KERA Badge for Anna Dudley Mcginn Lilly Ca1917-1920 Kerabadge

H-Kentucky KERA Badge for Anna Dudley McGinn Lilly ca1917-1920

Image published by Randolph Hollingsworth on Sunday, September 6, 2020 kerabadge-mrsgrantlilly.jpg

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Citation: Randolph Hollingsworth. KERA Badge for Anna Dudley McGinn Lilly ca1917-1920. H-Kentucky. 09-06-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/kera-badge-anna-dudley-mcginn-lilly-ca1917-1920 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Kentucky

Badge with handwritten label "Mrs. Grant Lilly" and yellow ribbon stamped with "Kentucky Suffrage Convention." Image courtesy of Jackie Couture, archivist. This item is part of the Lilly Family Papers, Eastern Kentucky University Special Collections and Archives, Richmond, KY.

Anna Dudley McGinn Lilly (February 27, 1872 - July 30, 1948) was married to Grant E. Lilly, owner and editor of three newspapers. One of the newspapers Lilly purchased was The Kentucky Register and his wife served as its editor. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Women's Clubs. She might have attended many of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) conventions, but the only one in which the minutes record her was in 1917. She is reported to have taken the lead in selling Liberty Bonds as Chairman of the Madison County Woman's Committee, working with Laura Clay, Mrs. Harvey Chenault and others to sell $40,000 worth in Madison County ("The Report of the Patriotic Work that has been done by the Woman Suffragists of Madison County," 24 Reports of the Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Nine Annual Conventions of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association Held at Lexington, Kentucky, November 30th and December 1st, 1917 and at Louisville, Kentucky, March 11th and 12th, 1919.). And, though she is not mentioned in the KERA report as being appointed an official delegate for KERA at the 1920 convention in Chicago of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), her daughter Austin Lilly remembered going with her on the train and staying at the hotel with her. See the oral history interview of Austin P. Lilly by Terry L. Birdwhistell (April 03, 1990, University of Kentucky Oral History Project, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries - listen to the clip starting at 00:22:20). She might also have attended the 1920 KERA convention held in Lexington (and Frankfort) to celebrate the state's ratification of the federal amendment before attending the NAWSA convention (called the "Victory Convention") in Chicago in mid-February.