Connecticut Attorney General John H. Light and His Fight for Woman’s Suffrage

…progress and that “women who believe in suffrage are fortunate in such a champion.” Yet, Light’s contributions to the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association’s (CWSA) fight for political equality, like that…

19th Amendment: The Fight Over Woman Suffrage in Connecticut

…acts of civil disobedience. The Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association In Connecticut, Frances Ellen Burr and Isabella Beecher Hooker took up the cause by forming the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA)…

Senator Brandegee Stonewalls Women’s Suffrage

…suffrage issues to be regulated by individual states. He proved so adamant in his convictions that he refused to debate the issue or even discuss it with women’s suffrage advocates…

Rosamond Danielson: Windham County Suffragist and Community Leader

…her progressive mindset. Women Suffrage March, ca. 1913 – Hahn Family photo album. 2009.382.0 – Connecticut Historical Society Becoming a Notable Local Suffrage Leader Danielson became active in the women’s…

Trolley Campaigners Storm Small Towns and Votes for Women is the Battle Cry

By Kathleen Motes Bennewitz “The Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA) continues to stir the State with its unique trolley campaign,” penned The Woman’s Journal, a venerable weekly published in Boston,…

Women Win the Right to Vote

…Alliance – Connecticut Historical Society In 1869, the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA) became the first official organization to fight for suffrage (the right to vote) in Connecticut. By 1910,…

A Feeling of Solidarity: Labor Unions and Suffragists Team Up

…State Federation of Labor. Although its national body was on record in support of women’s suffrage, local labor leaders balked when a suffrage resolution reached the Hartford gathering. Abbie O’Connell,…

Josephine Bennett: Hartford’s City Mother

…the State Capitol on April 5, 1911, where she shared the stage with Dr. Anna Shaw, president of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Josephine Bennett with suffrage banner and…

A Day for Women – Today in History: March 8

…and national levels. Remembering the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association Women’s fight for the right to vote in the Constitution State may be dated to 1869, when the Connecticut Woman Suffrage…

Looking Back: Tempest Tossed, the Story of Isabella Beecher Hooker

…in-line with them, either. Convention program of the First International Woman Suffrage Conference and the 34th Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, DC, 1902, where Isabella…

Katharine Houghton Hepburn, A Woman Before Her Time

…Archives, Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association Never timid in speaking her mind, Kit actively embraced woman suffrage and the fight against prostitution in Hartford. From 1910 to 1911, and then again…

America’s First Ordained Woman Minister: Olympia Brown and Bridgeport’s Universalist Church

…abolitionist and suffrage movements, to lecture at the church. The First American Woman Ordained a Minister Comes to the Park City Mrs. Olympia Brown, ca. 1919- Library of Congress, Prints…

Catharine Beecher, Champion of Women’s Education

…about women’s suffrage. Her reputation as an advocate for women’s education, as well as the suffrage work of her younger sisters, makes her position on securing the vote for women…

Women of the Prison Brigade

…were allied with Reds and were trying to incite class and race hatred. Others predicted “racial decadence” if suffrage was passed. The US suffrage movement began in the 1840s with…

Emmeline Pankhurst’s “Freedom or Death” Speech Energizes Connecticut Women in 1913

By Emily Clark In the early 20th century, women in both the United States and the United Kingdom fought for the right to vote. While remaining distinct, the suffrage movements…

Celia Burleigh, Connecticut’s First Female Minister

…an early marriage, she lived in Syracuse where she taught, gave lectures on temperance and suffrage, and wrote articles for the Christian Register. On September 7, 1865, she married William…

Looking Back: How the Vote Was Won

…Club. Cicely Hamilton (1872-1952) was an English writer and advocate for women’s rights. She co-authored “How the Vote was Won” as a one-act comedy specially written to support women’s suffrage….

Votes for A Woman: Sara Buek Crawford

…mother ventured out from her parlor to campaign for “Votes for Women” with the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA) in Westport and across the state. In the fall of 1920,…

Hartford’s Nook Farm

…much of her life to secure women the right to vote, a view that many of her day considered outrageous. Women’s suffrage was thought of as so radical that even…

The Smith Sisters, Their Cows, and Women’s Rights in Glastonbury

…abolitionist beliefs. Sisters Wage a New Fight Once slavery had been abolished in the United States, the Smith sisters focused their attentions on women’s suffrage. Before they could concentrate much…

Where Mr. Twain and Mrs. Stowe Built Their Dream Houses

…her own right. A leader in the women’s suffrage movement, she organized a convention of the National Women’s Suffrage Association in Hartford in 1869 and in Washington, DC in 1871….

An Orderly & Decent Government: Making Self-Government Work, 1905-1929

Women Win the Right to Vote With war’s end, suffrage advocates stepped up their campaign for equal rights and finally saw Congress pass the 19th Amendment giving women the right…

Connecticut Suffragists Appeal to the President – Today in History: July 12

…published in the July 13, 1918 edition of the Hartford Courant was sent to the president asking him to intervene in passing a suffrage amendment. It read: “Resolved, That we…

Mary Townsend Seymour: Hartford’s Organizer, Activist, and Suffragist

…American suffrage movement had a long history of systematically and intentionally excluding Black women. Southern states were the most challenging opponents to women’s suffrage and passing the 19th Amendment—white suffragists…

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

By Amy Gagnon Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a noted writer, lecturer, economist, and theorist who fought for women’s domestic rights and women’s suffrage in the early 1900s. Born in Hartford…

Reverend James Pennington: A Voice for Freedom

…25, 1847, the schoolroom at Talcott Street Church served as the meeting place for a discussion on suffrage. Pennington was part of an appointed three-member corresponding committee. The members at…

Isabella Beecher Hooker

…she dedicated her life to both her family and to the enfranchisement of women. She founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 and drafted a bill her state legislator…

