Journal Notes

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

On September 18, 1909, Laura Gregg of the Arizona Equal Suffrage Campaign Committee rolled a sheet of letterhead into her typewriter and began an affectionate letter to Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Shaw, who had been injured in an accident, was recuperating in Minneapolis, and Gregg wrote to her:

“If I had known that you were roasting on a bed of suffering in Minneapolis, I should certainly have sent you a little love note, as well as to send you all of the helpful thoughts that I could. At this late date, however, it is not too late to tell you how much I rejoice that your recovery has been so speedy, and that through it all you have had such Spartan courage to do such wonderful things as I am reading about, while you must have been suffering so much.”

Shaw, as head of the biggest national organization promoting woman suffrage, had been traveling the country stumping for the cause and speaking from her heart to the state organizations that had sprung up in nearly every state and territory. She had won the hearts of her fellow suffragists with her warm and intelligent rhetoric and open attitudes. And while she was working on the national stage, organizations like the Arizona Equal Suffrage Campaign Committee were going into homes, posing legal arguments, asking questions, and changing minds.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the territorial governments of the West formed and territorial laws were established, and then as territories made the move into statehood, suffrage advocates across the country had their eyes on the opportunities that came with crafting the law of the land from the ground up. If women hadn’t been excluded from the vote by law in each territory, went the reasoning, they didn’t need to be under the new laws and statutes that were being written.

After the Civil War, the discussion about women and the vote had been firmly on the political table for almost two decades. Women all over the United States had been protesting, lobbying, and had even been arrested for attempting to vote in elections. Pressure grew, as early as the 1870s, for a national suffrage amendment in Congress. But faced with great opposition—or apathy—on a nationwide scale, many suffrage advocates saw the laws being written on the frontier as the best chance for the vote to take hold in law.

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

No Place for a Woman

The Academy of Western Artists announced today that the book According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder, Love of Doc Holliday is the winner of the 2020 AWA Elmer Kelton Award for non-fiction.  Good for you, Kate!

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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.

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 up 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

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

Esther Hobart Morris carefully arranged borrowed chairs and warmed, borrowed teacups as she prepared for her visitors to arrive. Her tiny mountain cabin, perched at seventy-five hundred feet of elevation in the mountains at South Pass City, Wyoming Territory, was cleaned, decorated, and full of all of the delectable morsels she could contrive for the important guests who would be arriving soon. Her husband, Jim Morris, was barely tolerant of the bustle as he nursed a foot swollen with gout, but he didn’t make his objections audible. The couple had only been in South Pass City a few months, and the time had not been easy for him, though Esther had leapt into local life with her usual enthusiasm. Her son from her first marriage, Archibald Slack, was soon to arrive to report on the afternoon’s event for the newspaper. His story would appear in time for the elections that were to be held the next day in the boomtown of two thousand men, women, and children. White men would be voting to send delegates to Wyoming’s Territorial Convention.

Everything about the scene Esther set that day in her tiny home was right by her standards and the standards of the day. The room was cozily domestic, and any Victorian in 1869 would have felt at ease with the ritual that was about to take place. The pouring of tea by a proper wife and mother, the gathering of friends over small plates of sandwiches and desserts, removed gently from cherished china with delicate tongs, the feathers and frills worn by the women and the ridges from hats just removed remaining in the hair of the gentlemen were both comforting and comfortable. But the gentle talk of community events and shared acquaintance of an elegant tea would give way to the talk that was dominating South Pass City on that fall day—the territorial elections of the next day and the future of Wyoming Territory itself. And that was exactly what Esther Morris intended.

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.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

July 9, 1848, Waterloo, New York. It was a hot Sunday afternoon, and Jane Hunt, wife to prominent Quaker Richard P. Hunt, was home tending her two-week-old daughter and awaiting the arrival of the guests she expected for afternoon tea. Hunt’s home, an elegant, federal-style mansion, was comfortable and well-appointed, though not overtly luxurious, as befit her Quaker faith. It was the perfect venue for a meeting between a group of local Quaker women and renowned speaker, minister, and champion of reform Lucretia Mott, who was in the area visiting from Philadelphia. Mott, a Quaker minister, had been speaking openly in public and advocating fiercely for the abolition of slavery since the 1830s.

Hunt likely looked forward to the tea party and to the lively discussion she expected with Mott; her friend and fellow Quaker Mary Ann McClintock; Mott’s sister, Martha Wright; and an acquaintance of Mott’s named Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mary Ann McClintock was the wife of the local Quaker minister—both she and he were adherents to a branch of Quakerism called Hicksites, which promoted equality between the sexes. Martha Wright was well known for her intellect, her witty commentary, and for her support of her sister’s work and beliefs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had first met Mott when the two were excluded from participation in the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London on the basis of their sex, was also in attendance as she was visiting from nearby Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton took the opportunity, while the women enjoyed tea and dainty treats in Hunt’s spacious and comfortable parlor, to unleash “a torrent of [her] long-accumulating discontent,” over the inequality of the sexes.

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

No Place for a Woman

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Thunder Over the Prairie:

The Story of a Murder and a Manhunt by the

Greatest Posse of All Time

A fresh mound of earth covered Dora Hand’s grave and a sweet breeze danced around the crudely fashioned marker stuck in the dirt where she had been buried. Several bouquets of wilted flowers encircled the wooden tombstone. Although their blooms had faded somewhat, they represented the only color in the soap weed infested cemetery. For a short time after James Kenedy’s acquittal in December 1878, mourners returned to Dora’s plot to deposit fresh flowers, remember the entertainer and reflect on the shooting that took her life.

