S02 E13 Pennsylvania

In this episode, Robyn Young discusses the suffrage movement in Pennsylvania.

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

• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was a prominent speaker for abolition, African American rights, suffrage and education. She also authored poetry, articles, and books. 
• Hannah Patterson helped organize the 1915 "Suffrage Day" at the Philadelphia ball park for a game between the Phillies and the NY Giants and threw out the first pitch.
• The 1915 Justice Bell Tour took a replica of the Liberty Bell for a 5,000-mile journey around the state during which tens of thousands came to see it. The bell’s clapper was symbolically chained down and would only ring out when women got the vote.
• Anna Howard Shaw was one of the suffrage movement’s leaders and greatest orators with an estimated 10,000 speeches given around the country over decades. 
• Emma Writt and her sisters Pauline and Mary were African American suffrage leaders in western Pennsylvania when they helped plan and participate in an integrated women’s suffrage march in Pittsburgh in 1914 – the first march in that city.

About our Guest:

Robyn Young is an independent scholar and women's historian dedicated to sharing women's history with the general public. She is known as the “Marker Lady” as she has had four historical markers approved for the National Votes for Women Trail. She has been a board for NCWHS since 2018 and currently serves as its secretary. 

Links to People, Places, Publications:

• Pennsylvania & the 19th Amendment (here)
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the F.E.W. Harper statue (here)
• Hannah Patterson Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the 1915 Justice Bell Tour marker (here)
• Anna Howard Shaw Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Anna Howard Shaw marker (here)
• Emma Writt Richards Biographical video (here)
• Pittsburgh’s first women’s suffrage march (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, Earth Mama, Robyn Young

 CM Marihugh  00:00

Welcome to Her March to Democracy, where we're telling stories along The National Votes for Women Trail. The Trail chronicles the fight for voting rights for women. The suffragists, or suffs, as they were called, 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  00:36

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  01:09

Each episode is a tour on the trail to the places of struggle, 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 and recorded by Earth Mama. Join us on our travels to hear the stories along The National Votes for Women Trail. 

CM Marihugh  01:35

Today, we're going to the state of Pennsylvania to hear stories about the women's suffrage movement along The National Votes for Women Trail. Now this state has over 70 sites that are listed in the trail database, and it has at least 12 historical markers scattered around the state. It's also one of the relatively few states that actually has a statue of an important suffragist, and we're going to be talking about her today. 

I'd like to welcome Robyn Young. She's the state coordinator for The National Votes for Women Trail. She is an independent scholar and women's historian dedicated to sharing women's history with the general public. She is also known as "The Marker Lady", as she had four historical markers approved. She's been a board member for the National Collaborative of Women's History Sites since 2018 and currently serves as their secretary. I also wanted to mention that she recently published the book Woman Suffrage in Pennsylvania 1840 to 1920. Robyn, I'm wondering if you could start by giving us an overview of the suffrage movement in Pennsylvania.

Robyn Young  02:52

Pennsylvania and its beginning in the suffrage movement began with Lucretia Mott and her journey to Seneca Falls in 1848 and then following up four years later with the 1852 women's rights convention held in Westchester in Chester County, Pennsylvania. And Lucretia Mott was there with James Mott, her husband, and a lot of same people that were at the Seneca Falls convention, and then for a while, the movement just kind of got a long, slow start, and then started- They formed the Pennsylvania Women's Suffrage Association in 1869 and things progressed, where they got petitions signed and then presented them to the politicians and legislatures and promised that they would be voted on, and they were not. 

And so it wasn't until, I think, 1890s that the movement picked up momentum in Pennsylvania. There were a new slate of officers for the state that came in. By 1900 things really started progressing in the state, the western and eastern sides of the state united and formed their headquarters to be in the center of the state, in Harrisburg, the state capital. And then there was a run up to the 1915 they had a referendum, which they lost in November 1915 election. And then finally, by 1920 we were the seventh state to ratify and so that's a brief history of women's suffrage in Pennsylvania.

