A collection of unique documents from local collections highlighting diverging views and the evolution of the movement toward suffrage.
1780 |
Polly Welts Kaufman’s Boston Women and City School Politics, 1872-1905 (New York: Garland, 1994) notes that the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution omits the word “male” as a qualification for elective office (but left as a qualification for voting). |
1848 |
Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, NY. |
1850 |
On October 23 & 24, the National Women’s Rights Convention is held at Brinley Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. Men and women from across the country are in attendance. Of the 268 names of those who signed-in, 186 were from Massachusetts (Harriet H. Robinson, Appendix D). |
1866 |
The first meeting of the American Equal Rights Association is held at the Meionaon in Boston.First petition to the Massachusetts Legislature, asking that women might be allowed to serve on school boards, is presented by Samuel E. Sewall of Boston. The same petition is presented again in 1867. |
1868 |
New England Women’s Club is founded at a convention at Horticultural Hall in Boston. By 1872 the New England Women’s Club Standing Committee of Education states that “the most pressing business was securing the appointment of women on the school committee.” Around this time women are elected to school committees in the small Massachusetts towns of Ashfield and Monroe. The cities of Lynn, Worcester and Boston are soon to follow. An analysis of changes in the school committees of Beverly and Salem is presented in Kaitlin Nylund’s Noblese Oblige, or Self Interest? A Demographic Analysis of School Committee Membership, Responsibility and Action, 1860-1900 (2002)A history of the women’s club movement, including the New England Women’s Club, is described in Tara Talbot’s The Lothrop Club and Its Contribution to the Women’s Club Movement (2001). |
1869 |
A joint special committee on Woman Suffrage is formed by the Massachusetts State Legislature. The State House of Representatives votes on the question of municipal suffrage for women: 68 “yeas” (33.8%) vs. 133 “nays”. The American Equal Rights Association changes the name of their organization to the National Women Suffrage Association. The American Woman Suffrage Association is also formed. |
1870 |
The Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association is formed at a meeting at Horticultural Hall in Boston.The Woman’s Journal: a Woman’s Suffrage Newspaper is set-up by the New England Association in 1869 and in 1870. According to Harriet Robinson, “To sustain the Woman’s Journal and furnish money for other suffrage work, two mammoth bazars [sic] or fairs were held in 1870 and 1871 in the Music Hall in Boston. Nearly all the New England Sates and many of the town in Massachusetts were represented by sale-tables in these bazars [sic]; and as usual donations were sent from all directions, and the women worked as women will work for a cause in which they are interested, to raise money to furnish the sinews of war. Many of them stood day after day behind sale-tables, or worked in the cafe as caterers and waiters. Women in whose veins ran some of the best blood in New England, did not hesitate even at that early date to become identified with the Woman Suffrage reform.” (p. 64-65) |
1871 |
In his address before the Massachusetts State Legislature, William Clafin becomes the first governor of the state to speak directly on the subject of women’s rights. Clafin recommends a change in the laws regarding suffrage and property rights of women. |
1874 |
Boston elects three women to serve on the school committee. |
1875 |
U.S. Senator from Massachusetts George Frisbie Hoar argues that, for church, state and community to work well, the active participation and influence of women is necessary. “Woman Suffrage: Essential to the True Republic” (published in Woman’s Journal, the publication of the American Woman’s Suffrage Association) |
1876 |
Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake and Phoebe W. Couzins present the “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States” on 4 July 1876. As published in the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States by the National Woman Suffrage Association, July 4th, 1876.
 “Vote at Womans Suffrage Convention- Sept 12, 1876 L. Elliot, Mary E. Elliot, Emily J. Elliot and CDE delegates (T.E. did not attend, the rest did)”. |
1879 |
The Massachusetts Legislature votes to allow women to vote for school committee members. At the first annual elections for School Committee about 5,000 women in Massachusetts became registered voters. |
1879 |
Louisa May Alcott is the first woman to register to vote for the Concord School Committee election. |
1880-1881 |
The next goal for the women’s movement in Massachusetts is suffrage for municipal elections. For example in Beverly, a petition is brought before the town meeting “to see whether the Town will, by its vote or otherwise, ask the Legislature to extend to women who are citizens, the right to hold Town offices and to vote in Town affairs on the same terms as male citizens.” These petitions are rejected by voters. |
1881 |
Harriet H. Robinson’s Massachusetts in the Women’s Suffrage Movement: A General Political, Legal and Legislative History from 1774 to 1881 published in Boston.Massachusetts State House of Representatives again votes on the question of municipal suffrage for women: 76 “yeas” (38.3%) vs. 122 “nays”. |
1892 |
In June, 1892, the poll tax for women in Massachusetts is abolished. This enables all women citizens of Massachusetts who can read and write the right to vote for local school committee members. The percentage of registered women voters continues to remain quite low. Women are only allowed to vote for school committee members until 1920. Many women feel that a broader franchise would encourage more women to vote. As Harriet H. Robinson writes in 1881, “If the law were really a ‘school suffrage law’ and included the question of school appropriations, school supervisors, ormanagement, the building of enormous and costly school houses, or even concerning the books their children were to use, the result might be different, and the women might become interested…In fact the School Committee question is not a vital one with either male or female voters, and it is impossible to get up any enthusiasm on the subject. As a test question upon which to try the desire of the women to become voters, it is a palpable sham.” (Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement)The Massachusetts School Suffrage Association surveys the number of women elected to school boards in Massachusetts. In addition to 4 in Boston, 157 women serve in 112 cities and towns. |
1893-1894 |
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin founds the Woman’s Era Club for black women in Boston. Its motto is “Make the World Better”. In 1895 the Woman’s Era club publishes “The New Era” the first newspaper/magazine published for an by black women. Its readers are urged to become involved in public issues such as suffrage and civil rights. |
1894 |
Although women are allowed to register and vote in school elections, not very many are signing up. There is a large disparity in the number of women versus men registered to vote in Beverly.
