boston Courier, 1859; contributed especially to Springfield Republican and New York Tribune; launched her own weekly, Kate Field’s Washington, 1890-95; her two favorite lyceum lectures concerned Dickens and what she called “Musical Monologue,” incorporating her parody of a London society dinner party and a Spanish song and dance; made stage debut, 1874, acting in minor plays in America and England for several years; publicized commercial and reform causes ranging from telephone, California wines, and glass manufacture to purchase of John Brown’s farm as national shrine, cremation, international copyright, a national music conservatory, spiritualism, and anti-polygamy; founder of Sorosis, first woman’s club; lukewarm advocate of woman’s rights, not endorsing suffrage until 1893 (Baldwin; I. Ross, Ladies 36-37). She died in 1896, not 1898; Scott Duniway could be confusing the first and second woman’s congresses. [↩]
83. Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (1835-1896): kindergarten educator, author, and Bible teacher; born Cazenovia, New York; wrote book reviews and articles (often on woman’s role in society) for Overland Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, and evangelical press; married Halsey F. Cooper, editor, Chattanooga Advertiser, 1855; two daughters; cousin of Robert G. Ingersoll, “the great agnostic”; tried for heresy by Presbyterians for disavowing doctrines of infant damnation and everlasting punishment, 1881, she left denomination, becoming Congregationalist; instrumental in establishing and administering system of forty kindergartens among San Francisco’s poor, unsupervised, preschool children, 1879-95, which was model for 287 others across U.S. and abroad; first president, International Kindergarten Union, 1892; charter member, Associated Charities of San Francisco; active in Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association, Century Club (San Francisco’s first woman’s club), and General Federation of Women’s Clubs (treasurer, 1894-96); spoke at World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; one-time opponent of woman suffrage, vice-chair of almost-successful California suffrage campaign, 1896; suffered from depression following husband’s suicide, 1885; died of asphyxia, with daughter Harriet, in their San Francisco apartment, December 11, 1896 (Jacklin; Willard and Livermore 1: 206-07; “Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper”; “Guide to the Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper Papers“). Her “tragic death” occurred at the hands of her severely depressed daughter, Harriet, who, following several unsuccessful suicide attempts, asphyxiated both herself and her mother by gas on the night of December 10-11, 1896. [↩]
84. Clara Shortridge Foltz (1849-1934): California’s first woman lawyer, 1878; president, California Woman Suffrage Association, early 1880s; publisher, New American Woman, 1916-18; advocate for penal reform and public defenders for poor; first woman deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, 1911-13; declined appointment as Assistant U.S. Attorney General, 1921; candidate in 1930 Republican gubernatorial primary, running on equal rights platform. Mistreated by her spouse and needing money for her children, young Mrs. Foltz sewed for Scott Duniway’s millinery store and wrote for the New Northwest before moving to California in 1875 (Gilb, “Foltz”; Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 96). [↩]
85. Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16). [↩]
86. Adelia D. (Mrs. Charles Bird) Wade: born in Maine; lived in Massachusetts; moved to Pendleton, 1880; founded Thursday Afternoon Club of Pendleton, the “mother” woman’s club of Oregon, with departments of literature, art, and music, the belles-lettres, Greek history, art, and literature; State chairman of correspondence, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894; first president of State Federation, 1899-1902; “an advocate of the higher intellectual development of women, and a lover of the best literature,” and “a writer of no mean ability” (“Writer’s Project“; Croly 1011-14; Haarsager 265). [↩]
87. Typescript: “primal” [↩]
88. Sarah Sophia Chase Platt Decker (1852-1912): vigorous participant in successful Colorado suffrage campaign, 1893; president, Woman’s Club of Denver, 1894, undertaking vacation-school classes for children, municipal civil service reform, cleaner streets; elected vice-president, General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, 1898; president, 1904-08; advocated activism over study, remarking to GFWC meeting in Denver, 1904: “Dante is dead. He has been dead for several centuries, and I think it is time that we dropped the study of his Inferno and turned our attention to our own”; member, National Child Labor Committee; strong advocate of conservation, only woman invited to President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 conference on subject; Colorado Board of Charities and Correction, 1898-1912, implemented penal reforms; spoken of as possible U.S. Senate candidate, 1912 (Rinehart; Haarsager 295). [↩]
89. Typescript: “winter” [↩]
90. The third verse of “Ho! Reapers of Life’s Harvest,” words and music by Isaac B. Woodbury (1819-1858). One of James A. Garfield’s favorite hymns, it was sung at his funeral, following his assassination in 1881. [↩]