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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West

When suffragist Susan B. Anthony boarded the passenger car of the Union Pacific Railroad in Ogden, Utah, in late December 1871, the train was filled to capacity. Men, women, children, livestock, baggage, and crates containing food and supplies were being loaded onto the vehicle bound for Chicago. Weary and carrying an oversized satchel bulging with clothing, books, and papers, the fifty-one-year-old woman climbed aboard and began the slow procession past the throngs of people occupying various seats and berths. She snaked her way toward the semi-private compartments until she found the one, she was to occupy for the duration of the trip. The pair Anthony would be traveling East with had already arrived and made themselves comfortable. She smiled at the congenial-looking couple as she entered. California congressman Aaron A. Sargent politely got to his feet to help her stow away her bag. He introduced himself, then introduced his accomplished wife, Ellen, to Anthony, who returned the kindness.

Not long after Anthony was settled, Ellen admitted to being familiar with her work. Anthony’s crusade to acquire the right to vote for women had been covered in the Sacramento newspapers as well as the publications in Nevada City, California, where the politician and his family lived. She had joined the fight for woman’s suffrage in 1852. Since that time, she had traveled from town to town, inspiring women to fight for equal rights. The crusade, which initially began in Seneca Falls in New York in 1840, had expanded westward. Once Wyoming granted women the privilege to cast their ballots, suffrage rose in territories beyond the Mississippi to battle for the opportunity to do the same. Crusaders reasoned if women could gain that right state by state the federal government would be persuaded to pass an amendment making it law.

From June to December of 1871, Anthony had traveled more than thirteen thousand miles, delivered 108 lectures, and attended close to two hundred rallies on the issue of woman’s suffrage. There were others such as Emily Pitts Stevens, who helped form the California Woman Suffrage Association, and physician and minister Anna Howard Shaw who had joined the fight and were hosting meetings to inform and educate women about the movement. It was essential that the message of equality be heard in every mining community, fishing village, and major city from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Women needed to be encouraged to petition for enfranchisement. They needed to be reminded they were entitled to speak for themselves and stand against fathers and husbands voting for them. Anthony and the other dedicated suffragists had been able to share the message with women in Kansas, Wyoming, Utah, Washington, and Oregon; they had great hope the ladies in California would back reform.

Anthony couldn’t have found a more receptive audience for her message than Congressman Sargent and his wife. Ellen had founded the first suffrage group in Nevada City, California, in 1869, and Aaron was in full support of giving women the vote. The Sargents had moved to California from Massachusetts in 1849 and settled in Nevada City in 1850. In addition to owning and operating the newspaper the Nevada Daily Journal, Aaron was an attorney and former U. S. senator. Ellen was a homemaker and mother who was active in the Methodist Church. She firmly believed that women could not attain their highest development until they “had the same large opportunities and the same large chances as her brothers have.”

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West.

On April 5, 1895, the lavish Grand Opera House in Salt Lake City was filled to overflowing with a host of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen. Women engaged in serious discussions outnumbered the men filtering into the building. Musicians in the orchestra pit serenaded the preoccupied crowd standing, talking, and preparing to sit upon rows of waiting chairs. As the clock approached two o’clock in the afternoon, more than a dozen women filtered on stage and took their places among the plush seats stationed in front of a magnificent, hand-painted drop curtain. Conversations quieted, and the room slowly came to order. When the music faded, Mrs. J. A. Froiseth called the meeting of suffragists in the Utah Territory to order. The following articles were read to the audience.

“Whereas, a convention is being held in this city for the purpose of framing a constitution for the proposed state of Utah, and; whereas, the question is being considered by said convention of incorporating in said constitution a provision for women suffrage, and; whereas, no opportunity has been afforded the women of this Territory to manifest their opinion upon the matter; and whereas, by the adoption of a plank of favor of woman suffrage in the platforms of both political parties, no opportunity was afforded to the citizens of this Territory to indicate their approval or disapproval of the proposition, and; whereas, it is conceded alike by the advocates and the opponents of woman suffrage that in all intellectual attributes and attainments the women are entitled to vote, and if this is true, then they possess the necessary intelligence and attainments to enable them to determine for themselves whether they desire this privilege, and they should be given the opportunity to decide this question for themselves.”

The crowd of onlookers cheered and applauded the articles read aloud. They waved their hands in the air approvingly and congratulated one another for their dedication to the cause. Someone shouted, “Give me suffrage or give me nothing.” That single voice then led many in a chant of “Give me suffrage or give me nothing!”

An enthusiastic supporter of the cause leapt to her feet and proclaimed, “The fight is still on!” Fellow believers praised the sentiment. “Ninety percent of the people hesitate to try the experiment these men would force upon us,” the spontaneous orator announced. “You who propose to vote against statehood make your voice heard now, with no uncertain sound. If we are to have equal suffrage, let us have it equal. Let the women serve on juries, let them work their poll tax on the roads, make them subject to military service, let them be drafted and enlisted in time of war, let them be equal in all things!”

