Maine: From Muddy Roads to Voting Booths

In this episode, Anne Gass, independent historian and author, discusses the suffrage struggle at sites in Maine.

We talk about the events and activists in the ME voting rights campaign:

• Florence Brooks Whitehouse was a suffrage leader who traveled to D.C. to picket at the White House.
• Mabel Derricks, Edith Johnson, and Blanche Dymond–members of the Black community in Bangor–signed a petition in 1917 advocating for women’s suffrage.
• Lucy Nicolar Poolaw of the Penobscot nation combined her musical career with activism for the rights for her community and was finally able to vote in 1967.
• Camille Lessard Bissonette who immigrated from Quebec to work in the Lewiston mills, became a journalist for the local French-Canadian newspaper and advocated for women’s suffrage.
• Augusta Hunt fought for women’s suffrage as well as other important rights including women’s rights for custody of their children. 

About our Guest:

     Anne Gass is an independent historian and the author of the non-fiction book Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage, published in 2014. Anne is Whitehouse’s great-granddaughter. Her most recent book is We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip, a historical novel based on the true story of an epic cross-country road trip that took place in 1915. In 2015, a century later, Anne spent two months retracing the original route.  Anne describes herself as a "women's rights history activist" and speaks regularly on suffrage and women’s rights history. She recently led an effort to install seven roadside markers across Maine honoring women (and one man!) who fought for women’s voting rights. She serves as Chair of Maine’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. 

People, Places, Publications:

Maine & the 19th Amendment (here)

Maine Suffrage Trail (here)

Francis Brooks Whitehouse Biographical Sketch (here)

Francis Brooks Whitehouse marker (here)

Black Matriarchs of Bangor Biographical Sketch and marker (here)

Lucy Nicolar Poolaw Biographical Sketch and marker (here)

Camille Lessard Bissonette Biographical Sketch (here)

Camille Lessard Bissonette marker (here)

Augusta Hunt Biographical Sketch (here)

Augusta Hunt marker (here)

CM Marihugh is a public history consultant and currently conducting independent research for a book on commemoration of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She has an M.A. in Public History from State University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Learn more about:

• National Votes for Women Trail (here)
• National Votes for Women Trail - William G. Pomeroy historical markers (here)
• National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (here)

Do you have a question, comment, or suggestion? Get in touch! Send an e-mail to NVWTpodcast@ncwhs.org

Transcript

SPEAKERS

CM Marihugh, Anne Gass, Earth Mama

CM Marihugh  00:00

Welcome to Her March To Democracy, where we're telling stories along The National Votes For Women Trail. I'm CM Marihugh, and this podcast chronicles the fight for voting rights for women. The suffragists were the revolutionaries of their day, and they battled the powers that be. These foot soldiers cut across the lines of geography, race, ethnicity, class and gender and numbered in the many 1000s over 70 plus years.

Earth Mama  00:28

We are standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us. They are saints and they are humans. They are angels. They are friends. We can see beyond the struggles and the troubles and the challenge when we know that by our efforts, things will be better in the end.

CM Marihugh  01:01

Each episode is a tour along the trail to the places of struggle, the states, the cities, the towns where wins and defeats happened over and over again. Our theme music is Standing On The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse recorded by Earth Mama. Join us on our travels to hear about these incredible activists in the stories along The National Votes For Women Trail. 

Today, we're talking about Maine, and we have Anne Gass to share some suffrage history from that state. Anne is an independent historian and author of the book Voting Down The House; Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine's Fight For Woman's Suffrage, which was published in 2014. Anne is Whitehouse's great granddaughter. 

Her most recent book is about suffrage also. It's a historical novel called We Demand; The Suffrage Road Trip, and it's based on the true story of an epic cross country trip that took place in 1915 and she retraced this route in 2015 thank you for being with us, Anne!

Anne Gass  02:08

Thanks for having me, so excited to be here.

CM Marihugh  02:11

So as you know, in this podcast, we're talking about the sites of stories and commemorations, such as historical markers, statues, monuments to the suffrage movement. And I was looking at Maine. I looked at the historical marker database, the National Votes For Women Trail database, and the Maine Suffrage Trail, and I found that Maine has at least 10 markers that mention women's suffrage. 

And I know you've been involved in getting at least seven of those installed, and I know we'll, we'll be visiting some of those today. I wonder if you could start though telling us about this fascinating family connection that you have to the suffrage movement in Maine.

Anne Gass  02:58

Yeah, so Florence Brooks and Robert Treat Whitehouse were suffrage leaders in Maine from roughly 1914 to 1920 and they were my great grandparents. And the wild thing is I knew almost nothing about them when I was growing up, it wasn't until I was in my 40s that I started reading some papers that Florence had left behind, papers that are now at the main historical society, and reading those really started me on my suffrage history journey. I got completely obsessed with it, and ended up doing a lot of background reading to bring myself up to speed on it, and then wrote a book about her, and that was the Voting Down The Rose book.

