When you think of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in Upstate New York, you may conjure images of women in white with purple sashes marching through the streets of Albany or New York City, but rural Warren, and especially Washington County also played a major role in the fight for equal voting rights for women.
The idea of women’s suffrage resonated in agricultural regions where women worked the farm alongside men and shared equally the burdens and rewards. In fact, many of the members of Political Equality Clubs throughout New York’s rural counties were farm wives seeking to have their voices heard.
Susan B. Anthony was an activist, advocate, and organizer for abolition, temperance, women’s rights and especially women’s suffrage. Anthony and her family lived Battenville in the town of Greenwich in 1826 after her father was employed running a textile mill.
In 1851, Anthony attended an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls where she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two worked tirelessly on the cause, appearing before every Congress between 1869 and 1906 on behalf of women’s suffrage.
In November 1872, Susan B. Anthony and her sisters would succeed in casting their votes in an election in Rochester, only to be arrested two weeks later. The Anthony women returned to their childhood home county regularly.
The Easton Political Equality Club (PEC) was formed in 1891, with the encouragement of Susan’s sister, Mary S. Anthony, then Secretary of the State Woman’s Suffrage Association. The sisters used their local connections to work with the women in the PEC and the local grange to gain support for equal rights.
According to the Washington County Historical Society, other Washington County women involved in the suffrage movement included Chloe Sisson (of Easton), Lucy Allen (Easton), Emma Woodward Hays (Hebron), Betty Wakeman Mitchell (Fort Edward), Anna Lewis MacArthur (Granville), and Bessie Taylor (Granville).
In nearly every town in Washington County, political clubs and community organizations were founded to advocate for women’s right to vote. Many local men, too, fought alongside women of the area, locally and in Congress. Erskine C. Rogers Sr., chairman of the men’s committee of Hudson Falls said “It can be recorded that the men in Washington County declare their fairness to women, another proud fact in history.”
Since 2016, public historian Tisha Dolton has uncovered the names of hundreds of women in Warren and Washington Counties who campaigned for woman’s right to vote by looking at local club notices in digitized newspapers.
The Warren County Historical Society will host Dolton’s presentation “Columbia’s Daughters: The Political Equality Clubs of Warren and Washington Counties, 1890-1917” on Wednesday, November 20, 2024 at 7 pm at the Historical Society, 50 Gurney Lane in Queensbury, NY.
In 2020 Dolton received an Individual Artist Grant from Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council (LARAC) to create 42 embroidered portraits of New York State suffragists, including five from Warren County, and the exhibition, “Equali-tea: Suffragist Tea Cozies in Redwork.” Warren County Historical Society then published a book based on the
project in 2022.
Tisha Dolton is Public Historian/ Librarian at the Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, NY. She is a graduate of Adirondack Community College, SUNY New Paltz and University at Albany.
She was Public Historian for the Town of Greenwich from 2003-2019. She serves as a Trustee of the Warren County (NY) Historical Society, is vice regent of the Jane McCrea chapter, NSDAR, and is co-founder and chair of the Celebrating Suffrage in Greater Glens Falls Committee which creates and promotes suffrage and women’s history events in the region.
Her research focuses on suffrage songs, pageants, local Warren and Washington County suffragists, women’s clubs, and local minority groups. She is a member of the Society for Embroidered Work, the Embroiderers’ Guild of America, and the choral group Adirondack Voices.
This event is free and open to the public. No reservations required. Books and select embroidered tea cozies will be available for purchase. Please call or email the historical society at (518) 743-0734 or mail@wcnyhs.org for additional information.
The mission of the Warren County Historical Society is to preserve and promote the history and heritage of Warren County, NY and its environs by supporting research and preservation efforts and encouraging public participation.
Its headquarters are located at 50 Gurney Lane, Queensbury. Winter hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 9 am to 4 pm, Fridays 10 am to 4 pm.
Illustration: Bessie Taylor of Granville at the Suffragettes Parade in Washington, DC, in 1917 (Washington County Historical Society).
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