More than twenty-five years prior to the enthusiastic gathering at the Grand Opera House where women argued for their right to vote, a somber group of leaders in the Utah Territorial Legislature quietly passed an act giving women that entitlement. Sarah Young, grandniece of settler and Mormon Church leader Brigham Young, became the first women to vote in the region. She voted in a municipal election on February 14, 1869.

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman

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No Place for a Woman:  The Fight for Suffrage in the Wild West

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who signed the first call for a woman’s rights convention in the United States, was born in Johnstown, New York, on November 12, 1815. She was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady, both persons of exceptional educational refinement. As a child Elizabeth displayed unusual intelligence and began her education at Johnstown Academy. After finishing the coursework at her homeschool, she went to Mrs. Emma Willard’s seminary in Troy, New York, where she was graduated in 1822.

In 1839 she met Henry Brewster Stanton, an anti-slavery orator of some note, and in 1840 they were married. Immediately after their wedding they went to London where the international anti-slavery convention was to be held.

Mrs. Stanton was one of the delegates from America but was denied participation in the proceedings because she was a woman. While in London she met Lucretia Mott and with her signed the first call for a women’s rights convention. Returning to Boston, Mr. and Mrs. Stanton made their home there until Mr. Stanton was compelled to move to Seneca Falls, New York, because of his health. It was in Seneca Falls on the 19th and 20th of July 1848, in the Wesleyan chapel, that the first women’s rights convention was held. Mrs. Stanton was at the head of the movement at that time and, besides caring for the delegates, wrote the declaration of aims which became the subject of ridicule and jest throughout the United States.

From 1867 to 1874 she went from state to state campaigning for woman’s suffrage and became associated with numerous organizations having that end in view. She became a candidate for Congress from the Eighth New York District, having the support of the New York Herald. She became associated in the management of the resolution with Susan B. Anthony and was the joint author of many books on woman’s suffrage.

To learn more about how women won the right to vote in the West read

No Place for a Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Sarah Kirby threw down the newspaper and paced across the room, only to turn and race back to the crumpled pages. She picked them up, smoothed them out, and once again read the diatribe against her penned by John Hambleton. Sarah was stricken with grief at the suicide of Hambleton’s wife. That the actor should blame her for his wife’s untimely death and publish his accusations in the San Francisco newspapers increased her distress. Her fingers whitened, and the edges of the page crumpled as she saw herself likened to a snake squeezing the life from its victim. Hambleton wrote of his dead wife’s devotion:

“For six years of struggling hardship through poverty and sickness she was at my side night and day, with the same watchful attention as a mother to an infant, until, with the last two months a change had taken place, like a black cloud over shadowing the bright sun. She gradually lost all affection for me, riveting her attention on a female friend who, like a fascinating serpent, attracted her prey until within her coils. In silence I observed this at first, and deemed it trifling, until I saw the plot thicken.”

Sarah crushed the flimsy copy of the Evening Picayune again. She must counter this ugly story or lose her reputation in the city. Not for this had she struggled to attain a pinnacle of success as both an actress and a theater manager. As a manager of a company of actors—one of very few women managers—bad publicity could cost her everything.

A genuine pioneer of theater in California, Sarah Kirby had made her debut in Boston but arrived in the brawling new territory within a year of the first rush of Argonauts heading for the sparkling, gold-laced streams of the Sierra. Rowe’s Amphitheater in San Francisco saw her first performance as Pauline in The Lady of Lyons.

Two months later she appeared at the Tehama Theater, which she had opened and comanaged in Sacramento. By August 1850, she was a full-fledged manager, producing plays at a theater in Stockton, and in September she was back at the Tehama in Sacramento.

To learn more about how Sara Kirby Stark’s career began and about the other talented performers of the Old West read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world-wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. Today the curtain goes up on a woman entertainer who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.

Ladies and gentlemen, Songstress Antoinette Adams

The first actress to appear in Virginia City was Antoinette Adams, variously described as six feet tall, long-necked, Roman-nosed, cracked-voiced, and a faded blonde. Although her audience of miners were cruelly disappointed in what they saw and heard, they listened patiently through her first rendition. At the first pause in her performance, a burly miner stood up and ordered the audience to give three cheers for “Aunty.”

The cheers resounded, and Antoinette sang again. Once more the miners applauded her, then one man rose to suggest they give her enough money to retire from her profession. A shower of silver cascaded upon the stage, the audience rowdily saluting her retirement. After that, every time Antoinette opened her mouth to sing, the miners cheered her so lustily she could not be heard; they also hurled more silver at her feet. At last the actress surrendered, ordered the curtains pulled. When she gathered the silver up, it filled two money sacks. But Antoinette could take a hint; she left town the next day.

To learn more about

Antoinette Adam’s not so illustrious career

and her performances across the Old West read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.