The century of the 19th
Today, August 18th, is the 100 year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
In case it’s been a while since you’ve thought about U.S. history, that was the law that granted women the right to vote in America.
100 years might seem like a long time to each of us individually. But in terms of human history and genealogical memory, it wasn’t long ago at all.
Your grandmothers and great-grandmothers, women just a couple of branches farther up your family tree, women whom you may have known and loved, lived through this time period.
Today, in honor of our maternal ancestors and this very special centennial, I wanted to look at a snapshot in time of their lives during August of 1920.
Fair warning — this is a long post. Settle in for a bit with a cup of coffee. 😊
Notes:
I have limited this list to women who would have been adults or nearing adulthood in August of 1920.
This is arranged by state because the laws and social circumstances of these women would have varied considerably based on where they lived. After location, each section is arranged by line of descent.
If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably related to at least one of these women. I’ve traced them to our own grandparents for clarity, but if you want help figuring out how they fit in your own family tree just reach out to me, OK?
Arkansas
Arkansas suffragists had a hard row to hoe. As in much of the rest of the country, the general culture was against them; women were not supposed to be naturally interested in politics at all, and even if they were they couldn’t possibly be smart enough to understand how the government worked… and in any case ladies of good reputation should not want to mix with men at the polls or in political offices at all.
This was complicated by the spread out, rural nature of the state. Insular communities and widespread impoverishment made organizing for any political movement particularly difficult.
Suffragists gained more support as the temperance movement grew in popularity in Arkansas. The temperance movement was organized to fight the evils of alcohol consumption, which was blamed for many social ills at the time — things like widespread domestic violence and high unemployment rates. The movement was led mainly by women, including a lot of suffragists.
Temperance became popular among the growing numbers of pro-Prohibition Protestants in the state. In early 20th century Arkansas, rowdy oil wildcatters spread hand-in-hand with lawless moonshiners, further cementing the association of more respectable society with temperance and its sister movement, suffrage.
The question of women’s suffrage was raised in the state legislature several times between Reconstruction and the ratification of the 19th Amendment. In 1915, the legislature actually approved a resolution that would allow votes for women — a resolution that would have to be voted on by the men of the state in order to become law.
Unfortunately, in this state only three resolutions could be put to voters at a time... and suffrage was number four on the list, so it didn't even make it on the ballot.
But in 1917, Arkansas became the first state to allow women to vote in political party primaries. That meant that even though they couldn’t actually vote in elections, women could at least have some say in political party leadership and platforms. This had a huge impact on the state’s role in national suffrage.
When the U.S. Congress voted on the suffrage bill, Arkansas lawmakers — now influenced by the votes of the women of their state — overwhelmingly chose to pass it. The state legislature then held a special session and voted to ratify in July of 1919, making it one of the few states in the South to immediately approve the 19th Amendment.
Longnecker (Longenecker) Family
Alice Betticks
(Grandmother of Belva Louise Longnecker)
Alice was born in January of 1893, so she would have been 27 years old when she got the right to vote.
When the 19th Amendment was ratified in August of 1920, Alice was living in the countryside near St. Charles, Arkansas Co., Arkansas. This is where she was born and where she married Guy Longenecker in February of 1910.
Alice worked as a domestic servant and her husband worked as a hired man on farms until they’d saved up enough to buy their own little rice farm, where they raised all of their children. Their eldest son was Buck Longenecker, future father of Belva Louise Longnecker (Longenecker).
This family belonged to a Southern Baptist church; they also attended tent revivals and similar events hosted by other Protestant organizations in their area. They were also teetotalers — that is, they strictly refrained from drinking alcohol. It’s a sure bet that they supported the temperance movement.
Therefore, it is possible Alice also supported the suffrage movement… but it is also possible that she felt constrained by the insistence of her religious sect that virtuous women should remain silent and follow the leadership of men.
Elizabeth Parker
(Great-grandmother of Belva Louise Longnecker)
Elizabeth was born in June of 1861, so she would have been 59 years old when she got the right to vote.
Elizabeth was born just after the start of the Civil War in Kentucky, so her earliest years were undoubtedly shaped by that bloody conflict. By the early 1880’s, she’d moved to Arkansas and gotten married to Jacob Longenecker, a Pennsylvanian who’d set up as a carpenter and farmer in rural Arkansas. Their eldest son was Guy Longenecker.
By 1920, Elizabeth, her husband, and her youngest son and his own young family had taken up residence in a home attached to their carpentry shop in the riverside town of St. Charles, Arkansas Co., Arkansas.