CM Marihugh  03:40

That is such a legacy, especially for both of them to be involved. I'm always fascinated by the couples that work together on this issue. I wonder if you could start by giving us an overview of the suffrage movement, how it played out in Maine. 

Anne Gass  03:57

Yeah. So Maine has always been a large, rural state with a relatively small population. And in 1900 the population was just under 700,000 with concentrations in southern and coastal areas and some in the Central Maine city called Bangor. And the suffrage fight started early in Maine's mid coast region and in Bangor, before concentrating more in Portland later on. 

In Ellsworth on Maine's coast, sisters Ann Frances Greely and Sarah Jarvis, campaigned in the 1850s for women's right to vote, and they had a women's rights lecture series in 1857 and also in 1857 a group of women from Bangor sent a petition To the Maine legislature asking for a state constitutional amendment enfranchising women, and the legislature simply ignored them, no hearing, no nothing, no response. And in Maine, the prohibition movement was closely intertwined with the suffrage movement. Maine was the first state to enact a total ban on the manufacture and sale of liquor. 

That was in 1851 in fact, one of the earliest national leaders of the Women's Christian Temperance Union The WCTU was Lillian Stevens, and she was from Dover Maine, and we'll talk a bit more later on about Augusta Hunt. And she was chair of Maine's branch of The WCTU for a while, and also chair of the Maine Women's Suffrage Association for a period. So that's an example of how those two movements were kind of joined together in Maine that presented a challenge for suffragists later on, when the cities, which had a larger population and also more immigrants, especially who enjoyed alcohol and they didn't really embrace prohibition, prohibition was more popular in the rural areas though. I don't have the impression that the anti suffragist movement, that they were called antis, were super well organized here, but they didn't really need to be it seems to me. 

Most Mainers didn't really care about suffrage, one way or the other, but the whiskey or they were sometimes referred to as the "wet interests" the you know, so liquor manufacturers funded opposition to suffrage in the cities, including funding the main Association of Women Opposed To Suffrage, and that was, that was the name of Maine's primary anti suffrage group. Whenever they needed extra cash, say, you know, to oppose efforts to pass a statewide suffrage referendum, they were able to get it from the whiskey interest to pay organizers and publish written materials opposing suffrage. Meanwhile, the suffragists had to go begging for donations, and they sold pamphlets and candy and did other grassroots fundraising to get their organizing money. 

The whiskey interests were certainly active in opposing Maine's first and only statewide referendum on full suffrage for women, and that took place in 1917 that was defeated by a margin of two to one in almost all the rural areas. Remember, those were the ones that were sort of pro prohibition, and they voted for the amendment while the cities opposed it. And again, that's where the concentrations of people were. They were worried that if women were enfranchised, they'd vote for national prohibition and enact other restrictive legislation in the end, Maine's prohibition laws lasted until 1934 they were repealed one year after the end of national prohibition. 

Another factor in Maine was that it was very conservative when it came to women in their roles. There was a National Woman's party suffrage organizer named Julia Emery, whom Alice Paul sent to Maine to help organize in 1918 and she described Portlanders in a letter back to suffrage headquarters as being very stuffy and rigid in their social customs. She said they were, quote, "like mahogany furniture and 15 years behind the times." End quote. I've always loved that description because my mom was born and grew up in Portland, and when I was a kid in Massachusetts, we'd come up to visit her parents in Maine, and always felt like that to me, though it's changed quite a lot since then, but you still see pockets of it. 

So Maine's terrain was another challenge. It was really hard to organize support in the rural areas, especially in the spring, during mud season. And this was a huge issue in 1917 and that was when Maine's legislature finally approved that first ever statewide suffrage referendum. And there was a long, snowy winter that year, followed by long, wet spring that made the roads really muddy and basically impassable until later on that year, and by that time, the US had entered World War One, and it just really complicated things for the suffragists. 

You know, it wasn't just the white elite or farmers, rural farmers who resisted change. There were immigrants from Canada, Italy and Ireland who were supported by the Catholic Church, and they were also really rigid in opposing broader rules for women, even as in the early 20th century, especially, women were increasingly working outside the home to support their families, and there were a lot of people who found that trend frightening because it meant that young women were leaving the rural farms to work in the mills, and that meant they could escape the supervision of their Families, and who knows what kind of mischief they would get up to. 

As with any social movement, Maine's suffrage activism waxed and waned over the decades. You know, there were times when they were really active and the times when they just couldn't get their selves together to do any kind of major work. Florence and Robert got recruited into suffrage from their involvement in Portland's progressive movement in the early 20th century. And at that point, Maine's original suffrage leaders were getting older, and they were looking to pass a baton to younger activists. 

You see that in their correspondence, like we must have younger people in this work. Still, over the years, they kept up an active grassroots campaign, with suffragists having booths at county fairs, having automobile parades, holding debates, bringing in speakers, holding suffrage teas and speaking at movie theaters. Even there was a big national effort on the part of the congressional union for women's suffrage, where they called for suffragists in every state to hold parades on May 2, 1914, and Portland suffragists responded, they held an automobile parade, the automobile being a symbol of women's growing independence. 

