Suffragists

Suffragists in New Rochelle

The League of Women Voters of New Rochelle has to cancel their Coffee & Conversation today. We're instead bringing to you a related history gem, and a glimpse of the Notable Women of New Rochelle Exhibit, presented by NRPL and the New Rochelle Council on the Arts. Today: Three Leading Suffragists.

100 years ago, this year, American women were finally given the right to vote. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which finally passed in August 1920, was a decades-long struggle. These three women, each a former New Rochelle resident, were key figures in the battle.

Lucretia Mott

1793 - 1880

Born in Nantucket, Lucretia Coffin became a teacher when only 15 years old, beginning a long mission of educating others. In her case, it would be educating people about injustices, in attempts to change the world for the better. A small and frail looking woman, she exemplified her Quaker tradition in her gentle and tolerant ways. Her strength and determination was well-served by her eloquence.

When she was 19, she married James Mott, who was raised as a Quaker as she had been. The Mott family owned Premium Mill, located on the border of New Rochelle and the Town of Mamaroneck onthe Premium Point Peninsula. In  1814. two years after Lucretia and James were married, they moved into the Mott's home, located on the New Rochelle side of the Point. Here, she would give birth to their first son, Thomas. 

By 1821, Lucretia Mott had become a Quaker minister and was highly respected for her speaking abilities. She and her husband soon joined with the more progressive wing of their faith, traveling the country with their messages. Mott was strongly opposed to slavery, and advocated not buying the products of slave labor, which prompted her husband, always her supporter, to get out of the cotton trade around 1830. 

On July 15, 1848, was the first convention of and for women, and was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls, NY. 

Mott spent her life fighting for the rights of women and African Americans, while mainting a full routine of a mother and housewife. She was also a writer - among her published works are "Sermons to Medical Students" and "A Discourse for Women."

Lucretia Mott died on November 11, 1880, in Cheton Hills, PA, and was buried next to her husband, James.

  

Susan B. Anthony
1820 - 1906

Susan Brownwell Anthony was born into a Quaker family in Adams, Massachusetts. One of six children, she clearly carried on her parent's wishes that they all contribute positively to the world. Anthony's parents devoted themselves to the causes of abolitionism and temperance, two movements that Susan would also champion wholeheartedly. 

When she was 18, the Anthony family faced bankruptcy. To help pay the family bills, Susan took a job as an assistant teacher at Miss Eunice Kenyon's Boarding School, in New Rochelle. She wrote extensive letters describing her life in New Rochelle, including an enterprise raising silkworms and attending less-than satisfactory Quaker meetings in the area. "The people about here are anti-Abolitionist and anti-everything that's good," she penned.  

In September 1852, Anthony attended her first women's rights convention in Syracuse. She became convinced, in her words, "that the right women needed above every other...was the right of suffrage." Anthony soon became a regular on the lecture circuit and in legislative halls. By 1856, her outspokennes and tireless efforts on behalf of abolitionism led to her selection as the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought to keep the word "male" out of the Fourteenth Amendment, then petitioned Congress for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing "universal suffrage" - suffrage for both the newly freed slaves and for women. Some in Congress listened; most didn't. Soon after, the two women founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and continued their work, passionately and relentlessly.

Susan B. Anthony's last public speech was in Washington on her 86th birthday, February 15, 1906. She spoke of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and the many other women who had battled at her side - some for over half a century - for women's suffrage. Less than a month later, on March 13, Anthony died in her home in Rochester. Ten thousand mourners attended the funeral. Ms. Anthony had requested: "When it is (my) funeral, remember that there should be no tears. Pass on, and go on with the work."

Carrie Chapman Catt
1859 - 1947

The woman who took the gavel from Susan B. Anthony and "went on" with the work and to the ratification of the 19th Amendment was Carrie Chapman Catt.

Carrie Clinton Lane was born on January 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin, the second of three children. She graduated from the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm in Ames (now Iowa State University) at the top of her class, having worked her way through school by washing dishes, working in the school library, and teaching. She was also the only woman in her graduating class. In 1883, she became one of the first women in the nation appointed superintindent of schools. 

Catt began work nationally for the National Woman Suffrage Association, first speaking in 1890 at its Washington, D.C. convention. In the following months, her hard work and brilliant words established her reputation as a leading suffragist. In 1900, she succeeded Susan B. Anthony as National Woman Suffrage Association president. From then on, her time was spent primarily in speechmaking, planning campaigns, organizing women, and gaining political experience. 

After a long and arduous struggle, New York granted women the right to vote on November 6, 1917. By 1918, President Woodrow Wilson was finally converted to the cause. The Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to votem became the law of the land. The presidential election of 1920 was the first in which women were eligible to vote nationwide. 

In 1928, Catt chose New Rochelle as her final home. Here, she continued work on her broadened interests: world peace and child labor. During these years she won countless national awards, including being named one of "America's Twelve Greatest Women Living" in 1931 by Good Housekeeping Magazine. On a more local level, she became active in the Woman's Club of New Rochelle, the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the New Rochelle Public Library.