Category Archives: Uncategorized

“When the Revolutionary war cloud burst . . .” – circa October 19, 1915

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 […]

“THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT AND TWO KINDS OF PROHIBITION” – October 5, 1914

Now just a month before the November election, Scott Duniway continues to speak out against a prohibition measure on the ballot. ((As she had earlier at a Progressive Party luncheon.)) 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 […]

“HOME AND MOTHER” – September 7, 1914

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. ((Labor historian Philip Foner asserts that Labor Day was observed first and informally in 1885; Oregon became the first state to make it an official holiday in 1887; and it […]

PROGRESSIVE PARTY LUNCHEON – February 25, 1914

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 […]

“GREETING AND REMINISCENCE” – October 6, 1913

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), […]

OREGON PIONEER ASSOCIATION – June 19, 1913

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 […]

OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 20, 1909

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 […]

OREGON PIONEER ASSOCIATION – June 11, 1909

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 Cartwright (((1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; […]

PORTLAND CHARTER COMMISSION – January 26, 1909

The progressive currents making headway across the United States in the early years of the twentieth century influenced Oregon as well. ((Generally, see Dodds 152-84; Schwantes 345-62.)) In August, 1908, during Democrat-cum-populist Harry Lane’s (((1855-1917): Portland’s first populist mayor, who clashed repeatedly with corrupt authorities; born Corvallis; graduated with medical degree from Willamette University, 1876; appointed […]

OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 27, 1908

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 Colby ((Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, […]

WILLAMETTE VALLEY CHAUTAUQUA ASSEMBLY – July 18, 1908

The Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association was incorporated in 1895 “for the general promotion of religious, scientific and educational interests.” ((Apparently the assembly met in practice at least one year before incorporation, and perhaps as early as 1892. 1908 was generally recognized as the fifteenth annual assembly.)) Each summer, for almost two weeks in July, the […]

“THE POWERS OF THOUGHT” – October 6, 1907

In this second address before the Society of Bible Spiritualists, meeting in A.O.U.W. Temple ((The Ancient Order of United Workmen. On both the building and the order, see Walt Lockley, “Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple.”)), Scott Duniway examines another dimension of the paranormal: hypnotism. Her immediate concern is the recent murder trial of Charles […]

“THE VISIT OF NICODEMUS TO JESUS BY NIGHT” – Unknown

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 […]

“EARLY PIONEER NURSING” – July 10, 1907

Scott Duniway spoke this Wednesday afternoon at the quarterly meeting of the Oregon State Nurses’ Association, on the grounds of the North Pacific Sanatorium. ((Prior to 1890, there were no nursing schools in Oregon, and only a few trained nurses who had migrated from the east; when the first school, affiliated with Good Samaritan Hospital, […]

OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 17, 1906

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 […]

“UPWARD STEPS IN A THIRD OF A CENTURY” – circa February 7-13, 1906

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. […]

BUSINESS WOMAN’S LEAGUE OF SAN FRANCISCO – November 17, 1905

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 […]

LEWIS AND CLARK EXPOSITION – October 6, 1905

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 […]

“THE PIONEER MOTHER” – July 6, 1905

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 […]

OREGON FEDERATION OF WOMEN’S CLUBS – circa May-June, 1905

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 […]

“PRESIDENTS PAST AND FUTURE” – circa Fall, 1903

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. […]

“A PIONEER INCIDENT” – December 20, 1902

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.” ((These speakers included: John R. […]

“EMINENT WOMEN I HAVE MET” – June 1, 1900

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…

“SUCCESS IN SIGHT” – February 12, 1900

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 […]

“HOW TO WIN THE BALLOT” – May 2, 1899

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 […]

“WOMAN IN OREGON HISTORY” – February 14, 1899

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 […]

OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 20, 1897

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 […]

“WOMAN IN JOURNALISM” – circa February-October, 1897

In this address, Scott Duniway discusses her principal trade–journalism–and the contributions of women thereto. ((This subject naturally was of longstanding personal interest to Abigail. More than twenty years earlier the New Northwest had printed a similar history of “Women in Journalism” on its front page (24 Dec. 1875).)) As she relates in closing, this was […]

OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – December 10, 1896

The twenty-fifth annual meeting of  O.S.E.S.A. ((The Association’s name had been changed–Equal replacing Woman–at its October, 1894, convention, in Portland (Montague 50).)) 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 […]

“The manifold duties of the mother . . .” – circa 1894-1896

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 […]

NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION CONVENTION – circa January 31-February 5, 1895

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.” ((4: 249.)) This one-paragraph synopsis, remarkably, is the most complete account of a Scott Duniway speech in the entire, […]

“THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST” – June 1, 1893

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 Chicago ((A world’s fair, opening January 22, 1893, held in celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage, attended by more than 21.4 million […]

“WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY” – circa 1892

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 […]

“EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL” – July 17, 1889

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 […]

U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE – January 24, 1889

The morning after she had admonished her sisters in “Ballots and Bullets,” Scott Duniway accompanied eight other representatives of the N.W.S.A ((Isabella Beecher Hooker, Virginia L. Minor, Alice Stone Blackwell, Laura M. Johns, Olympia Brown, Anna Howard Shaw, Susan B. Anthony, and Harriette R. Shattuck)) to Capitol Hill, to testify once again before the Senate […]

“BALLOTS AND BULLETS” – January 23, 1889

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 […]

VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON TERRITORY – July 4, 1885

The year following their 1884 defeat at the polls ((Scott Duniway was not chastened or discouraged into idleness in this year. In the three months following the June defeat, she traveled 1,500 miles, gave forty-three public lectures, complained about inadequate financial support, and implored others to enter the field: “Where are the philanthropists who will […]

U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE – March 7, 1884

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. ((According to a report in the New Northwest, others in the delegation included: Harriette […]

NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION CONVENTION – March 4, 1884

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 Oregon ((Stanton declined (which disappointed Scott Duniway, […]

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 12, 1884

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 Loughary ((Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, […]

ASTORIA, OREGON – August 9, 1883

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” […]

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 13, 1883

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 […]

OREGON PIONEER ASSOCIATION – June 15, 1882

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. […]

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – October 18, 1881

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 […]

OREGON STATE SENATE – October 7, 1880

Like clockwork, Scott Duniway had been presenting petitions for a suffrage law to every session of the Oregon legislature since 1872 ((History of Woman Suffrage 4: 770-71.)), 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 […]

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 10, 1880

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.

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 11, 1879

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 Loughary ((Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then […]

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – September 25, 1878

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 […]

OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – August 7, 1878

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, […]

WASHINGTON TERRITORY CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION – June 18, 1878

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 Evans (((1828-1898): born Philadelphia; came to Oregon via Panama, 1851, arriving at Steilacoom; went to […]

“CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY AND THE ARISTOCRACY OF SEX” – January 19, 1877

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. ((Apparently at the invitation […]

“THE DESTINY OF OUR REPUBLIC” – October 5, 1874

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 […]

“OPPOSITION” – November 5, 1873

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. ((She told the N.W.S.A. convention in 1884 that, for twelve and one-half years, she had divided her time roughly equally between Oregon and Washington, […]

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – January 4, 1871

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 […]