Louisiana
The history of women’s voting rights in Louisiana is inextricably tied up with the disenfranchisement of African Americans. Suffragists of the time promoted granting white women the vote as a way to counterbalance the votes of former slaves and their descendants. Other suppressive measures, like literacy tests and property qualifications, had already been codified into law by the turn of the century.
By 1900, Louisiana women who owned property were at least allowed to vote on policies that would directly affect their property taxes — even though the purpose of that law was really to restrict the voting rights of African Americans, who were in many locations across the state not even allowed to own property.
Some Southern proponents of women’s suffrage even campaigned against the 19th Amendment because they saw this federal law as a violation of states’ rights. Bafflingly, it was actually more important to them to focus on their state government’s ability to suppress the African American vote than to promote universal suffrage for all women.
Even though the 19th Amendment went into effect in 1920, the legislators of Louisiana actually rejected ratification that year — in fact, they flat-out refused to ratify it until 1970, a full five decades after women actually began voting.
Given the Jim Crow laws of this time period, a woman may not actually have been able to vote even if she wanted to — and even if she was white. Louisiana required that anyone who couldn’t prove that they had a basic education… that is, anyone who wasn’t an English-speaking, property-owning white man… could be required to take a literacy test before being allowed to vote.
This literacy test was infamously difficult, even for educated people. It consisted of 30 questions that had to be answered in under 10 minutes, and even a single wrong answer meant failure. It was deliberately confusing and designed so that the registrar could subjectively fail anyone they didn’t like. This test could be used to disenfranchise white voters who didn’t belong to the “right” social class or sex just as easily as it was used to deny the vote to African Americans.
The women profiled in this section were partly to entirely illiterate. In fact, it wasn’t until the late 1910’s that public school attendance became mandatory for all children in Louisiana. The upshot for these particular women is that their children and grandchildren could get an education — and definitely qualify as voters in the future.
Unfortunately for this Cajun family, the education system in Louisiana at this time was designed to suppress their Louisiana French language and their unique cultural identity in general. Children who did not speak English at home often had a difficult time in their English-only schools. This was just another attempt by those with power to limit the political influence of the “wrong” type of white people as well as their darker-skinned neighbors.
Not all methods of suppression were as blatant as those farcical voter registration tests. Plus, it’s worth remembering that racist policies can also easily be used against women of any race and whole communities of non-dominant cultures.
Chapman Family
Lela Ortego
(Grandmother of Elroy Chapman)
Lela was born in December of 1896, so she would have been 23 years old when she got the right to vote.
Lela, like most of the women of this branch of the family, was born in rural or semi-rural Louisiana and spent her entire life there. She was married as a teenager to Armelian Ortego, a distant cousin, and they would go on to have several surviving children together. Her eldest daughter, Murdis Ortego, was born in February of 1913.
In 1920, Lela and her family lived in the small town of Vidrine, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, where her husband worked on a farm owned by a Fontenot family. Armelian Ortego was certainly illiterate, and it’s likely that Lela was too. And they, like most members of their community, spoke Louisiana French and very little (if any) English.
Fortunately, we know for sure that Lela and the other women of her family did vote. One of her living descendants remembers her going out with her daughter and son-in-law and other family members to the polls on Election Day. She definitely understood how significant it was to have her voice be heard in the form of a vote.
Delaide Johnson
(Great-grandmother of Elroy Chapman)
Delaide was born in February of 1873, so she would have been 47 years old when she got the right to vote.
By summer of 1920, Delaide and her husband Narcisse Ortego were empty-nesters living on their own little farm near Easton, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana; this was in the same area where they’d both been born and grew up and where they’d raised their own children, and they were surrounded by both close and extended family. Their eldest son, Armelian Ortego, was husband to the aforementioned Lela Ortego.
If you’re wondering how a person who was illiterate or barely literate could even cast a vote, their success had to do with the most common method of voting in the early 20th century — paper ballots.
In many places, including rural Louisiana, people could bring their own ballots with them to the polls. These personal ballots might be provided by community groups, labor unions, churches, etc., and they often had political party symbols on them to indicate each candidate’s affiliation. That way people who couldn’t read would still be able to pick candidates who most closely aligned with their politics.
Sophie Smith
(Grandmother of Elroy Chapman)
Sophie was born in May of 1872, so she would have been 48 years old when she got the right to vote.
Sophie was married as a teenager to a neighboring farm boy, Artelus Chapman. In 1920, they and their children could be found in a rented home in Easton, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. To support the family, Sophie’s husband and one of her sons worked at a local sawmill, while two of her daughters were employed as domestic servants.