And I know that Florence spoke on street corners during the 1917 suffrage referendum, or just stood up in the back of her car. You know, they'd zoom up and down the street and find little, small crowds of people they could speak to. So those are just some examples of how they tried to spread the word and win support.

CM Marihugh  10:22

It's so interesting as we go through the different states in this podcast to see the similarities and differences in the state's movements, when you mention the influence of the whiskey lobby that is seen in so many states, if not all, as well as the railroad and textile industries that actively fought women's suffrage, supported the anti suffrage groups, because they were afraid of progressive legislation. 

And as far as differences, we tend to think, at least today, of East Coast states as being more progressive, and yet, regarding suffrage, they were behind a number of the western states where women had won the right to vote. When you see how the different movements in states happened, you can see some similarities and differences. Where are we going to start telling the stories about the Maine suffrage movement.

Anne Gass  11:23

So we're going to start in Portland, on the southern sea coast of Maine, where there's a historical marker for Florence Brooks and Robert Treat Whitehouse, my great grandparents at 42 Deering street outside the first house they bought when they moved to Portland from Augusta. They were living there when they first got active in suffrage. And Florence and Robert were both born in Augusta Maine, and they moved to Portland following their marriage in 1894 and in 1913 after bearing three sons, writing several plays and publishing two novels, Florence became involved in women's suffrage. 

This was precipitated by hearing a speaker give a lecture on why women should not have the vote. There was this woman named Mrs. Hamlin who traveled around offering lecture series on a subscription basis, and she would talk on a variety of topics. And one night, she was sort of expounding on why women shouldn't be able to vote, but- and Florence didn't agree, but she didn't know how to argue her case. She just didn't know any facts. She hadn't really looked into it that much. So she told Mrs. Hamlin, I think you're wrong, and I'm going to go and read everything I can about suffrage, and then we'll have a debate, and we'll see. 

So that's how she became a convert, doing that research, and she ended up joining the Maine Woman Suffrage Association, which I refer to as "Misa", and very soon became chair of its legislative committee. Misa was an affiliate of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, and that was the kind of stuffy legacy suffrage group that was most associated with employing a state by state approach to winning suffrage. They did- they did focus some on getting an amendment to the US Constitution, but by far the greatest amount of their effort went into winning suffrage state by state. 

It's worth noting that Robert's father, whose name, who was a judge named William Penn Whitehouse, had helped organize a women's rights convention for suffrage back in 1874 and he was chairman of the conventions committee on resolutions, and in that capacity, he introduced several having to do with women's rights and voting rights, and he also called for an amendment to the state's constitution allowing this to happen. And he was a man of some prominence. I mean, he served on Maine Supreme Court from 1890 to 1913 and was Chief Justice for the last two years of that. 

Robert followed in his father's footsteps, and he became a lawyer himself, and he founded the men's equal suffrage league in 1914 and served as chair of that group until ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 and he was really an active supporter of Florence's involvement in suffrage and provided a lot of legal advice and financial assistance to the suffrage campaign in 1917 alone, during that statewide referendum, the Whitehouse's later estimated that they had put the equivalent in today's dollars of about $20,000 into that campaign. So that's just an example of how he was supportive. And so, you know, they worked really hard on getting an amendment to the state constitution. 

And after yet another unsuccessful effort in 1915 to do that, Florence started to wonder, like, "is this state by state approach really the right way to go? I mean, I might be in my deathbed before I get a chance to vote." So later that year, when the congressional union for women's suffrage, which was later known as the National Women's Party, Alice Paul's group, knocked on her door and asked her to help form and lead the newly- this new branch of the congressional union, she said yes, because they were focused solely on winning suffrage through an amendment to the US Constitution. 

The CU the Congressional Union, was known to favor a more militant approach to suffrage organizing, and one of the ways they did that was to hold the political party in power, which at that time was the Democrats, accountable for failing to move the federal suffrage amendment through Congress, they kept bottling it up in committees, so it never even got out on the floor for a vote. And but that approach, that militant approach, was very controversial with her more mainstream colleagues, and that was especially true once the CU started picketing the White House in January of 1917 and the pickets were protesting then President Woodrow Wilson for his refusal to support the federal suffrage amendment. 

By this time, he'd sort of said, "Well, I hadn't really thought about suffrage before, but I'm okay with it happening state by state, but I'm not going to back a federal amendment." And so that's what they were doing, was putting pressure on him. Mainers hated the picketing and other radical actions by the National Women's party. They thought them very unladylike. And I thought it was interesting that my great grandfather, Robert Whitehouse, like as I mentioned, was a huge supporter of suffrage and of his wife's participation, asked her not to get arrested for picketing. And I don't know if that was just a bridge too far for him personally, or if he was worried the political blowback from his wife being in jail would be bad for his professional career. 