CM Marihugh  04:32

When we think of Pennsylvania, we think of it as one of the foundational states for representing freedom. That's because it's linked to the fight for independence in 1776 a topic that we refer to in this podcast is how the women's suffrage movement is also linked to that fight, as it was people fighting for the right to have a say in their government. So Robyn, where. Are we going to start on our tour of Pennsylvania?

Robyn Young  05:03

I thought we could go to Chambersburg, which is in the middle part of the state, maybe five miles past Gettysburg, and we would go to Wilson College, which was women's college at the time, to the suffragist Hannah Patterson. And she was very active in the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association in the state. And she was a very good organizer, who was from Pittsburgh, but she went to Wilson College, graduated from there, and then later became a trustee of the college- first woman to become a trustee of that college. And she played basketball. 

She was involved in sports. She was involved in the debate club when this state headquarters moved to Harrisburg, Hannah Patterson moved to Harrisburg and moved in the state headquarters so that she could be close to all the politicians, so that she could lobby them, because they found that you would have to really button hole these politicians and get them to promise that they would vote on suffrage. They would promise the moon, and then they would get into the halls of Congress and then not even vote for women's suffrage. She scheduled a suffrage day. 

That was when they were working on the referendum in 1915 where in Philadelphia, she threw out the first pitch for the World Series when the Philadelphia Phillies were playing the New York Giants. And because they had to convince the men to vote, to allow women to vote. So they had to convince the men they realized. And so they started going to where the men were, and they would set up these stands and give out the scores of the ball games. And in Pittsburgh, at one of these stands, they had 10,000 visitors in one day just to get the World Series scores, because there weren't telephones, and then they would hand out suffrage literature and buttons and sashes and things like that.

CM Marihugh  07:08

Again, such creative ways that these suffragists use to get press and attention. So far, we've talked about two other states that set up baseball games to get their message to the men who would actually be voting on the issue. Could you tell us again about these stands that they set up, and how did they actually get the scores? 

Robyn Young  07:31

Like a stand, where you would go and have all these booths, kind of like a market, an open air market, but it was inside of a building. There were different floors in the building, people would stop by their stand, and they would get the scores by telephone. They would arrange to have a telephone, and the people in Philadelphia would call and give them the scores of the ball games, and that's how they got them that was through the phone. It was very popular. 

When the younger men started seeing what women really wanted, they were more receptive to women getting the right to vote. They started stamping up and saying, "you know, why can't they vote?" And they were young men like in from 1910, on, you know, it was that generation where they started dressing different. They dressed more modern. They dressed all downy and all in black. You know, they dress like Roaring 20s outfits. And you know, they've got a makeover. The suffrage movement did get a makeover.

CM Marihugh  08:28

It was definitely a new generation for suffragists. It was the era of the new woman. When you think about the difference of women's clothes from even the 1890s to the 1910s it was a huge shift. That's a good point that you bring up about how that affected how the public looked at suffragists. So where are we heading to next?

Robyn Young  08:53

Well, I thought since we're in Chambersburg, we could go by Harrisburg, which is the State Capitol, to visit the monument for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. African American woman who was a poet and a teacher. In 2020 there was a monument dedicated to four African Americans in Harrisburg at 4th and Walnut Street. And it's actually one of the four figures is a statue of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and very unusual in the state of Pennsylvania or nationally, for a woman to be commemorated with a monument. 

She gave speeches during the suffrage movement. One of her famous speeches is, we are all bound up together. And she was a poet who lived at 106 Bainbridge Street in Philadelphia. And she died in Philadelphia in 1911 and is buried in the Eden cemetery. She went all around the state of Pennsylvania speaking on behalf of suffrage. She spoke nationally- at the National Women's Rights Convention in New York at Union Square in 1866 with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony. 

And that is that the convention where she made her speech, we are all bound up together, and that urged attendees to include that black women in the suffrage movement. The Philadelphia March that Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was part of. They marched together peacefully. I mean, they planned. She was on the planning committee and rode in the car and and also in Pittsburgh, the women in Pittsburgh, African American women worked with the white suffragists, and they all planned these marches together, and they worked together. 

I think Pennsylvania, because it was a Quaker State more equal. As far as the abolition movement, a lot of the early suffragists were involved in the abolition movement. I think that kind of filtered over into the suffrage movement, and I think that's why they were more open and successful at including black women in their projects and their marches around the state. 