The news of what James had done and the posse that pursued him followed the cattleman to Texas, and he reveled in the notoriety. Youth often wobbles dangerously, then steadies to follow the straight and narrow path, but not in his case. The injuries he sustained during his capture had left him a cripple, and he was anxious to prove that the disability had not affected his gunplay.

He learned to use his left arm to draw his weapon and rumors prevailed that he killed several men with his quick hand during a brief stay in Colorado in November 1880.

By 1882, James had settled down and married the daughter of a wealthy landowner. He focused on the family business and worked closely with his father, earning the man’s respect and confidence. Neighbors and acquaintances considered James to be a “man of industry with good business qualifications and a trusted manager of Mifflin’s large ranch and cattle business.”

James Kenedy died on December 29, 1884 of tuberculosis, shortly after his son, George Mifflin was born. News of his death was slow to reach Dodge City, but well received. Mayor Kelley was particularly pleased. He had taken the death of Dora Hand hard. His emotional attachment to her, combined with the fact that a bullet intended for him had killed her, had left him devastated. Like many Dodge City residents who had been fond of Dora, Mayor Kelley felt “the only punishment meted out to James had been the sickness he endured from being shot by the posse.” After James was apprehended, Mayor Kelley expected the gunslinger to be found guilty of murdering the songstress and subsequently hung. The mayor was disappointed with the judge’s ruling to acquit.

Mayor Kelley served four terms in office, stepping down from the position in March 1881. He left the job after being accused by his business partner of allowing a customer to pass a counterfeit dollar to him. In spite of the embarrassing incident, residents viewed him as an effective town leader. He helped pass ordinances outlawing houses of ill repute, increased licenses for taverns to help provide services to the community and organized a law enforcement team that eventually became known throughout the territory as the “toughest group of men in the west.”

With the exception of his daughter, Irene, there was no other significant woman in Mayor Kelley’s life. He consorted with very few ladies in public after the loss of Dora and focused much of his attention on his purebred greyhound dogs. In November 1885 a fire burned one of Mayor Kelley’s saloons to the ground. He rebuilt the saloon, but never fully recovered financially and was eventually forced to sell all of his real estate holdings to sustain himself. When his health began to fail in late 1910, he moved to the Soldier’s Home at Fort Dodge.

To learn more about the most intrepid posse of all time read

Thunder Over the Prairie.

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Thunder Over the Prairie:

The Story of a Murder and a Manhunt by the

Greatest Posse of All Time

James squirmed uncomfortably in the saddle and slowed his horse from a fast trot to a walk. The renegade’s attention was fixed on the countryside that unrolled before him. There were miles and miles of open range as far as he could see. The sky directly above was clear with fuzzy pinches of cotton-like clouds scattered here and there, but dark thunderheads were piling up a few miles out. He led his ride around the bones of a buffalo that had fallen some time prior to his passing through the area, and the horse balked and snorted. The mount was apprehensive about moving forward. James strained his eyes over the rugged trail, but failed to see anything that warranted the horse’s obstinate behavior. He poked the animal with his spurs, and the horse continued on.

Bat peered over the mound of earth he and the other posse members were positioned behind and watched the fugitive they’d been pursuing draw slowly nearer. “We’ll stop him out here,” Wyatt announced. “I don’t think he’ll make a fight. Most likely he’ll run for it.” “If he does… I’ll drop him,” Charlie promised. “Kelley wants Kenedy alive,” Bill reminded the men.

Charlie looked around for their horses and noted that the animals were scattered about the vicinity – too far away for the lawmen to reach without being seen. “Damn-it,” Bat spat under his breath realizing along with Wyatt and Bill the location of the mounts. “I’ll attend to the man,” Bat told his fellow riders after contemplating the distance a bullet would have to travel to hit James. “If he runs, shoot his horse,” Bat ordered Wyatt.

James rode on lost in thought. The closer he got to the acres of pastureland outlining the sod house, the more nervous his horse became. The animal raised his head and neighed. James surveyed the region and again saw nothing out of the ordinary. He kept going, but stopped every few yards to make sure the way was clear. Seventy-five yards away from the posse’s location, James brought his ride to a stop. He could hear only the cold wind blowing over the withered grass.

He scrutinized the prairie for a third time and noticed four rider less horses milling about. Anxiety swelled to fear and broke out on him in a cold, clammy sweat. A charged silence descended on the spot as the outlaw and the posse held their positions like graven images, waiting for someone to make a move. James’s face was bloodless and in one quick simultaneous motion, he removed his gun from its holster and swung his horse around.

Wyatt, Bat, Charlie and Bill jumped up and leveled their weapons at James. “Halt,” Bat shouted, cocking his weapon. James was defiant. He fired a shot at the same time he dug his spurs into his mount’s sides. The animal launched into a hard gallop. “Halt,” Wyatt warned the killer again. James refused. “Last chance, Kenedy,” Wyatt warned, “Halt!” James raised his whip to strike his ride and urge the horse to go faster, but a bullet fired from Bat’s .50 caliber rifle struck his left arm and he dropped the quirt. Thoroughly spooked by the violent exchange, the horse hurried to escape the scene. The lawmen let loose a volley of shots. Wyatt took careful aim and fired at James’s horse. Three bullets brought the animal down. James fell out of the saddle just as his mount received the fatal blow and the horse landed hard on top of him, crushing the arm that had just been shot. Horse and rider lay motionless on the ground.

To learn more about the posse that tracked down

Spike Kenedy read Thunder Over the Prairie.