We don’t know who Sophie might have voted for, but we can make some educated guesses. Louisiana was essentially a one-party state and the Democrats held the most political power there in 1920. So, there’s a good chance that Sophie voted for locally popular Democrats.
However, the timber industry labor unions tended to favor the Socialist party in the early 20th century. In fact, Socialist candidates who promised to support sawmill workers had a lot of influence in municipal and parish governments in rural Louisiana. So, it’s also possible that Sophie and the men of her family chose to vote for them.
Ohio
Suffragists had been active in Ohio since the earliest days of the movement. Voting rights for women was a hotly debated topic during the state’s Constitutional Convention of 1850 and again in 1870. Lawmakers rejected it at the time, but women’s suffrage would continue to be a major political issue in Ohio through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Interestingly, an Ohio woman named Victoria Woodhull ran as the first female candidate for President of the U.S. during the 1872 race. This was a doomed campaign — especially considering the candidate herself was actually in jail on charges of publishing obscenities on that particular Election Day, not to mention the whole disenfranchisement thing — but still an impressively bold attempt.
Ohio was also host to the headquarters of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (a.k.a. NAWSA, founded by the famous Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone) from 1903-1910. The suffragists’ strategy during this time revolved around the grassroots efforts of respectable, typically middle-to-upper class white women campaigning in their own towns; NAWSA provided public speaking training, event planning help, and pamphlets and posters and things to their supporters across the country.
Ohio had yet another Constitutional Convention in 1912. But rather than rewriting their existing laws, the legislators chose to introduce a series of amendments for voters to approve. One of those proposed amendments would have been suffrage for women.
Although three quarters of those new laws did pass, suffrage was not one of them. Apparently liquor industry lobbyists spent over $500,000 — over $13 million dollars in 2020 money!!! — waging a campaign against this amendment because of the suffrage movement’s long association with the anti-alcohol temperance movement.
The suffragists of this state tried yet again in 1914. They got enough signatures on a petition to have a referendum that year. But again they lost the vote, and again this was in large part due to overwhelming opposition by the liquor industry. After this defeat, they began focusing their efforts on getting voting rights in particular cities, hoping to build support among influential local politicians.
They were successful in gaining the right to vote in municipal elections in parts of Greater Cleveland and the state capital of Columbus. Unfortunately for the women profiled in this section, none of their towns allowed women to vote in local elections.
But this tactic of starting small in order to aim at bigger goals actually kinda worked. In 1917, a bill was introduced in the Ohio legislature that would allow women to vote specifically in elections for the U.S. president. This bill was championed by a representative from Cleveland; even though he was anti-Prohibition and spoke against the temperance movement, he’d been convinced of the need for women’s suffrage by the local activists in his district.
Sadly, this victory was short-lived. Those wily liquor industry folks immediately began working on a petition to repeal the law. They used some ethically questionable tactics to get support for their referendum, including bribing newspapers to prevent pro-suffrage editorials and offering free drinks in saloons to anyone who would sign their petition and promise to vote for their cause. Ohio women lost their right to vote once again.
Once they realized that they could not outspend or fight fair with the liquor lobby, Ohio suffragists chose to refocus their efforts on a nation-wide change. The 19th Amendment was approved by the U.S. legislature in May of 1919, and the Ohio legislature ratified it less than a month later.
Once again the state's liquor industry began petitioning for a referendum to repeal — but this time, the Supreme Court stepped in. Their tactics were deemed illegal, and the state’s ratification would stand.
In a show of support for the women of their state, Ohio lawmakers were able to pass another law that allowed women of their state to vote in Presidential elections again in August of 1920, this time without interference from the liquor lobby. But this really was just for show; the 19th Amendment got its final ratification and passed into law just a few days later.
Eckert Family
Emma Lair
(Mother of Vincent Eckert)
Emma was born in March of 1895, so she would have been 25 years old when she got the right to vote.
This young woman was a new wife and mother when the 19th Amendment was ratified in August of 1920; she and her husband, Earl Eckert, had just been married in October of the previous year and welcomed their first baby a few months later. They made their home in Louisville, Stark Co., Ohio with Earl’s mother, Catherine, and his two older brothers. Earl and his brothers worked as coal miners while Emma and her mother-in-law managed their little home farm.
Even though paper ballots were still the usual method of voting in most places, Ohio adopted the new gear-and-lever voting machines as their official voting method for the election of 1920. If she voted, Emma would certainly have experienced this newfangled device. Some community groups even provided “practice” machines so that women would not be too intimidated to vote with them on Election Day.
