"SHE FLIES WITH HER OWN WINGS"

Nothing is certain about this untitled, five-page, edited manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers, except that Abigail wrote it. Most probably, she composed it in celebration of the 134th anniversary of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. Because she refers to herself in the third person, it seems intended for print, not the podium. And it is […]

Now just a month before the November election, Scott Duniway continues to speak out against a prohibition measure on the ballot.1 This is an autobiographical account of her awakening to the cause of equal rights and opposition to Prohibition. Again one sees the personal experiences that stimulated her concern for the economic condition of women. The […]

By Labor Day, 1914, Americans had been honoring working men and women with a national holiday on the first Monday of September for twenty years.1 According to one historian, “a growing consensus that the government must do more to correct the evils of industrial capitalism” was emerging. Yet, while gains had been made, this remained […]

According to one historian, 1912 represented “the high tide of Northwest progressivism.” That year, Idaho joined Washington and Oregon in adopting the initiative, referendum, and recall, while Oregon joined her sisters in approving woman suffrage. And many reformers, typically Protestant, middle-class Republicans, were swept up in third-party politics, when former Republican chief executive Theodore Roosevelt […]

Delivered to the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, this speech is a narrative history of the club movement, with a surprising twist: Scott Duniway suggests that women’s clubs were organized as a way to quell the Prohibition “boomerang” (her term for the counterproductive effect that she believed Prohibition had on the cause of equal suffrage), […]

This is the fourth speech in this collection that Scott Duniway delivered to the association, in which she and her family (pioneers of 1852) had been active for many, many years. It also is the first that was delivered after Oregon women were enfranchised in 1912. The occasion was the association’s forty-first annual reunion, at […]

Midway through the “tax-paying women” suffrage campaign, the O.S.E.S.A. held its thirty-ninth anniversary meeting in the home of the late Senator Joseph Norton Dolph. Scott Duniway’s optimistic Presidential address attributes increasing success to “the aid of far-seeing and justice-loving men,” and the 1908 failure at the polls to “timid or selfish men” and “the debased […]

At the business portion of the Association’s thirty-seventh annual session, meeting in the Masonic Temple, a momentous gift was presented to the Oregon Historical Society. Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright1, “an honored pioneer of 1845,” conveyed “a tract of land on Clatsop Beach, near the Seaside Hotel, at Seaside, upon which is situated the salt cairn […]

The progressive currents making headway across the United States in the early years of the twentieth century influenced Oregon as well.1 In August, 1908, during Democrat-cum-populist Harry Lane’s2 second term as Mayor of Portland, a Charter Commission began to consider alternative forms of municipal government such as the recently-devised “Des Moines Plan” of government by nonpartisan, […]

Five months after “another dismal defeat” at the polls, the thirty-eighth annual convention of O.S.E.S.A. met at the Portland Commercial Club. Among others, Clara Bewick Colby1 spoke about the suffrage efforts of London women, Myrtle E. Pease2 reported on her efforts as the association’s organizer, and Sarah A. Evans3 described the national convention of Federated […]

The Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association was incorporated in 1895 “for the general promotion of religious, scientific and educational interests.”1 Each summer, for almost two weeks in July, the association conducted assemblies on the grounds of Gladstone Park in Oregon City. According to its promotional programs, the shaded, seventy-four-acre park with “scenery that invites the tourist […]

In this second address before the Society of Bible Spiritualists, meeting in A.O.U.W. Temple1, Scott Duniway examines another dimension of the paranormal: hypnotism. Her immediate concern is the recent murder trial of Charles H. Reynolds in the shooting death of George Herbert Hibbins, who was having an affair with Reynolds’ wife, Lulu.2 Although Abigail thinks […]

Although this archive might suggest that Scott Duniway’s public address was devoted almost exclusively to the topics of equal rights, the status of women, and prohibition, such was not the case. During the periodic economic upheavals of the late nineteenth century, for example, she lectured frequently on “Labor Unrest and Political Upheavals” and “Removing the […]