But it's interesting because the congressional union, the National Women's party, keep asking her to come to DC and picket with them, and she keeps saying, "You know what, you need to persuade Mr. Whitehouse that that's an okay thing to do." And she she did eventually picket, but she never was arrested. In 1917, after decades of attempts, the Maine legislature finally passed a statewide suffrage bill that set the question out to voters for a referendum vote, and Florence's more conservative suffrage colleagues in the Maine Women's Suffrage Association, because she was still a member of that organization, refused to have her let any public role in promoting it, saying that she was just far too radical. And as a result, some friends of hers created a brand new suffrage group just to make things a little more confusing, which they called the suffrage referendum League of Maine that was organized solely to work on the 1917 referendum, and that's how she was able to do it, because, of course, she wouldn't have been able to do it through the main branch of the congressional union. 

I love that Florence was a very visible proponent of this. And here's an example where she goes further than a lot of other people in in promoting not just suffrage, but women's equality. She wrote and recited a poem at a hearing in front of the Judiciary Committee and the legislature on the statewide suffrage bill in 1917 when they were getting ready to vote on it. And here's a few lines from it. She said, it starts with, "I have no quarrel with you, but I stand for the clear right to hold my life my own, the clean, clear right." And she ended with saying, again, "I have no quarrel with you, but this you must know the world is mine as yours." 

And that was pretty amazing. I mean, I found that in a newspaper they printed it after the hearing. But So here they are, they're launched in their first ever suffrage campaign, and as with all suffragists, Florence and her colleagues used the arts and humor to publicize the suffrage movement. One example of this is Florence had a good friend named Frederick Freeman, who was a cartoonist, and for the 1917 referendum, he created a lot of cartoons promoting suffrage that were posted for display in their office windows, which is on them the main, sort of main drag in Portland, and also printed in newspapers around the state. And they used humor to counter Antis' arguments. 

And he even created cartoon about Florence, and just sort of highlighting her contention that there was no shame in trading votes for candidates support of issues that women cared about, like if you want clean milk and your candidate says he's going to vote for it, why wouldn't you vote for you know, sort of trade your political support for that. And that was to counter the Anti suggestions that politics was just so dirty and not something women should be involved in. After the 1917 referendum failed, Florence resigned, or maybe she was just thrown out. 

It's not clear to me which of the Maine Women's Suffrage Association, and after that, she worked exclusively for the Federal Amendment, until Maine ratified what became the 19th Amendment in november of 1919. There's ample evidence that it was her leadership, joined at the last minute by Alice Paul that helped get the measure ratified in Maine.

CM Marihugh  19:44

You raised so many compelling points, particularly when you think about the different organizations that were promoting women's suffrage, we tend to think of it as this one movement with all women working in the same way. But. Really, there were times when it was contentious between the different organizations and you bringing up the fact that Mainers hated the picketing and it wasn't popular with a lot of mainstream groups. But it's important to see that women, just like any other movement, also had different strategies that they thought would work. 

In the end, I think it took all the different strategies. But it's an important point to talk about the different groups that were present. The other thing I'm fascinated that your great, great grandfather, who was a judge, was actively supporting votes for women in 1874 again, we tend to think of the suffrage movement. Of course, it was mainly women, but they needed all these male allies, and for the men that just stepped forward and started working on this issue very early, it's fascinating to hear about them.

Anne Gass  20:59

They were critical to its success. They wouldn't have done it without them.

CM Marihugh  21:03

And the other thing is your mention of political cartoons, because I don't think we've touched on that yet, but they were such an important part of communication at this period, and particularly the suffrage movement started using them. There were the pro suffrage cartoons, and, of course, the anti suffrage. 

You know, there's so many. I remember a couple of versions of showing a suffragist leaving her house to work or vote, presumably, and the husband is left wearing an apron in the care of the baby and the housework, which was to really scare men at the time for taking responsibilities that were not part of their role in that period. And of course, they changed as the decades went by, but they were really an important part of communication. Where are we going to next?

Anne Gass  21:58

We're going to stay in Portland, where at 165 State Street, there's a historical marker for Augusta Hunt. And Augusta was born in 1842 in Portland. Her name was Augusta Merrill Barstow was her maiden name, she was a champion of women's rights suffrage and the temperance movement throughout her life, my great grandmother once described her as as a woman who was behind every major social movement in Maine for half a century. 

In 1863 when she was 21 she married the much older George Hunt, and they had two children. Hunt became active in causes for women and children, such as free kindergartens and getting a women's reformatory. She helped lead a push to allow women to have custody of their children, which wasn't allowed in in the sort of mid to late 19th century even. She also helped shape public policy. There was report she heard about a woman whose husband sent their children to live in Canada with his family against her wishes, and she was outraged by this. 

So in 1895 she successfully lobbied the state legislature for a law that would give women equal guardianship over their children. And as I mentioned earlier, she was a leader in The WCTU, the Christian Temperance unit union, and she saw women's suffrage as a way to achieve the social goals that she supported, that a lot of temperance activist did. And then in 1891 she was elected as an officer of the statewide Suffrage League, the Maine Women's Suffrage Association, and they worked unsuccessfully for decades to get the state legislature to fully enfranchise women. 