When she reached her polling place, Emma would have been directed to stand in front of a large mechanical booth. She would first pull a handle to close a set of curtains around the booth for privacy. Then she could select her preferred candidates by turning the little levers over their names. When she was done choosing, she would pull on a lever to have the machine record her ballot. And when it was time to count votes, the poll workers would only have to look at the mechanical tally on the back of the machine.
Amanda Vernier
(Grandmother of Vincent Eckert)
Amanda was born in December of 1872, so she would have been 47 years old when she got the right to vote.
Amanda was born in or near Louisville, Stark Co., Ohio, and would remain there her entire life; she married her husband Joseph Lair in Louisville in 1892 or 1893 and had all of her children with him there, too — including her eldest daughter, Emma Lair. Joseph was a blacksmith and a widowed father of six sons with a relatively large home farm, so Amanda probably had quite a busy life from the moment she said, “I do.”
We know that Amanda and her family were Catholics. In the early 20th century, most Catholics supported Democrat candidates. This was in spite of the fact that many Democrats from the South at the time were vocally anti-Catholic, mainly because that was the religion of many immigrants from Latin America and “undesirable” parts of Europe, which they saw as a threat to their political power.
So, if Amanda had any political feelings at all, it’s likely that she’d have voted in the 1920 presidential election for the Democrat candidate, Governor Cox of Ohio.
Catherine Culler
(Grandmother of Vincent Eckert)
Catherine was born in November of 1858, so she would have been 61 years old when she got the right to vote.
Catherine, too, was born near Louisville, Stark Co., Ohio and would continue to live in that town or the rural area surrounding it until her death. She married John Eckert there in 1879 or 1880 and would raise their seven surviving children on a small farm just a few miles from town.
However, by 1920 Catherine and her husband were separated — whether by choice or necessity is currently unclear. Catherine ran the family farm with the help of her daughter-in-law, Emma Lair, while her three adult sons lived with her and worked as coal miners. John had moved into a rented room in a nearby town and was working at a hotel there.
We don’t know whether Catherine was a suffragist or not. Her political opinions have been lost to time. However, given that she was separated from her husband in a time when that kind of thing was both legally and socially super difficult, and given that she was managing a relatively large and successful farm, we do know that she was a very capable and independent woman. It is easy to imagine that she would have happily exercised her right to vote.
Elizabeth Kern
(Great-grandmother of Vincent Eckert)
Elizabeth was born in September of 1834, so she would have been 85 years old when she got the right to vote.
Elizabeth was born in Stark Co., Ohio and would remain in that area for her entire life, although her own parents were apparently immigrants from the Kingdom of Württemberg, now part of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.
In 1856 or 1857 she married David Culler, a wealthy widower with an impressive farm and six young sons. (No, you’re not imagining things; this was the same matrimonial choice made by the aforementioned Amanda Vernier.) They had a further five sons and five daughters together — including Catherine Culler — before David’s death in December of 1895.
By 1920, Elizabeth had sold the family farm and moved in with her youngest daughter and her family.
Elizabeth is the oldest of the women on this list. She was of the same generation as the founders of the suffrage movement in the U.S. — people like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone. These women came of age in a time before the widespread use of steel and long-distance railways, before electric lights and power grids, before massive machine-powered manufacturing, even before the modern bicycle — and way, way before any kind of modern idea like “feminism”.
Even if Elizabeth was not directly involved or even interested in the fight for suffrage, she undoubtedly would certainly have encountered some of the movement’s organizers in her own community.
Kidder Family
Almira Durke
(Great-grandmother of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.)
Almira was born in August of 1857, so she would have been 62 years old when she got the right to vote.
Almira was born in rural Wood Co., Ohio. She married John Rosenbaum around 1876, and they had four daughters and four sons together — including Wilmer Rosenbaum, grandfather of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.
The Rosenbaum family — Almira and her husband and most of their adult children and their own spouses and the grandchildren — eventually settled in and around East Liverpool, Columbiana Co., Ohio. John worked as a carpenter until his death in 1917 or 1918; after that the widowed Almira moved in with her eldest daughter, Dorothy, and her family.
Longnecker (Longenecker) Family
Barbara Crites
(Great-grandmother of Belva Louise Longnecker)
Barbara was born in March of 1867, so she would have been 53 years old when she got the right to vote.
Barbara was married in December of 1885 to Francis Marion Hall in West Virginia, where they’d both been born and raised. They had several children together there as well, but sometime in the earliest years of the 20th century Barbara was widowed. She then moved to Akron, Summit Co., Ohio to be near other family.
Tragically, Barbara’s first son, Ora Hall, had also died as a teenager. Her eldest surviving son, Guy Kay Hall, went to the newly-formed state of Oklahoma to work in the oil fields while Barbara worked in Ohio as a domestic servant and, later, as a nurse to support her younger children. She married for a second time in January of 1920 to Martin Lowers, a 60-something teamster there in Ohio.