Scott Duniway spoke this Wednesday afternoon at the quarterly meeting of the Oregon State Nurses’ Association, on the grounds of the North Pacific Sanatorium.1 This address, one of the few that are not explicitly or primarily political in content, combines two subjects of recurring interest to her: the exploits of the pioneers and women’s superiority […]

If 1900 and its aftermath had been a test of Scott Duniway’s “still hunt” tactics, then 1906 became equally a test of the vigorous public campaign methods (the so-called “hurrah” tactics) and the suffrage-temperance alliance espoused by others. When the referendum failed (disastrously, with a larger “nay” vote than six years before), Scott Duniway interpreted […]

When the National American Woman Suffrage Association met for its thirty-eighth convention at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, “the need of the hour” was Oregon. Throughout its proceedings, the upcoming June referendum “was the uppermost thought”: Appeals were made for funds, plans were made in business meetings, and “hopeful” speeches of “probable success” were delivered.1 […]

By 1905 the woman’s club movement certainly was well-established, even on the West Coast. However, it was not universally acclaimed. On Monday, November 13, the local district of the Federated Women’s Clubs of California assembled in San Francisco for its annual convention, prompting the Reverend Frederick W. Clampett, rector of the city’s Trinity Church, to […]

The centennial of the Expedition of Discovery, the first to reach the Oregon Territory by land, demanded a celebration. With the heavy financial backing of a consortium of twenty-five Portland businessmen, a fair was held in the Guild’s Lake district of Portland, where three Federal and twenty Oregon state buildings, and buildings and exhibits representing […]

Nineteenth-century women seeking to justify a larger role in public life often looked to exceptional historical women as models. Scott Duniway, for example, fondly invoked Abigail Adams, for whom she was named. At the turn of the next century, an obscure native woman known to Lewis and Clark would become the most important heroine in […]

Little is known about this manuscript, which was found in folder “Suffrage Correspondence 1905-1906″ in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. Textual clues strongly suggest a meeting of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs in Portland, with Scott Duniway speaking as a Federation representative (in her home city, of course). If so, its probable date is […]

Encouraged by the presence of  prominent Olympia, Washington, clubwoman (and Scott Duniway’s close friend), Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart, the Portland Woman’s Club was organized on December 19, 1895. A temporary organizing committee was appointed, including as president Georgiana M. Burton Lewis, wife of Oregonian owner and paper-making industrialist Henry Lewis Pittock. However, to Jane C. […]

Scott Duniway addressed the fourth annual meeting of the Oregon Historical Society on this Saturday at City Hall. The topic of discussion was the Constitutional Convention of 1857, and speaker after distinguished speaker arose to eulogize the framers as “men in whose veins flowed firm purpose, highmindedness and enduring sagacity.”1 Their message, sometimes implicit and […]

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…

The following year, and four months before Oregon men would vote on an equal suffrage amendment, the N.A.W.S.A. and Scott Duniway both returned to Washington, D.C. As might be expected under these circumstances, Abigail here reports on progress in Oregon and the prospects for success in June. She describes the behind-the-scenes  campaign being waged, a […]

Regarding political–and rhetorical–strategy, Scott Duniway often disagreed bitterly with other suffrage leaders, particularly Eastern women officers of the national suffrage organizations. Because the Pacific Northwest was a special place (a theme invoked again here), she believed, special strategies or persuasive appeals were required. In particular, Scott Duniway generally resisted expediency-based rationales for suffrage in favor […]

Scott Duniway delivered this address on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Oregon’s admission to statehood. Commemorative ceremonies were conducted by the state legislature in joint session in the statehouse in Salem. According to a front page report in the next day’s edition of the Morning Oregonian, roughly 1,200 officials, pioneers, prominent citizens, and […]

