The right of suffrage
When, like The Legal Genealogist, you reach Medicare age, the one thing that’s unalterably true is — you’ve seen a lot of elections.
I don’t remember the Eisenhower elections at all — I was just in first grade when he was elected the second time. But I remember all the rest — Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama.1
And, from the day I came of age, I voted in every election, presidential or not.
My mother was born in 1926.2 In her lifetime, we can add more elections: Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman and the Eisenhower elections I don’t remember. From the day she came of age, she voted in every election, worked the polls, served in the League of Women Voters.
My maternal grandmother was born in 1898.3 She turned 21 in 1919. The 1920 election would have been the very first election where she was old enough to vote — and the very first election when women throughout the United States could vote. Add in Harding and Coolidge.
But then, just three generations back, there’s my grandmother’s mother.
Eula (Baird) Robertson, my great grandmother, was born in Alabama in 1869.4 She turned 21 in 1890. She was living then in Texas, where women didn’t gain the right to vote until the 19th amendment took effect.5
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1892, when Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison.6
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1896, when William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan.7
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1900 when McKinley defeated Bryan in a rematch.8
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt defeated Alton Parker.9
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1908, when William Howard Taft handed Bryan his third Presidential defeat.10
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson defeated a raft of candidates: Roosevelt, Taft and Eugene V. Debs.11
• She wasn’t allowed to vote in 1916, when Wilson won reelection against Charles Evans Hughes.12
By the time the law allowed my great grandmother to vote, she was 51 years old.
In the half-century of her life before the law allowed her to vote, she had married,13 had a family,14 homesteaded in Oklahoma,15 and been left a widow with four kids — the oldest only 14 and the youngest just seven.16 She managed to handle the estate, raise her kids, pay her taxes, and live a good life.
She lived long enough for her life to intersect, briefly, with mine.
Which means that I have personally known at least one woman who was personally denied the right to vote by the law simply because she was a woman.
And you, dear distaff member of my family… female member of my community… woman I call a friend… you were even momentarily thinking of not voting on Tuesday?
Seriously?
Get out and vote.
SOURCES
Image: Waco History Project, Moments in Time: Suffrage.
- See generally “Presidential Elections,” History.com (http://www.history.com/ : accessed 4 Nov 2016). ↩
- Virginia Department of Health, Certificate of Death, state file no. 99-018720, Hazel Cottrell Geissler (1999); Division of Vital Records, Richmond. ↩
- Virginia Department of Health, Certificate of Death, state file no. 95-011808, Opal Robertson Cottrell (1995); Division of Vital Records, Richmond. ↩
- See Virginia Department of Health, Certificate of Death, state file no. 6367, Eula Robertson (1954); Bureau of Vital Statistics, Richmond. ↩
- See “Woman Suffrage,” Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online : accessed 4 Nov 2016). ↩
- “Presidential Elections,” History.com (http://www.history.com/ : accessed 4 Nov 2016). ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
- Bexar County, Texas, marriage license no. 14298 and return, J C Robertson and Eula Beard, 1896; County Clerk’s Office, San Antonio. ↩
- 1910 U.S. census, Tillman County, Oklahoma, Stephens Twp., population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 256, p. 216(B) (stamped), dwelling 197, family 199, Eula Robertson; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Oct 2011); citing National Archive microfilm publication T624, roll 1275. ↩
- Homestead Proof–Testimony of Claimant, 29 August 1908, Jasper C. Robertson (Tillman County, Oklahoma), cash sale entry, certificate no. 246, Lawton, Oklahoma, Land Office; Land Entry Papers, 1800-1908; Records of the Bureau of Land Management; Record Group 49, National Archives, Washington, D.C. ↩
- Tillman County, Oklahoma, County Court, Estate of Jasper C. Robertson, File No. 134, General Inventory and Appraisement, filed 22 March 1913; digital images, “Oklahoma Probate Records, 1887-2008,” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 4 Sep 2014). ↩
Oh, my gosh. For some reason, I’d never put two and two together. My paternal grandmother was born in 1883, my maternal grandmother in 1873. My maternal grandmother taught 8 grades, wrote a society page for a small town newspaper, and worked at Marshall Field in Chicago. She moved to Los Angeles when she was age 33 and worked in a dry goods store there. She married to my grandfather in 1909, at age 36. Didn’t get the right to vote until she was age 46. Such an intelligent woman, but couldn’t vote.
I loved this! I hope you don’t mind, but I am posting it to Facebook.
I have shared “That Newfangled Right” to my Facebook page from your FB page just now. Several times in the past few weeks I’ve mentioned to my friends that my college educated grandmother born in 1876 could not vote until 1920 at the age of 44 when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified. More than ever, we women need to honor our right to vote and speak our minds with that vote. It’s a right and a privilege that was fought for and finally won less than 100 years ago!
Amen!
Just two observations on this – the first independent country to give the vote to all women was New Zealand in 1893. And Switzerland only moved that far well into the 20th century – 1971. When I discovered this I could hardly believe it.
Judy, thank you for reminding us that we have a duty to honor the work of those women who worked so hard for this right … one that we tend to forget wasn’t always there. Got me to thinking about my grandmothers and great-grandmothers and when they could vote.
Amazing – I had not thought about it until you wrote this but my grandmothers were born before they had the right to vote…both educated women. I shared your link to this post on Facebook as I think it’s a good read for everyone to remind us we should vote … as so many of our ancestors could not.
If you lived in Wyoming (and some other states), you had already been voting for many years prior to 1920:
Female Suffrage
Chapter 31
An Act to Grant to the Women of Wyoming Territory the Right of Suffrage, and to Hold Office
Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory of Wyoming:
Sec. 1. That every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may at every election to be holden under the laws thereof, cast her vote. And her rights to the elective franchise and to hold office shall be the same under the election laws of the territory, as those of electors.
Sec. 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.
Approved, December 10, 1869.
Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Wyoming Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly (S. Allen Bristol, Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory), 386; digital images, Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org : accessed 6 November 2016.
My mother was fourteen when the 19th amendment was passed in 1920. I asked her once what she remembered about women getting the vote. I figured it would have made a splash in the lives of the women around her, especially with her mother. She said she couldn’t remember anything about it. I could hardly believe this. Was my mother, who voted faithfully in every election, who viewed it as her civic duty, so unaware of this momentous change in women’s status? Some time later it hit me. Women in Kansas, where she grew up, had had the right to vote since 1912, when Mom was only six.
The history of women’s suffrage is long and convoluted. We shouldn’t forget about the struggles in the individual states: Wyoming Territory gave women the vote in 1869, Utah Territory in 1870, Washington Territory in 1883, followed by a number of others. In fact, there was a tactical dispute among suffrage organizations about whether to throw their efforts into state by state legislation or to go for the national amendment.
We’d do well to remember that voting rights differ by state even today–case in point, the current presidential election.
I would also add that women should be informed about and vote in not just federal presidential elections every four years, but in state and local elections every year.
Interestingly, my great-grandmother (born 1876 in Pennsylvania), was found on a California voting list in 1912 when her family was living there for a brief time. (See From Maine to Kentucky.)