Mary A. Livermore updates the progress of the woman suffrage movement to date: “What Has the Woman Suffrage Reform Accomplished?” in the October 1894 edition of The Bostonian. |
1895 |
Massachusetts holds a non-binding referendum concerning municipal suffrage for women. Although women are allowed to vote on this non-binding topic, the vote statewide is overwhelmingly rejected, as shown by example of Beverly’s vote. Ninety-six percent of women vote in the affirmative (23,000 out of 24,000; there were 600,000 eligible women voters), versus only 32% of male voters (87,000 of 274,000). |
1895-1896 |
Abby Morton Diaz writes a series of articles, published in The Bostonian about the New England Women’s Club and what women’s clubs mean in Boston and around the country. |
1913 |
Beverly Beacon: A Woman’s Newspaper(Beverly, MA) November 1, 1913.
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1915 |
Massachusetts males are asked to vote by referendum on women’s suffrage as an amendment to the United States Constitution. As in 1895, the referendum is once again defeated by Massachusetts voters, reflected by the votes in Beverly. The only community in the state of Massachusetts to vote in favor of suffrage is Tewksbury with a vote of 149 to 148. Statewide, only 35.5% was in favor. Four states in the east vote on full suffrage for women: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. All four states vote in the negative.
Even some women were opposed to suffrage. The program for a “fashion fete” on March 16th and 17th, 1915 called A Century of Fashions, 1815-1915 included a lengthy list of patronesses in the Boston Committee of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. |
1920 |
It is not until 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that women in Massachusetts were availed full voting privileges. For more detail, read Jen Remare’s Women Voters in Beverly, Massachusetts During the 1920 Election in Connection to the Woman’s Suffrage Movement (1997). |
It seems that the women rights was for WHITE WOMEN only no other nationality USA was really Racist then which they still are they think white is always RIGHT way to go our white ancestors might came from other countries but white people don’t really own this country they stoled the land from the American Native Indians transfer them from East Coast to Mid West put them on reservations which might as well say they were put in concentration camps
At the time of women’s suffrage in the United States, Native Americans were not considered citizens but “wards of the Government”. It is not until much later 1924 that Native Americans were even considered citizens.. Women’s suffrage did include African American women, It is one thing to say you have the right to vote, versus the ability to vote( in the south due to the Democratic Party which controlled the majority of Southern States) with the poll tax, literacy laws, and other laws in place.
This is provably false. The assumption that well-meaning individuals are all from one race or another is another form of racism.
“The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) was formed in 1866 in the United States. According to its constitution, its purpose was “to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex.”[1] Some of the more prominent reform activists of that time were members, including women and men, blacks and whites.”
As a boy, I grew up in a 3 family home I Worcester owned by my widowed grandmother (mother’s mother) who in turn lived with her younger sister who never had married. My grandmother was born in 1881 and clearly remembered the 1800s, which also meant remembering the days when women were prevented from voting. I very vividly remember every election day when she and my aunt, two elderly women by then, would dress in their Sunday best and wait to be driven to the polling place because by virtue of having been deprived of the right to vote, they knew what it was worth. Good for you both; rest in peace.
Why does the timeline end with women getting the right to vote? Women had more rights denied to them that they fought for decades after the 1920s.
Because it is talking about women’s suffrage??
I have a certificate from the Board of Registrars of Voters, Fall River, MA, certifying that my grandmother had been registered to vote in the City of Fall River. The certificate is dated November 1918, before the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Does anybody know how that could have been? Were women allowed to “register” to vote but not allowed to actually “cast” a vote?
They were allowed to vote in certain elections prior to 1920. Also, Mass passed a referendum prior to the rest of the country in 1895. Louise May Alcott was the first woman registered in Massachusetts in 1879 to vote for Concord school committee.
My great aunt was a registered voter in Massachusettes long before 1920. She was even in the news paper holding up her certificate. Maybe she was allowed to vote in local elections and not national?
My grandmother Mary Sullivan Power used to lead suffrage marches in Boston in 1915 .On their white uniform dresses,it read Women to F.M.T.A. I’m trying to fugure out what that acronym meant,if anyone can help me here,I would appreciate it,,