McMahan Family
Elizabeth Hileman
(Grandmother of of Carolyn McMahan)
Elizabeth was born in January of 1874, so she would have been 46 years old when she got the right to vote.
By August of 1920, Elizabeth was living in Alliance, Stark Co., Ohio with her family. That family included her husband, Charles McMahan, who was a cart driver for a coal mine; their youngest daughter, Nora; and their youngest son, Ira — future father of Carolyn McMahan — who, as a teenager, was also working at the coal mine.
Coal mining was a difficult, dangerous job. Many miners depended on labor unions to advocate for better pay and safer working conditions. The biggest labor union at the time, United Mine Workers, was loosely allied with the GOP; Republicans at that time were considered the pro-labor party.
As an Ohioan and wife of a coal miner, if Elizabeth chose to vote for president in 1920, there’s a good chance she cast her ballot for the Republican Senator of Ohio — the ultimate winner of the election, President Harding.
Taschwer Family
Marie Reichard
(Grandmother of Karen Taschwer)
Marie was born about 1901, so she would have been about 19 years old when she got the right to vote.
When she was counted on the census in January of 1920, Marie was already married and had two young children. Her husband, Vene Haupt, was a truck driver. Their daughter Ruby would be Karen Taschwer’s mother. They lived in Alliance, Stark Co., Ohio at this time.
Actually… Marie wouldn’t have been able to vote right away. In the U.S. at the time, you had to be at least 21 years old to be eligible to vote. She was considered mature enough to be a wife and mother, but she was not yet old enough to cast her own ballot.
Mary Minerva Servy
(Great-grandmother of Karen Taschwer)
Mary Minerva was born in August of 1858, so she would have been 61 years old when she got the right to vote.
She was born in Pennsylvania, married Sylvanus Haupt around 1881 in Pennsylvania, and raised all 13 (thirteen!!!) of her children on their little home farm there in Pennsylvania as well.
However, like her aforementioned son Vene Haupt, Mary Minerva had moved to the town of Alliance, Stark Co., Ohio by 1920. She lived there with her husband, who was making ends meet as a handyman, and their three youngest sons.
Oklahoma
Given the particularly messy history of the land, it should come as no surprise that Oklahoma’s history of voting rights for women is also rather tangled. Prior to statehood, Indian Territory women could vote in most local elections and even hold certain local and county offices — in fact, they were eligible to hold more elected offices than they were actually allowed to vote for.
Territory-wide enfranchisement was on the ballot several times, including during the soon-to-be state’s Constitutional Convention, but the conservative faction of the government defeated it consistently.
In fact, that Constitutional Convention more strictly limited the roles women were allowed to have in government, limiting most of them to “qualified voters” — in other words, only men. A later Supreme Court decision restored eligibility for some of the local and county offices that women had been allowed to hold under Indian Territory law, but universal suffrage was still out of reach.
It might provide some perspective to mention that the conservatives in the new state’s government were also busily trying to restrict the voting rights of African Americans by requiring literacy tests with arbitrary enforcement rules and playing some unethical tricks with ballots. This included an attempt to pass a racially discriminatory law that would have allowed white women full enfranchisement, an obvious trap for their liberal opponents.
Nonetheless, the legislature eventually got votes for women on the ballot. Oklahoma was one of three states to grant full suffrage to women as a result of the elections on November 5, 1918 — nearly two years before the 19th Amendment granted the vote to women in all states.
Longnecker (Longenecker) Family
Becky May Ice
(Grandmother of Belva Louise Longnecker)
Becky May was born in November of 1899, so she would have been 20 years old when she got the right to vote.
Becky May was born in what is now the semi-submerged ghost town of Alluwe, Nowata Co., Oklahoma — what was then Indian Territory. She was married there as a teenager to a young oil field worker, Guy Kay Hall. Their eldest daughter, Belva May Hall, future mother of Belva Louise Longnecker (Longenecker), was born there in December of 1915.
In August of 1920, Becky May’s family was living in a small house in rural Nowata Co., Oklahoma, which they rented together with another oil field worker and his young family.
However, in all states at this time a voter had to be at least 21 years old. The voting age wasn’t lowered to 18 years old at the national level until the 1970’s.
Becky’s 21st birthday was November 7th, 1920… just five days after Election Day that year. She might not actually have been able to cast her first ballot until the midterm elections of 1922, by which time her family had upped sticks and moved to Arkansas.