It was common practice in the States if they thought winning full suffrage was unattainable, to try to whittle away at it by proposing women could vote, maybe just in local elections or just for president or just for Senators- US Senator and Representative. And in Maine, there were several partial suffrage referendum efforts that also failed, but one did secure the right of women in Maine to serve on school boards, so they made some progress, but not a lot. And hunt supported women's suffrage for decades. 

By the 1910s or so, she had largely retired from activism, and I think her health was a little impaired, but in 1916 during a short term leadership crisis, she came out of retirement at the age of 74 to serve as the Interim President of the Maine Women's Suffrage Association. And at that meeting, this is in October of 1916 they decide to pursue legislative approval of what would become Maine's first ever statewide full suffrage referendum in 1917 and interestingly, the National American Women's Suffrage Association president at the time, Carrie Chapman Catt was at that meeting and advised Maine against becoming what she referred to as a campaign state because she said they weren't ready. 

They didn't have a war chest, they hadn't done it before. She wanted to use their resources in states where victory was more likely, but they ignored her and went ahead. And so, as I mentioned, the referendum failed, but due to her long leadership, after passage of the 19th Amendment, Augusta Hunt was given the distinction of being the first woman in Portland to cast a ballot. Her story does have a darker side, though, and it's important to mention this. Her husband was, as I mentioned, he was older. 

He's 13 years older than her, and he owned the Eagle Sugar Refinery in Portland and a fleet of ships. It's always seemed to me to be a little ironic that he was involved in the liquor business, essentially, while his wife was such so prominent in The WCTU. But Georgia ships brought Maine lumber products, dried fish and other products to Cuba, exchanging them for cargos of sugar and molasses for his refinery, and then Cuban plantation owners used slave labor to produce the sugar, and that's what came back to Maine that went on until 1886 so his trade helped build and sustain the slave labor plantations. 

So the Hunt's wealth, which allowed Augusta to live in affluence and to turn her hands to good works instead of to paid labor, resulted in part from the labor of enslaved peoples. Augusta did use her wealth and privilege to improve the lives of those less fortunate, but we have to acknowledge that her privilege was derived from her husband's business interests, which profited from slave labor, and we thought that was really important to call out when we created her marker. Yes, she did a lot of good work, but. 

CM Marihugh  26:23

We often have talked about in the southern states the intertwining of race and the suffrage movement, and your description is another reminder of how many states traded with locations such as the Caribbean islands that continued to rely on slavery long after the Civil War, and these were many northern states also you mentioning the custody of children issue and how she worked on that. 

This is another issue that a lot of people don't know about. All the rights that women were denied, not just the vote, obviously it was custody of children. It was their ability, their financial positions. So at that time, a woman who left a marriage, maybe it was an abusive relationship, had to face leaving her children. So that was another critical right that women had to fight for. Where are we going to next?

Anne Gass  27:25

We're going to go north, about 35 miles to Lewiston, where there's a historical marker at 223 Lisbon Street for Camille Lessard-Bissonette. So Camille was born in St Julie de Megantic in Canada. She was a feminist in the early 1900s before the concept of feminism was more widely known. At age 16, she became a school teacher, again in Canada. That was one of the few jobs available to women at the time. But then, in 1904 her entire family immigrated to Lewiston, and she began working in the continental mill, which was a cotton mill, as many French Canadians did. 

Two years later, she joined the staff of Le Messager Lewiston's French language newspaper. In 1910 and 1912 she wrote columns in support of the suffrage movement. Here's one great quote from one of her columns. In 1910 she wrote in Le Messager, "You say, sirs, that it is the woman who lights up your home. You compare her to a ray of sunshine. You exclaim that the woman must not be dragged into the mud of politics. But sirs, when a ray of sunshine falls on the mud, does it dirty itself, or does it dry up and purify the mud?" So that's a great quote from Camille, and an example of how she's challenging this ridiculous sentiment that women have to stand on pedestals. 

I mean women who are working long, long hours in the mill and not just brightening up the home in hearth all day long. And she really is on target with that quote. As a French heritage woman, Camille's pro suffrage views were unique and daring at the time, and she worked across the border. She worked back in Quebec as well. She maintained conversations on suffrage with Quebec women who largely did not support women voting. 

And it's interesting to note that worldwide, French speaking cultures were reluctant to give women the vote. Quebec, women didn't win it until 1940 and for women in France, it was 1945 Camille's unique suffrage contribution was her bicultural, bilingual cross border conversation with the women in French Canada, as well as with the immigrant working women in Lewiston for whom she wrote her columns and where she spoke publicly, she also spoke in public in favor of suffrage. 