This address was delivered at the twenty-sixth annual convention of the O.S.E.S.A.. Meeting in her home at 294 Clay Street in Portland, Scott Duniway, as President, speaks personally and autobiographically while striking many familiar themes. She is optimistic about the progress of the movement. She asserts that the best people and the honorable classes all […]

In this address, Scott Duniway discusses her principal trade–journalism–and the contributions of women thereto.1 As she relates in closing, this was to have been a “practical” discussion of journalism as an occupation for women but, instead, her introductory remarks cataloging well-known women journalists expanded to fill her time. As a result, the speech is interesting […]

The twenty-fifth annual meeting of  O.S.E.S.A.1 convened at the Unitarian church in Portland on this rainy Thursday afternoon. In her capacity as the organization’s President, Scott Duniway delivered the following annual address, recounting the progress of the suffrage movement not only in Oregon, but nationwide. Her tone is optimistic; asserting gains in public opinion, she […]

Very little is known about this untitled and undated text, in which Scott Duniway argues that domestic service must be made a respectable occupation. Her discussion is particularly interesting for three reasons. First, in her view, the topic of domestic service is important not only to the wealthy and privileged, for whom she has little […]

In 1895 Scott Duniway traveled all the way to Atlanta for the first N.A.W.S.A. convention held in the South, or outside Washington, D.C. The History of Woman Suffrage reported that the following speech provoked “much laughter.”1 This one-paragraph synopsis, remarkably, is the most complete account of a Scott Duniway speech in the entire, six-volume History, […]

This address is an excellent example of Scott Duniway’s praise of the land, people, and opportunities of the Pacific Northwest. The Congress of Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago1 was a fitting occasion for such a unifying address: Scott Duniway uses the quatercentennial of Columbus’ pioneering voyage to relate the pioneer story of […]

The following speech, the primary purpose of which was to rally Republican support for women’s voting rights, was delivered to a number of equal suffrage societies during the 1892 Presidential election campaign. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison once observed: “In 1890 American politics lost their equilibrium and began to pitch and toss in an effort to […]

In addition to her efforts in Oregon and Washington, Scott Duniway campaigned vigorously for suffrage in nearby Idaho for many years. By her own account, from 1876 to 1895, she traveled over 12,000 miles “by river, rail, stage, and buckboard,” delivered 140 public lectures in at least twenty-two cities and towns, addressed the territorial legislature […]

The controversy that was to preoccupy Scott Duniway for many years and define her place within the suffrage movement concerned prohibition, which was one of a number of reform-oriented movements to gain favor during the last half of the nineteenth century. Joseph Gusfield attributes the rise in anti-liquor sentiment in part to the influx of […]

The year following their 1884 defeat at the polls1, Oregon suffragists were invited by their sisters to the north, who had won their own right to vote scarcely twenty months before, to an unusual Independence Day celebration, described as “the first equal rights celebration since the nation’s birth.” The “good citizens of Vancouver . . […]

Annually since the Civil War, suffragists had petitioned the Congress for voting rights for women, and in this, the nineteenth year of lobbying, Scott Duniway joined the delegation that addressed the Senate in Washington, D.C., the day after the N.W.S.A. convention.1 In a reversal of roles from their 1871 campaign, she was introduced by her […]

Although she devoted most of her energies to the cause in the Pacific Northwest, Scott Duniway also maintained a prominent national presence. From the day in 1871 that she invited Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who were on a lecture tour in California, to come to Oregon1, she was a figure to be […]

When the O.S.W.S.A.. convened in Turn Halle this Tuesday morning for its twelfth annual meeting, the excitement must have been palpable. For, as President Hattie Loughary1 put it, the circumstances were “peculiarly interesting and encouraging.” Just three months before, the Washington legislature had conferred suffrage upon the women of that territory.2 And just four months […]

In August, 1883, Scott Duniway was in Astoria, campaigning for the suffrage amendment that was to be voted upon in June, 1884, which, she asserted predictably, the “wide-awake, whole-souled and public-spirited” residents favored “with all their hearts.” Abigail wrote an enthusiastic account of the rally. She credited the potent “printer’s ink” of the “gentlemanly editor” […]