Mary Clark
(Great-grandmother of Belva Louise Longnecker)
Mary was born about 1869 or 1870, so she would have been about 50 or 51 years old when she got the right to vote.
Although Mary and her husband, Trammel Ice, were both born in Indiana and were married there, by 1920 they had settled in the aforementioned oil boom town of Alluwe, Nowata Co., Oklahoma. They lived there with their eldest son — who supported his family by working as an oil field roughneck, of course. Their eldest daughter, Becky May Ice, had already married and had her own growing family.
It is difficult to guess at what Mary’s political preferences were, if she had any. Oil laborers did not tend to vote as a bloc, like workers in other more unionized trades did. And because it was populated by culturally diverse people from all over the rest of the country, Oklahoma was a political battleground, with Democrats, Republicans, and Socialists vying for power all over the state. But we do know that Nowata and other counties in former Cherokee lands tended to lean Republican during the elections of the 1920’s.
Mitchell Family
Mattie Lowder
(Grandmother of Richard Mitchell)
Mattie was born in June of 1864, so she would have been 56 years old when she got the right to vote.
Sadly, Mattie was born shortly after her father’s death; she never knew him. Her mother moved with Mattie and her older sisters to Texas to be near her own family just after the close of the Civil War. Mattie grew up on her mother’s livestock ranch in Erath Co., Texas.
She married a neighboring farm laborer named Elisha Mitchell; they would go on to have 11 (eleven!!!) children together — including Richard Mitchell’s father, Fred. The family lived in several locations across Oklahoma and Texas from the late 1880’s until the late 1920’s.
Mattie, her husband, and two of their sons arrived in Altus, Jackson Co., Oklahoma in late 1919, which is where they were counted during the 1920 census. They were apparently running a boarding house as several unrelated, unmarried men were living with them there as well. These men were typically workers on nearby farms, oil fields, or railroads.
Three of Mattie’s sons had recently returned stateside after being drafted and deployed to Europe during WWI. As a mother to young soldiers, she may have felt it was her patriotic responsibility to exercise her new right to vote.
Attitudes towards suffrage during WWI had shifted in women’s favor, in large part due to women’s groups’ coordinated efforts nationwide to support the war effort. Prominent suffragists also used the President’s own pro-democracy rhetoric to support their cause. This turned out to be the very effective combination that would win over the majority of lawmakers in 1920.
Thompson Family
Tennie Cooley
(Great-grandmother of LaVera Thompson)
Tennie was born in November of 1855, so she would have been 64 years old when she got the right to vote.
Tennie was born in Pike Co., Arkansas. She was also married there — to Robert Bryant Thompson — and had all of her children there as well, but by the turn of the 20th century the family had answered the call of the West. Eventually they found their way to Wayne, McClain Co., Oklahoma, where Tennie lived during that particular August of 1920.
Again, we can’t be super sure about Tennie’s political opinions. Her husband was a laborer at an industrial cotton gin and the cotton market had started to collapse due to overproduction at that time, so it’s possible that she preferred the typically more pro-labor candidates of the Republican or Socialist parties. However, we also know that McClain and other counties in the Oklahoma City area leaned Democrat during the 1920 elections.
Pennsylvania
Although many Pennsylvania women were instrumental in the suffrage movement, the ladies of this state did not have full voting rights until the 19th Amendment was finally ratified in 1920.
Suffragist groups of Pennsylvania managed to persuade the legislature to put votes for women on the ballot in November of 1915. In an effort to encourage the voting men of their state to allow them the same right, these women traveled all around Pennsylvania with a replica of the famous Liberty Bell that they called the Justice Bell. The bell’s clapper was silenced by a chain, a symbol of the way women’s voices were being silenced by disenfranchisement; the bell was meant to be rung only when women won the vote. The bell and its accompanying activists were welcomed in Philadelphia by a massive parade through the center of the city.
Unfortunately, this attempt failed by a narrow margin. Suffragists in Pennsylvania then began to concentrate on gaining the vote at the national level, working together with groups from other parts of the country instead of trying to get each separate state to end the discrimination on their own.
When women at last won the vote in 1920, their Justice Bell was finally allowed to ring in Philadelphia’s Independence Square.
Kidder Family
Georgia Chaffee
(Grandmother of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.)
Georgia was born in December of 1896, so she would have been 23 years old when she got the right to vote.
As a young woman, she worked at a pottery factory in East Liverpool, Columbiana Co., Ohio. East Liverpool was then nationally famous for its pottery, and at that time the city produced about half of all ceramics in the country.
Georgia got married to a fellow potter, Wilmer Rosenbaum, in May of 1917. They were joined a few months later by a daughter, Ruby — future mother of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr. — and in 1919 she was followed by a son, Clifford.