And there's here's another example in- from 1910 It was reported in Le Messager later on, but Lessard-Bissonnette addressed an audience at the Institute Jacques Cartier in Lewiston on the subject of women's suffrage. And that speech was not well received by some of the Franco-American men in the audience. So, you know, that sort of gives you an idea that she wasn't going out to adoring crowds when she went out there, just so it was pretty impressive that she was public and vocal about her support of the vote in this very Catholic, highly conservative Franco-American culture, and she spoke and wrote in the French language so her readers could completely understand and have access to the issues of the day. 

We were really proud to get a marker for her because her work highlights the diversity that existed in the state of Maine at the time of the women's suffrage movement. She was the lone voice in the Franco-American community speaking for suffrage action in the early 20th century, and her marker is located at the former offices of Le Messager.

CM Marihugh  30:43

That Quebec New England connection is interesting. So many Canadians came south to work in the mills of New England. In fact, my great grandparents did, but also maintained that connection to Quebec. So it's interesting that she had those discussions with the women there. Another relative aspect is the connection of the suffrage movement with immigrants. At that time, most of the immigrants were from Europe or Canada. 

Suffragists often criticized immigrant men for the lack of support for women's suffrage, rightly or or wrongly, there were reasons, as you mentioned, that some of them were related to prohibition, that immigrant men were perhaps more likely to be against women voting, but the suffragists threw comparisons of men who could not yet speak English having the vote when women could not. So there was certainly this tension between immigrant men and the suffrage movement in a number of states. And where is our next stop?

Anne Gass  31:55

We're going next to Bangor Maine, which is about, which is northeast, about 100 miles from Lewiston, where there's a historical marker located at the Bangor Public Library at 145 Harllow Street. Maine has never had a large population of African Americans, although they've been here from the earliest times of the Colonials coming over to the state and trying to settle in this area, I think we're still the whitest state in the country, as a matter of fact. But at the turn of the 20th century, Bangor had a small and thriving black community of about 300 people who came from elsewhere in the United States, principally the south, from Canada and the Caribbean. The black community there supported a number of social clubs, including several established by black women, Mabel Derrick, Edith Johnson and Blanche Dymond were a few of those leaders. 

They supported their community through these Mothers Clubs that they created, and also The Household of Ruth, which was a women's auxiliary to the Odd Fellows, among others, these clubs helped knit the black community together through dances, picnics and other social activities, and help teach their children how to comport themselves in public, and they also organize support for families in need. It's interesting that schools and sports teams and the public library, churches, things like that in Bangor were integrated, but black women weren't welcomed in mainstream suffrage organizations anywhere in Maine, and that likely explains why Mabel, Edith and Blanche's names cannot be found in the membership rosters of the Bangor suffrage organization. 

However, in 1917 Mabel, Edith and Blanche were among the women who signed a petition in support of Maine's first ever statewide suffrage referendum, the women all attended the integrated Columbia Street Baptist Church, where the pastor's wife, Deborah Knox Livingston, was active in the suffrage movement in Maine and nationally. Deborah was a Scottish immigrant who had moved to the US as a child and rose to become very active in the national WCTU, eventually leading their suffrage department, and she became a paid organizer for the Maine suffrage referendum in 1917. Remember Chairman Cat? She was worried about Maine's ability to pull this off, and so she hired Livingston to be the organizer, their primary organizer. 

It's likely that she was the one who was instrumental in collecting the three women's signatures, along with those of other church members, the advocates for suffrage had this big plan to collect signatures on the petition from 10,000 women statewide. So I'm sure Deborah would have been pleased to add members of her husband's congregation to her tally. And we found the three women we listed on the marker by cross referencing the signatures on the suffrage referendum with the US Census for 1910 and 1920 which, of course, includes information about race the Census does. I recruited some student interns to do the research, and we worked with a local historian of Bangor's black community to sort of hone- or narrow down the list to honor just these three women, because they were active in other ways. 

In their community they were real leaders. After the fight for suffrage was one Mabel, Edith and Blanche continued their activism. For example, Blanche helped establish and serve on the executive committee of the Bangor NAACP, but no other details have yet emerged anyway, regarding their involvement in Maine suffrage movement. I think it's important to note that this is the only public marker acknowledging that Bangor once had a thriving black community, and one of very few in Maine that honors black leaders at all. So we were really excited to have this marker there. 

CM Marihugh  35:32

It's always disappointing to hear about aspects of the historical record which had been lost or at least not yet discovered. What's wonderful about The National Votes For Women Trail database is the people, the historians, the history enthusiasts, that have gone out to seek those stories that have not yet been told. 

And one would think that because these women signed a petition supporting suffrage, that they're very likely were they held meetings and discussions about it in their communities, that because of the lack of records, it's impossible to know more detail about those. I think historians are always hoping that something will be found in an old attic or a library storage basement. But who knows? It's research like you having the interns cross reference with censuses that really turns up those kinds of details. Where are we traveling to next?