CM Marihugh  11:14

It's amazing to see how much she wrote, and she was the first black woman to publish a novel and a short story in the US.

Robyn Young  11:23

In 1854 she did an eight year lecture circuit across the United States and Canada, speaking about anti slavery. And then she also started speaking about women's rights, temperance movement. And then she married at the age of 35 she married a widower, Fenton Harper. He died four years later, and so Frances had to earn a living for herself.

CM Marihugh  11:48

Where are we going to next? 

Robyn Young  11:50

We're going north, the mid northern part of the state, to Williamsport, which is in Lycoming County. This is where the 1915 Justice bell went through Williamsport. And the Justice Bell was an idea of Katharine Ruschenberger , and she was from Wayne, Pennsylvania, in Chester County. And she decided that, you know, the women needed their own Liberty Bell. 

She paid for this 2000 pound bell to be cast at a foundry in New York, and then it was brought to Pennsylvania, and it was taken around the state to all 67 counties. And at each county would be met by the local suffrage group, and they would accompany the Bell to like the center of town or courthouse. And people would come, they thought, "oh, let's go look at this Women's Bell." It was very popular. It was the publicity stunt of the movement, and it was the- it was very unique out of all the state. It was actually borrowed by other states to be used, you know, in their marches and different events. But they went to Williamsport and they there's a marker there, 

The National Votes for Women Trail marker at the YWCA, and that's on Fourth Street in Williamsport, and that's where the suffrage headquarters were in 1915. When the bell came to town, people came from everywhere. I mean, they're- like at the York fair, 60,000 people showed up to look at the Justice Bell. And so this bell had its clapper chained to the side of the bell, because it was to represent that women had new voice, and it was not allowed to ring until women got the right to vote. And in 1920 when women did get the right to vote, the bell was brought to Philadelphia to Independence Square, and it was rung 48 times, one for each state in the Union. 

At the time, there were 48 states. So the bell had a lot of history, and then someone found it in Valley Forge, and it was- it's now- the original Bell is in the chapel of the Valley Fords National Park, and it was found in the woods outside of the chapel in the 1990s and someone finally realized the significance of it and brought it in. And there's actually a replica of the bell that goes around the state. It was at Delaware County Community College for all last year, and now this year is that it's at Montgomery County Community College. So you can go there and look at it. And it has this, you know, all the memorabilia from the women's suffrage movement, the sashes, Buttons. Really nice exhibit to visit. It's a traveling exhibit, so I guess it's going to go around the state.

CM Marihugh  14:45

This campaign with the Justice Bell was all in hopes that the 1915 referendum would pass, that the voters would pass that for women's suffrage. But it didn't, correct?

Robyn Young  14:58

Right, it did not pass. It was a big blow to the movement. But you know what? Right away, they got right back into this thick of things and scheduled, you know, the Suffrage Ball and all- The Suffrage Shirtwaist Ball in Pittsburgh, and just kept raising money. They didn't give up. In fact, the in November 1915 the referendum in Pennsylvania lost by 58,860 votes out of a total of 826,000 cast. So 45,000 of those votes in opposition were cast in Philadelphia, which surprised me.

CM Marihugh  15:39

That's an incredible story. It's interesting to bring up the rural versus urban, because we have seen in other states, particularly in the West, that what often happened were that the antis were particularly strong in the larger cities, because they were often funded by the industry, the liquor industry, railroad, textiles, who were against the women's vote, talking to legislators in the Capitol and encouraging them not to be swayed. 

I don't know the case in Pennsylvania, but certainly that divide was seen in other states. And what I love about your book is that so often we talk about the suffrage movement in very general terms. They did fundraising without referring to all the ways they did that these promotional efforts cost money, even with volunteer labor. So the ball that you mentioned was one way you also mentioned in your book Suffrage Gardens. 

