Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2012 "When we get to voting": rural women, community, gender, and woman suffrage in the Midwest Sara Egge Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd Part of the History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Egge, Sara, ""When we get to voting": rural women, community, gender, and woman suffrage in the Midwest" (2012). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 12319. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/12319 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “When we get to voting”: rural women, community, gender, and woman suffrage in the Midwest by Sara Anne Egge A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: Agricultural History and Rural Studies Program of Study Committee: Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Major Professor Jana Byars Charles M. Dobbs Kathleen Hilliard John Monroe Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2012 Copyright © Sara Anne Egge, 2012. All rights reserved. ii Dedication To Mark In memory of Richard Hoebelheinrich iii Table of Contents List of Maps iv Acknowledgements v Abstract ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Local Story 21 Chapter 2: Rural Women Made Community 74 Chapter 3: Woman Suffrage to 1910 115 Chapter 4: Woman Suffrage in Iowa, 1916-1920 179 Chapter 5: Woman Suffrage in South Dakota, 1914-1918 220 Chapter 6: Woman Suffrage in Minnesota, 1915-1920 266 Conclusion 289 Bibliography 296 iv List of Maps Map of Clay County, Iowa 26 Map of Yankton County, South Dakota 31 Map of Lyon County, Minnesota 34 v Acknowledgements About five years ago, I met with Pamela Riney-Kehrberg and naively informed her that I wanted to study how rural women living in the Midwest engaged with woman suffrage. My plans were sketchy at best, but from the beginning Pam supported my ideas wholeheartedly. Her well-timed advice and endless encouragement served me well as I spent countless hours putting together the puzzle pieces that became this project. Pam is the model of an excellent graduate advisor, and I sincerely appreciate all that she has done for me. I also thank the members of my committee for their encouragement throughout my graduate career. In particular, I want to recognize Kathleen Hilliard for allowing me access to a nineteenth- century newspaper database during the early stages of this project’s development. In addition, numerous people outside Iowa State provided crucial support for this project. Dorothy Schwieder and Deborah Fink offered vital suggestions and advice during the formative period for this project. I especially thank them for their insightful recommendations. I benefited greatly from the expertise of archivists and staff members at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress. During a trip to these two archives, I uncovered important documents, correspondence, and speeches that helped me reframe my dissertation at a crucial stage in the research. The archivists and staff at the State Historical Society of Iowa, South Dakota State Historical Society, and Minnesota Historical Society offered timely suggestions and discovered countless resources I may have otherwise overlooked. I especially want to thank Susan Jellinger and Mary Bennett in Iowa, Ken Stewart in South Dakota, and Debbie Miller in Minnesota for their help. I also want to recognize the staff and student workers at the Iowa Women’s Archives for assisting me in early research for this project with patience and cheer. In addition, I acknowledge the work vi of archivists at the regional centers in Minnesota, including Daardi Sizemore at the Southern Minnesota History Center in Mankato and Jan Louwagie at the Southwest Minnesota History Center in Marshall. Daardi introduced me to the fabulous oral history collections housed at the history center there while Jan provided kind and patient assistance as I asked what seemed to be a million questions. She also pointed me to important collections that I had not intended to investigate. Daardi’s and Jan’s deep archival knowledge of their collections made this dissertation richer, and for that I thank them. In addition to the support of the staff at the regional and state archives I consulted, I also must recognize the crucial assistance of the people who provided me access to the collections housed within their local archives and museums. At the Clay County Historical Society in Spencer, Cindy McGranahan and Holly Kellogg of the Parker Museum provided me open access to their collections and records and offered excellent suggestions about potential sources and materials. They also contacted the Clay County Extension Office on my behalf, and I spent a wonderful afternoon digging through their boxes of old annual extension reports. At the Dakota Territorial Museum in Yankton, Crystal Nelson and her volunteer staff many times stopped what they were doing to answer one of my many questions. In Marshall, a volunteer staff member at the Lyon County Historical Society dug up what later became an important box of women’s club records. To these tireless promoters of local history, I offer my sincerest thanks and gratitude. I could not have completed the research I intended without vital financial support. I received a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the United States Department of Education just before my second year of graduate school. The financial support provided by the Javits was unparalleled, and I especially thank Carmen Gordon for working with the staff at Iowa State vii to coordinate this fellowship. I also can never repay Jennifer Rivera for managing all the paperwork that this award required. I can only offer my deepest gratitude to Jennifer for going above and beyond. A research grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa provided significant funds for early research conducted while still a young graduate student. I also received a Phi Alpha Theta Professional Development Grant that supported crucial research trips to northwest Iowa. Finally, the Iowa State history department awarded me a travel grant from a generous anonymous donor. The grant provided me the financial resources to finally travel to the east coast for the two-week research trip to New York and Washington DC that I could not have undertaken otherwise. I also sincerely appreciated the support and encouragement of friends and family throughout my graduate career. In Mankato, Ashli Maddox let me stay with her despite her busy schedule as a graduate student. She, along with Jen Gunderson, cheered and encouraged me after weeks of seemingly uninterrupted research trips. In New York City, my dear friends Laurie Rempp and José Vasquez welcomed me into their home for a week. In Washington DC, Ben, Kelly, and Jayne McGovern offered their home as a fantastic place to retreat after long days in the archives. Finally, J. D. and Vercie Webb provided a warm bed and good food during a critical weeklong research trip to Clay County. To these friends and family whose hospitality made my research trips enjoyable, I offer my sincerest thanks. In addition, I offer my gratitude to the graduate students in the history department at Iowa State. I have appreciated their camaraderie, collegiality, and friendships. In particular, I thank Peter Noll for creating the maps for this dissertation. I also want to thank my parents, Alan and Sharon, for raising me to appreciate my roots. When writing this dissertation, I thought often of my grandmothers, Harriet Namminga and Dorothy Egge, whose lives have viii exemplified the strength, wit, and resourcefulness of many of the rural women I studied. My dear friends, Sam and Kimberly Isburg, provided restful and relaxing weekends away during periods of intense writing, and I cannot thank them enough for their love and support. In the midst of graduate school, I gained a fantastic set of in-laws, including Dorothea, Richard, and Paul. I am only sorry that Richard was not able to see the final product. Finally, I thank Mark, for everything. ix Abstract During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Progressive reform radically reshaped the nature of politics and political activism. It reinvigorated debates about the role of the state in the home and family, revealing new conversations about women and their rights. In this study, one Progressive reform, woman suffrage, intersects with conceptions of women as political activists and potential feminists. In particular, this project examines woman suffrage in a local and comparative context, assessing the cause in three counties in three states—Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota—in the Midwest. By employing this innovative framework, in which “place” and “locality” matter, this study argues that most people in the rural Midwest experienced Progressive reforms like woman suffrage through their local communities. As this project reveals, Progressivism took neither a unified nor continuous form. Instead, it was haphazard and sporadic, depending on the whims of people who engaged with the movement on their own terms and in their own ways. In addition to reexamining the nature of Progressivism, this study also repositions the analysis of feminism among groups of women who exhibited feminist behavior without claiming the label. For these rural women, their activism came from their mutual positions on the farm, in the family, and within their communities. This project, then, analyzes the actions of rural women by redefining the term feminism to include their properly contextualized political and public behaviors. Although most rural women did not become outright suffragists, they did actively interact with the cause, both individually and collectively, for their own reasons and motivations.