But by 1920, Georgia and her young family had moved to Darlington, Beaver Co., Pennsylvania, where Wilmer had found a job as a laborer at a brickworks.
Lucy Starling
(Great-grandmother of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.)
Lucy was born in September of 1873, so she would have been 46 years old when she got the right to vote.
Lucy was born and raised in the state of Ohio, but in June of 1894 she got married to a man named George Chaffee and they moved back to his hometown of Ohio, Beaver Co., Pennsylvania. They had 11 (eleven!!!) children together there; Georgia Chaffee was her eldest daughter.
In 1920, Lucy was still living there in Pennsylvania with her husband — who was employed as a driller for an oil company — and her five youngest children, plus an adult daughter who was as yet unwed and was working as a servant in a wealthy household to help support the family.
Texas
Geographically and culturally, Texas is part of the South and the West in the U.S., and the history of women’s rights in the state reflects that. As in many “frontier” states, women enjoyed comparatively more economic and social freedom than in many other places — at least at the individual and local levels. But at the state level, political attitudes towards suffrage were very conservative (surprise, surprise).
Suffrage for women was proposed and rejected during the state's Reconstruction-era Constitutional Convention in 1868-1869, which was generally a cluster of terrible ideas and useless political maneuvering anyway. The legislature was a bit more successful with their task during the Constitutional Convention of 1875-1876 — but again, they rejected any law that would grant voting rights to the women of the state.
Suffragists in Texas, as in much of the former Confederacy, had to deal with two related problems. The first had to do with attempts to disenfranchise non-whites. The second was an assumption that genteel ladies should not actually want to have anything to do with politics.
In the first case, lawmakers' fear of the non-white vote led to things like literacy tests and poll taxes. It was also used alternatively as an argument against women’s suffrage — because voting should only be a privilege for not-too-poor white men — and in favor of women’s suffrage — because white women should vote to support white supremacy.
To deal with the second problem of social resistance, suffragists organized grassroots campaigns with locally influential women. They spread their message with newspaper editorials, floats in holiday parades, booths at county fairs, and sponsored lectures for various clubs and church groups. Many of the women who facilitated the spread of the suffrage movement in Texas in these “small” behind-the-scenes ways will forever remain anonymous.
Texas suffragists promised to support the re-election of Governor Hobby in 1918, and in turn he supported their campaign to be allowed to vote in political primaries. Though not quite as satisfying as true suffrage, primary suffrage did allow the state’s women to have a more significant role in choosing their elected officials because they could at least vote for party leaders and platforms.
This primary suffrage law went into effect in late June of 1918 and the primary election was in early July. Nearly 400,000 Texas women registered to vote in less than a month so that they could participate in that vote.
Due to the participation of women in the primaries, a suffragist named Annie Webb Blanton became the first woman to hold statewide office (Superintendent of Public Instruction) in 1918. Superintendent Blanton’s main legacy was making it possible for public schools to be funded by local property taxes, which is still their primary source of funding today.
Governor Hobby got the legislature to pass a resolution that would have allowed full suffrage for women the very next year. Unfortunately, they also passed a resolution that would have disenfranchised resident aliens — that is, immigrants who'd settled in the state with the intention of getting citizenship. At the time, it was legal for not-yet-naturalized male immigrants to vote in elections in Texas. The state was experiencing an influx of immigrants across the border due to the ongoing Mexican Revolution.
The reason this was unfortunate for the women of the state is that both the pro-suffrage and anti-immigrant resolutions were bundled to be voted on together. In May of 1919, Mexican immigrants (men only, of course) turned out in record numbers to vote down the resolution that would have disenfranchised them — but in so doing, they shot down votes for women as well.
Despite this, the state legislature chose to hold a special session the very next month in order to make Texas the first state in the South to ratify the 19th Amendment in June of 1919.
Thompson Family
Mancy Morris
(Grandmother of LaVera Thompson)
Mancy was born in November of 1881, so she would have been 38 years old when she got the right to vote.
Mancy was born in Texas, and she was also married there— to Henry Austin — and had all 10 (ten!!!) of her children in various locations throughout Texas as well. One of her children was a daughter named Blanche Austin, the future mother of LaVera Thompson.
By 1920, Mancy, her husband, and five of their children had settled for a while in Lamesa, Dawson Co., Texas, where Henry Austin worked as a section foreman for the railroad.
Lucinda Thomason
(Great-grandmother of LaVera Thompson)
Lucinda was born in November of 1856, so she would have been 63 years old when she got the right to vote.