Anne Gass  36:36

Our next stop is about 15 miles north of Bangor and the small town of Indian Island, where there's a historical marker for Lucy Nicolar Poolaw at 1 Down Street. Lucy Nicolar was born in 1882 in the town of Indian Island, and she was a citizen of the Penobscot Nation and the daughter of Joseph Nicolar and Elizabeth Joseph, her heritage spurred her lifelong support of fighting for the needs of her people, and she is just so revered in the Penobscot Nation. Her father was an elder of the Penobscot Nation in Maine, and he was the grandson of the Penobscot's most famous shaman leader. Her father was a lecturer. He was a representative of the Maine legislature and a writer who published The Life And Traditions Of The Red Man, which was published in 1893. 

He wrote that book in an urgent effort to pass on Penobscot cultural heritage to subsequent generations of his tribe and to reclaim Native Americans right to self representation at a time when their ability to exist as natives was under dire threat. So that it's apparently quite an extraordinary work. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds just amazing, and it weaves together stories of Penobscot history, pre contact, material culture, feats of shamanism and ancient prophecies about the coming of the white man. 

As a teen, Lucy joined the Wabanaki club, a local women's club, and in January of 1900 when she was only 17 years old, she traveled from her home on Indian island in Penobscot County, Maine to New York City, where she attended a debate about immigration, and there she spoke eloquently about how she was the only true American present, and how her people's land had been taken by colonists whose descendants, among those the debaters who were present at that at the debate, who are now opposing new immigrants to the country. And she pointed out the sort of irony and awfulness of that. 

Every summer, Lucy's family traveled to the resort town of Kennebunkport, which is kind of in Maine Southern Sea coast, to sell baskets and Lucy and her sister sang and performed an Indian dress for tourists. In her late teens, she started performing at public events like sportsman shows, and a Harvard administrator heard her and offered to help her study music in Boston and New York. That led to a long and successful career in the arts, performing on stage in traditional Indian dress, where she would mix, kind of like classical music and opera with Native American songs. 

She became a recording artist with Victor Records. Her stage name was Princess Watahwaso, and I think it's really, you know, you should go look it up, because she had an extraordinary soprano voice. You can find a clip of her singing opera on the podcast about her that we have on the Maine League Women Voters webpage. It's the Maine Suffrage Trail, Road to the 19th Amendment, and it's there's a little podcast about her there, and you can find a clip of her singing. It's really quite extraordinary. And she combined entertainment with political activism throughout her life. 

After she retired, she came to Maine, came back to Maine with her husband, who was a Kiowa nation citizen named Bruce Pula. In 1847 they opened a shop they called Chief Pulas Teepee on Indian Island, and that featured Penobscot artwork, like basket making and other things. That's where her marker is located. Her considerable achievements in the arts were matched by her activism on the part of the Penobscot people. 

Along with her sisters Florence and Emma, she fought for better educational opportunities for the Penobscot people and campaigned for native voting rights. American women citizens won the right to vote through the 19th Amendment. But remember that states established voting laws in Maine didn't initially extend the vote to indigenous peoples until 1954 we were one of the last states to do that. 

And even then, Maine kind of forgot to create legislative voting districts for the reservations. So native peoples here weren't fully enfranchised until 1967 when somebody came across the error and was like, "oh, yeah, we should fix this." But in recognition of her advocacy, Lucy was chosen to be the first Native American on a Maine reservation to cast a vote. And there's a wonderful photo of her placing her ballot in the official state of Maine ballot box that's also on that Maine League Voters website, where all the information about these markers can be found.

CM Marihugh  40:58

In several of the western states that we covered in this podcast, we've discussed Native American activism and its priority having to be on basic rights, rather than solely suffrage, women's suffrage. So it's- it's interesting to hear this heritage of activism in Lucy's family, and how that was obviously passed on to her in so many states. 

The years that Native Americans were able to vote was so long after 1924 when they could become citizens. And here in Maine, you're saying they essentially started voting in 1967 which is over 40 years later, just a reminder of voting rights has always been a struggle and continues to be. Can we close by you telling us about Maine during the 19th amendments, when states were ratifying it and after? 

Anne Gass  41:58

Yeah. So our final stop is in Augusta, which is about 60 miles northeast of Portland, and there's a historical marker there at the Maine State House on Capitol Street that commemorates the ratification- of Maine's ratification of the 19th Amendment, that happened on november 5th 1919, and they ratified with only four votes to spare in the Maine house. So we were really excited to get this marker, because when I initially approached them or started talking about it, I was told, "No, they'll never do it." 

So the course, I just thought of the suffragists and how hard they had to work. And that was just like- I wasn't going to stop there. And so let's talk about the long, hard fight to get there in Maine, 65 years earlier, in 1854 there had been a state senator named Thomas McCulloch Hayes of Saco, who asked the Maine legislature to consider women's voting rights. And then there was another petition in 1857 one authored by national suffrage leaders, Alice Blackwell, Lucy Stone and Antoinette Rose, but no action was taken on that. And these earliest attempts to win suffrage through state action were followed by petitions submitted at least 12 more times between 1869 and 1915 and it's really quite extraordinary. No other population, with the exception of you know, black Americans had to work so hard just to win the right to vote. 