Scott Duniway continued as Vice President At Large of O.S.W.S.A. the next year and read the following annual report during the afternoon session of the eleventh annual convention’s first day, meeting in Y.M.C.A. Hall. Obviously feeling unappreciated, she complains–in ways both subtle and not–that she continues to bear the heavy financial burden of her office […]

Having migrated to Oregon in 1852 at the age of 17, the people and events of the pioneer period held a special place in Scott Duniway’s heart. She was a member of the Oregon Pioneer Association, founded on October 18, 1873, and a frequent speaker at its annual reunions at the state fairgrounds near Salem.1 […]

At its ninth convention in February, 1881, O.S.W.S.A. had approved a new constitution that created an office of Vice President at Large, who “shall be authorized to lecture under the auspices of this association, in any town, city or district, he or she may visit, within the boundaries of the state, and shall be vigilant […]

Like clockwork, Scott Duniway had been presenting petitions for a suffrage law to every session of the Oregon legislature since 18721, ultimately, despite varying degrees of support, to no avail. However, in 1880 prohibitionist legislators introduced both prohibition and woman suffrage amendments to the state constitution, prompting “months of squabbling.”2 Abigail–seeking to decouple the two […]

Once again, Scott Duniway, as President of the O.S.W.S.A., delivered the opening address at the association’s annual convention, meeting this year at her residence in Portland. Once again, her principal theme is advances in the cause of woman’s rights.

According to advance billing, the O.S.W.S.A. would convene for the seventh time with President Abigail Scott Duniway in the chair at the YMCA building. Vice-President Hattie Loughary1 would speak on “Rights under the Constitution,” and the Honorable F. O. McCown, Esq.2, of Oregon City, would speak on “Women and the Law.” “Vocal and instrumental music […]

In late September, a special meeting of the association took place at Reed’s Opera House in Salem for the purpose of planning for the upcoming legislative session. This brief address was given at the opening of business, on Wednesday. Later, Scott Duniway would complain that these daily business sessions had not been “as largely attended […]

This brief Presidential address was delivered at the opening session of the sixth annual convention, meeting in Astoria. It is interesting, if not remarkable, for its juxtaposition of two basic themes.  First, it illustrates Scott Duniway’s recurrent optimism, asserting that conditions have never been more favorable and that ultimate success is inevitable. Second, it reveals, […]

Meanwhile, back in Washington . . . Two years after Scott Duniway’s 1873 “Opposition” speech before the Washington Territory Woman Suffrage Association convention and the legislative defeat of the Eldridge suffrage bill, yet another bill, this one introduced by Elwood Evans1, a Republican from Thurston County, failed by eleven votes to fifteen.2 And so woman’s […]

Scott Duniway was born and spent her childhood in Pleasant Grove, Illinois, in Tazewell County, before departing for the Oregon Territory in 1852, at the age of 17. Thus, this speech, delivered before the Illinois state legislature, represented a homecoming for her. Scott Duniway stopped in Springfield following a trip east.1 She reported having been […]

This lengthy address is particularly interesting as a window not simply onto Scott Duniway’s views on suffrage and prohibition but onto her broader reformist spirit. In it, she first offers her views on human motivation, echoing the liberal belief that environment influences behavior and the progressivist credo that improvements in the human condition will improve […]

The question of equal suffrage was a lively topic for public and political debate very early in Washington’s history, and Abigail Scott Duniway was a major figure almost from the beginning.1 The question was considered as early as 1854, when a bill was introduced in the lower house of the territory’s first legislature. The bill […]

The onset of Scott Duniway’s oratorical career is well-known. By her own account, her “maiden speech” occurred during the “log cabin and hard cider” campaign of 1840, when Abigail was about six years old and the Scott family was living in the village of Wesley, on the banks of the Illinois River: “William Henry Harrison […]