Lucinda, like her daughter-in-law Mancy Morris, was born in Texas and lived her entire life and produced her 10 (ten!!!) children in various locations in that state. She and her husband, Emerson Austin, eventually settled near Cross Plains, Callahan Co., Texas where they farmed a small orchard of fruit trees.
Unfortunately, her husband died there in March of 1912. Lucinda chose to remain on their farm in Cross Plains; she was counted there on the census in January of 1920, along with their youngest daughter and a newly returned-from-WWI adult son.
West Virginia
Like Arkansas, West Virginia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries consisted of mainly isolated and generally pretty poor rural communities. And even though the state had been brought into existence by splitting from the original Virginia and joining the Union during the Civil War, conservative politics — historically being pretty racist and sexist — still dominated in the state government. The state’s suffrage movement was a small but scrappy underdog in the fight for women’s rights.
After the 19th Amendment was approved by Congress, West Virginia called a special session of their state legislature just to consider the question of ratification. They debated for well over a month. Finally, they approved ratification — by a single vote — in March of 1920, making West Virginia one of the last states to participate in ratifying suffrage into national law.
Kidder Family
Melissa Hindman
(Grandmother of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.)
Melissa was born in December of 1889, so she would have been 30 years old when she got the right to vote.
Melissa married David Kidder around 1908 in Wetzel, Co., West Virginia, where she’d been born. This was near the state border along the Ohio River.
The couple and their children were living a bit farther south along the river in rural Pleasants Co., West Virginia in 1920; David worked at a lumber mill there to support the family. Their youngest son was Melvin Kidder, who would be Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.’s father.
Elsa Whiteman
(Great-grandmother of Gary Lee Kidder, Sr.)
Elsa was born in December of 1858, so she would have been 61 years old when she got the right to vote.
Though she lived in Wetzel Co., West Virginia all her life, when she was born it was still part of the unified state of Virginia. Her childhood was inevitably shaped by the Civil War. She married Ford Hindman, a farmer, in October of 1884 and they were joined by their first child the following year; they would have several more children together, including the aforementioned Melissa Hindman, who was named after Elsa’s mother.
Elsa’s husband died in January of 1917. She and her youngest son, Achilles, went to live with her youngest daughter’s family, which is where Elsa was still in residence when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.
Wisconsin
Before the 19th Amendment, women in Wisconsin were allowed only to vote for and hold school board positions — at least, technically. In reality, women were not allowed to vote with ballots that listed anything other than school board positions, which local governments often did not provide.
Wisconsin also held a state referendum on women’s suffrage in 1912, which was defeated by the voting men of the state in a two-to-one vote. It was apparently defeated in large part due to the association of many suffrage activists with the temperance movement, which was focused on a moralistic attempt to limit or ban alcohol consumption.
The temperance movement was the major force behind the 18th Amendment, more commonly known as Prohibition, which went into effect in January of 1920 — just a few months before the ratification of the 19th Amendment. This whole temperance thing was pretty unpopular with Wisconsin’s large German immigrant population, particularly among Catholics.
After the defeat of 1912, Wisconsin women chose to focus their attention on the national campaign for universal suffrage instead. In the end, Wisconsin was actually the second state to ratify the 19th Amendment in June of 1919, less than a week after it was approved by Congress.
Taschwer Family
Marie Kroisenbacher
(Grandmother of Karen Taschwer)
Marie was born about 1888, so she would have been about 32 years old when she got the right to vote.
Although she was born in Austria — or what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire — Marie chose to immigrate to the U.S. in 1905 or 1906. She married a fellow Austrian, Benedict Taschwer in Wisconsin in February of 1907, and together they gained American citizenship in June of 1910. They had four surviving children together, including William Taschwer, future father to Karen Taschwer.
By 1920, the family was living in Wauwatosa, Milwaukee Co., Wisconsin, where Benedict worked as a carpenter and their young children attended school. Marie was a member of two community groups for Austrian and German immigrants, the Doppeladler Women’s Club and the Edelweiss Women’s Club, and she devoutly attended St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.
It is possible that Marie — an immigrant citizen who was an active member of community organizations and a mother to school-going children — was interested in voting and having a voice in her government. Or, as a German immigrant and dedicated Catholic, she may have found the temperance-adjacent suffrage movement distasteful. Or, like many women of her time, she may simply have chosen to focus entirely on her personal sphere of home and family, eschewing defined political opinion altogether.
Resources
Library of Congress Exhibit: Shall Not Be Denied
National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution
National Constitution Center's Centuries of Citizenship: A Constitutional Timeline
National Museum of American History Exhibit: Creating Icons
National Park Service Women’s History Index
Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative: Because of Her Story