All of these petitions were considered in some fashion by the legislature in the Maine State House. Some years, there'd be hearings in front of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary, followed by votes in each respective chamber. But sometimes it didn't even make it out to the floor to vote, and sometimes the, you know, one chamber would vote yes and the other would vote no, and then they'd swap the next time it came up, you know, a couple years later. And with each failure to pass, suffragists sort of went back and regrouped and got ready to submit their demands the next time the legislature met. So it wasn't until 1917 as I mentioned, that the legislature passed a full suffrage bill with the two thirds majorities that was needed to send it to voters, but it was soundly defeated on a two to one vote. 

And so that's where things stood until the US Congress approved the 19th Amendment in June 1919, and sent the measure out to the states for ratification. And fortunately, Maine Governor Carl Millikin was a friend of the White House's and a political ally, and he called the legislature into special session on November 4th and 5th in 1919, for the ratification vote. And there were just some amazing last minute machinations. I mean, the suffragists really thought they had this locked up. It was going to pass easily. 

And then just a few days before they convened, there was a lot of nonsense, but still, the measure passed the Senate easily. On November 4th, they were the first to vote, and it was like a 25 to 5 vote. I mean, it was pretty overwhelming, but they knew they were closer in the house. And the following day, following some vigorous arm twisting by national women's party chair Alice Paul and Maine suffrage leader, Florence Brooks Whitehouse, my great grandmother, it squeaked through the house with only four votes to spare. Even at that late juncture, it was still a fight. But still, Maine became the 19th state to ratify the 19th Amendment in november of 1919, that's how I like to remember it. 

So it wasn't until the 19th Amendment was fully ratified that most Maine women won the right to vote, as noted Native American men and women would not be fully enfranchised until in Maine, until 1967 but you know, I think a lot of people might think, "Well, okay, they finally got it ratified and just, you know, the women could vote", but no. Within weeks after the Maine legislature ratified the 19th Amendment, antis mounted a legal challenge to it on the grounds that Maine's constitution allowed ratification of federal constitutional amendments only by a citizen referendum, and the Maine Supreme Court rejected the suit. 

Maine was one of six states where antis launched these sorts of suits after their legislators had ratified the amendment, and eventually the state of Ohio's case made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where the justices rejected their claim, and that kind of put that litigation to rest in all the other states too, and the US Supreme Court was like "No. Our Constitution clearly says that ratification has to be done by three quarters of the states through the state legislatures, and that's all that needs to happen." 

There was also a legal challenge in Maine as to whether the 19th Amendment conferred on women the ability to run for and serve in public office like the state legislature and the Maine Supreme Court ruled that yes, they did. So again, I mean, just think of how hard they fought just to get the right to vote. And now, you know, they're trying to throw up all these other obstacles. There's very little evidence of women's history in the Maine State House in any form. They have pictures of past legislators, and up until relatively recently, it was almost all men and but I'm really proud to say that on February 27th in 2020 the legislature's Legislative Council gave its unanimous approval for a suffrage marker to be placed in prominent position on the state house grounds. 

And that fulfills a goal of the Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaborative and the Legislative Council to have a marker honoring women's fight for suffrage at the State House, and the marker reads simply, "Votes For Women. November 5, 1919. The legislature, after a decades long battle, ratified the 19th Amendment through which most women won the right to vote." It's so important to have the marker there, and I like it both because it acknowledges the struggle, but also seems to raise as many questions as an answers. 

I mean, why did it take so long for women to win voting rights? What were the battles like? Why weren't all women enfranchised by the 19th Amendment? And we're hoping that those questions will kind of spark people's interests in this history and going forward and a sort of side benefit is this marker can become a focal point when women rally in Augusta at the state house for some sort of Bill that benefits women. 

I mean, they can start there at the marker and draw courage from that. Maine, like most other states, continues to see an under representation of women in our state legislature, but we're getting better. We're about 40% in the Senate and 43% in the house, and we rank 9th nationally. So it's it's so important for women to be legislators and and to be fighting for the kinds of things that women and their families really need.

CM Marihugh  48:32

I'm glad you pointed out how commemoration like historical markers can continue to inspire people that come after, and I think that's what everyone that's involved in suffrage commemoration is hoping that these markers or statues or monuments, whichever it is, continue to do that. I want to thank you so much for being with us, Anne and sharing these sites and stories about the long, hard suffrage fight in Maine.

Anne Gass  49:03

Thank you so much for having me and for this work that you're doing, CM. It's so important.

CM Marihugh  49:08

Thank you for joining us this week. We hope you'll contact us with comments or questions. The National Votes For Women Trail Project is a work in progress. Please click on the support the project link to contribute to our ongoing work. The trail is a project of the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites, a non profit organization dedicated to putting women's history on the map. Our theme is Standing On The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse and recorded by Earth Mama. Be sure to join us next time. 

Earth Mama  49:45

I am standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before me, I am honored by the passion for our liberty. I will stand a little taller. I will work a little longer, and my shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me. My shoulders will be there to hold the ones who follow me.