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Women's Suffrage in Central New York

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Women's Suffrage in Central New York 1 WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN CENTRAL NEW YORK Hester Jeffrey Warsaw Suffragists, 1910 Elizabeth Smith Miller Rochester Regional Warsaw Historical Society Women’s Rights Park I. HISTORIC CONTEXT STATEMENT II. LIST OF POSSIBLE NATIONAL REGISTER NOMINATIONS III. BIBLIOGRAPHY APPENDIX A: DATABASE OF SITES (electronic format) APPENDIX B: DATABASE OF SUFFRAGE NAMES (electronic format) Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator Dana Teets, Database Manager Susan Goodier, Historical Consultant With help from many local historians Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York August 2019 . Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator/Dana Teets, Database Manager Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York, 2019 2 Printed Fulton, New York Historical New York Research Associates Copyright 2019 . Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator/Dana Teets, Database Manager Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York, 2019 3 HISTORIC CONTEXT STATEMENT FOR WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN CENTRAL NEW YORK Hester Jeffrey Warsaw Suffragists, 1910 Elizabeth Smith Miller Rochester Regional Warsaw Historical Society Women’s Rights Park Library Council ABSTRACT On August 26, 2020, the nation commemorates passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States. As part of the suffrage centennial commemoration, the Ontario County Historical Society sponsored this reconnaissance-level survey of historic sites relating to the suffrage movement in central New York, funded by Preserve New York (a program of the New York State Council on the Arts and the Preservation League of New York State). The purpose is two-fold: 1) to highlight the importance of central New York and its diverse people in generating and sustaining movements for equal rights, including movements for women’s rights and women’s suffrage; and 2) to identify historic sites relating to these movements, with special attention to those sites that may be eligible for National Register listing. This project pulls together previous work on this topic. In turn, it contributes to two national projects: 1) database of suffragists identified by Tom Dublin for Women and Social Movements, and 2) the National Votes for Women Trail, sponsored by the National Collaborative of Women’s History Sites (www.ncwhs.org). Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator, Historical New York Research Associates, conducted this survey. She worked with Ed Varno, Director, Ontario County Historical Society; Dana Teets, Database Manager; a wide variety of county and local historians across the region; and Kathy Howe and Erin Czernecki from the New York State Historic Preservation Office. Part I highlights people, events, and places in central New York in the context of New York State and national suffrage movements. Part II identifies key themes relating to this movement, with a list of sample historic suffrage sites with photographs that may be eligible for the National Register. This report incorporates two databases. The first is a database of more than two hundred sites relating to central New York suffrage. The second is an expanded list of suffrage names from central New York, building on Tom Dublin’s original database. Format for this report is modeled on that of . Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator/Dana Teets, Database Manager Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York, 2019 4 Jay Shockley et al, Historic Context Statement for LGBT History in New York City (National Park Service and New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, 2018). Susan Goodier, Carol Kammen, and Elaine Engst read the manuscript in its entirety. I am very grateful to them and to all who contributed to this amazing project. Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator/Dana Teets, Database Manager Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York, 2019 5 Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction . .7 Importance of Central New York in Women’s Suffrage Movement . 7 Connecting Suffrage to Historic Sites: Background . .. 11 This Project . .. .. 12 Methods . .. .. 13 Sources . .. .. 14 Results . .. .. .16 Recommendations . .. .. 17 I. Women’s Suffrage in Central New York A. The First Seventy-two Years: Race, Sex, Property, and the Meaning of “Created Equal,” 1776-1848. 21 B. Seed-Sowing Time: From Women’s Rights to Universal Suffrage and Back Again, 1848-1869 . 45 C. National and State Suffrage: Intertwined Networks, 1869-1890. 71 D. High Point or “the Doldrums”? 1890-1908 . .81 E. On to Victory: New Faces, New Allies, New Methods, 1908-1920 . 105 F. Implementing Suffrage: Accomplishments and Limitations, 1920 Beyond . , . 125 II. Historic Sites Relating to Women’s Suffrage in Central New York That Are Potentially Eligible for the National Register of Historic Places: Introduction. .. 131 A. Context of Reform . .133 B. Suffrage Activism . 143 C. Suffrage Activists . .161 D. Implementing Suffrage: Post-1920. 171 III. Bibliography . 173 Appendices: Electronic Format (not hard copy) A: Database of suffrage sites in central New York—208 sites B: Database of suffrage names from central New York—475 names . Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator/Dana Teets, Database Manager Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York, 2019 6 . Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central New York Judith Wellman, Principal Investigator/Dana Teets, Database Manager Sponsored by Ontario County Historical Society, Ed Varno, Director Funded by Preserve New York, 2019 7 INTRODUCTION Importance of Central New York in Women’s Suffrage Movement Central New York, along with several other regions of the U.S., was a hotspot of activism for equal rights, especially for people of color and for women. Completion of turnpikes, the Erie Canal in 1825, and railroads brought rapid in-migration into central New York. New York State led the nation in changes so large that historians, known for their careful use of language, called them revolutions—in transportation, industrialization, and urbanization. Along with these dramatic economic and social dislocations came powerful cultural changes, as Americans worked to understand their position in the new American democracy. What did “all men are created equal” really mean, as Americans created new communities, integrating their past with their future, their own values with those of their neighbors from different places of origin, different racial/ethnic groups, different religions, different levels of wealth? Such questions struck with particular force in central New York before the Civil War. The struggle of Americans in this region to understand themselves in this new Republic brought major reform initiatives, including movements for women’s rights and women’s suffrage. Rooted in revolutionary ideals, efforts in New York State for the abolition of slavery, the legal rights of married women, constitutional revisions, women’s education, political rights for African American men, freedom of conscience in religion, moral reform, temperance, and the rights of wor king people acted as incubators for ideas about women’s rights, including the right of women to vote. Women’s suffrage ultimately became a national issue, the largest nonviolent mass movement in U.S. history before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Often, people view the suffrage movement as one cohesive organization, dominated by European American women. This was the image projected by the largest single history of the movement, the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage. Beginning in the 1880s, Susan B. Anthony, with help from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper and dozens of other researchers around the country, did an amazing job of documenting the work of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Although volunteers, their work paralleled the development of professional standards for historians. Influenced by German scholars, they relied on primary sources to tell historical stories. As they claimed in the preface to Volume VI, “accounts of the annual conventions of the National American Suffrage Association demonstrate as nothing else could do the commanding force of that organization, for fifty years the foundation and bulwark of the movement.” So powerful was their work that it overshadowed suffrage efforts that emerged outside NAWSA. Suffrage, however, was not monolithic. Instead, it formed a complicated network that involved organized groups of women and men in rural and urban areas all over the nation. They came from various geographic, economic, cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds. This study recognizes the powerful impetus that NAWSA exerted over suffrage activities in central New York and nationwide. But it also supports the conclusion that suffrage in fact formed, in David Hacket Fisher’s words, a . Historic Context Statement for Women’s Suffrage in Central
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