“’No Taxation without Representation’: Black Voting in Connecticut

…battles over African American suffrage in Connecticut, read Katherine J. Harris’s article, “‘No Taxation without Representation’: Black Voting in Connecticut“ in Connecticut Explored magazine. Also, check out the Fall 2018…

Elizabeth W. Coe Demands the Right of Jury Service

…the Hotel Bond in Hartford. League members, guests, senators, and representatives from Hartford County listened as Coe proclaimed: When women were granted the suffrage, it was thought by them that…

Mary Hall: Connecticut’s First Female Attorney

…1866 she graduated from Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and became a teacher. A believer in equal opportunities for women, she attended a woman suffrage convention in Hartford that set…

Vera Buch Weisbord’s “Radical” Life

…School and Hunter College, where she was a strong student and excelled in French. She began her activism in college by participating in a women’s suffrage march. Unexpected Illness Brings…

For the Common Good | Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project

Charlotte Perkins Gilman Born – Today in History: July 3

…men to gum chewing in public. She was also a lecturer and supporter of women’s suffrage and women’s economic independence in the early 20th century. Gilman’s paternal great-grandfather was Dr….

Elizabeth Jarvis Colt Born – Today in History: October 5

…children of working mothers, meals, and access to a library and classes. Elizabeth was also the first President of the Hartford Soldiers Aid Society, an organizer of the first Suffragette…

Transportation

…also contributed to women’s suffrage and the Good Roads Movement of the late 19th century. The state’s transportation history also includes early Native American trails that traced routes still in…

Women

…long after, barred them from the same rights as men. Among those pioneering national and local change in the 1800s are educator-abolitionist (and state heroine) Prudence Crandall and women’s suffrage…

Social Movements

…and universal suffrage to the Good Roads movement championed by Hartford bicycle innovator Albert Pope in the late 1800s. Often the struggle is long, as witnessed by indigenous groups’ quest…

Politics and Government

…the years, various political debates arose over such issues as slavery, temperance, religious influence on governance, women’s suffrage, and even where to locate the state capital. (Until 1875, Connecticut had…

Henry Ward Beecher, a Preacher with Political Clout

…suffrage were topics of great importance to Beecher and his sister Harriet, with whom he maintained a close relationship, but perhaps no issue stirred Henry more than his desire to…

Site Lines: Fortresses of Faith, Agents of Change

…worship, discuss issues, and hold meetings. Issues of great importance to these congregations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries included suffrage, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and access to fair…

Hiding the Charter: Images of Joseph Wadsworth’s Legendary Action

…more democratic, liberal faction, that demanded wider suffrage, an end to the official support of the Congregational church, elimination of the practice of returning the same men to office year…

Hope for the West: The Life and Mission of Lyman Beecher

…as advocates for educational reform and suffrage respectively. His daughter, Harriet, however, became perhaps the most famous of his offspring after her authorship of the renowned abolitionist tract, Uncle Tom’s…

Katharine Hepburn’s Love Affair (with Connecticut)

…a privileged upbringing. As a young girl she attended demonstrations with her mother, who was active in the movements for women’s suffrage and the right to obtain easy access to…

The Bull Moose Party in Connecticut

…formed Progressive Party. The Progressive Party supported organized labor against big business, was in favor of women’s suffrage, and even proposed a national health service. Most of the party’s followers…

An Orderly & Decent Government: Searching for the Common Good, 1776-1818

…the state that embodied their reforms. “The very principle of admitting everybody to the right of suffrage prostrates the wealth of individuals to the rapaciousness of a merciless gang who…

An Orderly & Decent Government: Making Self-Government Work, 1866-1887

…and equality indeed ruled throughout the land, as is the boast of men.” Julia and Abby Smith, c. 1875 – Julia Smith, Suffragist, 1875 The Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association, founded…

An Orderly & Decent Government: Business and Government, 1905-1929

…making key committee assignments, setting legislative agendas, and dispensing patronage. Suffrage advocates Beneath the surface prosperity of the period, old problems still simmered. Tensions between the state’s Yankee population and…

Past Perfect: Wallace Nutting Invents an Ideal Olde New England

…a world of “new” women—office girls, suffragettes, and flappers—Nutting’s female models were invariably posed in two extremely conservative modes, “the genteel” and “the productive.” They are “good wives,” spinning like…

A Diversified Mind: Hiram Percy Maxim

…the Hartford Board of Education, served on the executive committee of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and founded the Connecticut League of Women Voters. Explosive Engine patent, Hiram Percy Maxim…

The Smith Sisters and Their Cows Strike a Blow for Equal Rights – Today in History: January 8

…Hooker’s suffrage convention in Hartford in 1869, launched a public campaign against the tax and lobbied for their right to speak in town meetings. Isabella Beecher Hooker herself contributed to…

Where It All Happened: Connecticut’s Old State House

…Women’s Suffrage Association, arrived at the Old State House to petition the general assembly for women’s rights to own property. After seven years of battling, she won the case and…

Early Civil Rights and Cultural Pioneers: The Easton Family

…an organized effort for black men’s suffrage led by James Mars, a church deacon and former enslaved man born in Connecticut. Rev. Hosea Easton died on July 6, 1837, at…

Connecticut College for Women: The State’s First All-Female Institution of Higher Learning

…popping up in the mid-19th century. In Connecticut, however, there were very few institutions that admitted women. At the turn of the 20th century—as the suffrage movement gained momentum and…

Hebron’s Josephine Sophia (White) Griffing and a Vision for Post-Emancipation America

…two industrial schools to teach freedwomen professional skills such as sewing. Working closely with female volunteers at other community organizations and churches, Griffing also hoped to promote the suffrage movement….