And the group would sell packets of seeds that would come up with suffrage colors. The silent films they would show, the different plays that suffragists wrote and put on, and then also this suffrage cookbook, and they obviously had a sense of humor, because they had recipes for quote "Pie, for Suffrage Doubting Husband", and another recipe called "The Antis Favorite Hash." So they knew how to appeal to people, particularly by this time, and they used every avenue they could. So where are we heading to next?

Robyn Young  17:24

Well, we're going to the eastern part of the state. We'll go to Delaware County, which is Media Pennsylvania, and to the home of Anna Howard Shaw, and I thought- I think she was the greatest auditor of the women's suffrage movement. She made over 10,000 speeches in her lifetime, and she lived on Ridley Creek Road. The marker for her is at the bottom of Orange Street, right at Ridley Creek Road, because the property owners did not want the marker in front of the home, and so you always have to abide by the wishes of the property owner. So I always move a marker to where it would be seen more by people, you know, on a on the more traveled road. 

Robyn Young  18:11

So she lived with Lucy Anthony, which was Susan B Anthony's niece. They were companions. They lived together for over 30 years. Lucy was Anna Howard Shaw's secretary, and she also was secretary to Susan B Anthony. Anna Howard Shaw was a very powerful figure in the women's suffrage movement. She was ordained as a minister and and then became a doctor. So she was the Reverend Doctor Anna Howard saw and she was born in England, but they moved to Massachusetts, and then the father brought them out to Michigan, and then he came to Pennsylvania, and she lived in Delaware County. 

Robyn Young  18:56

Had a big yellow car that was used in suffrage parades. Gave speeches in every state to travel by rail, carriage, wagon, and she was president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association from 1904 to 1915 and then she was during World War One, she was asked by President Wilson if she would head the Women's Council for national defense. And she stopped her suffrage work. She was in a southern state, Georgia, somewhere, campaigning, and she dropped everything. Went to Washington, DC, and they asked her to organize the different women's organizations, because during World War One, all the men went to war. I think there were 60,000 farmers that went, and so they had to get all the crops off the field, and they were desperate. 

Robyn Young  19:54

They would put ads in the paper asking for high school students to come and help and at first, they asked the suffrage movement to a bake cakes and do the laundry for the farmers, but the women had better ideas, and they decided to form what they called the Women's Land Army, and Anna Howard Shaw was in charge of organizing the army, and they employed 20,000 women. 

They were paid for by the women's organizations. The federal government did not pay one penny of the women's salaries. Then they worked on different farms to learn how to take care of cattle. Originally, it was thought that, "oh, women should not wear trousers." That was like a big thing. They worked on learning how to prune fruit trees and preserve fruits and vegetables and teach people how to grow their own little victory gardens right in their own backyard, because they had to food- feed the troops in Europe, and there were no farmers cultivating farms in Europe during World War One, So they weren't getting all their food from the United States. 

They were encouraging everyone to grow their own food, and that's why they come up with these little victory gardens. And then the Women's Land Army, they had uniforms, and actually, we could just run on over to Westchester in Chester County, right next to where Anna Howard Shaw lived, is the Women's Land Army Farm of Jean Kane Foulke, and that farm is called Bala Farm. Today, there's a development there called Bala Farms, and the original farmhouse is still there. She had 6 to 15 women at a time, would train at the farm, learn dairy farming, butter making, and they wore uniforms. 

They had cards- that they- time cards they had to punch, and they went around the state and raised money with the Pennsylvania Agricultural Board. Women just stepped forward and helped with getting those crops off the fields, and they did a really good job. And actually, Anna Howard Shaw and Hannah Patterson from Chambersburg were the two women during World War 1 the only two women to get that a Distinguished Service Medal from the United States government for their work done during World War One. 

So, you know, even when I put the marker up for this Bala Farm, I contacted the local historical society. They said, "Oh, we knew that that house was used on the Underground Railroad, but we never knew that there was a suffragist that lived there as little and they used it as a farm." And it was sad because she became the manager of her own farm, because her husband was killed in a hunting accident on Thanksgiving Day. And so she was left a widow with three children. And so she had to take over the management of her own farm, dairy farm, and when her neighbors would go to Florida in the winter, she would look in on their animals, and she got a good reputation for all her work with agriculture in the state. Was asked to lecture. She would go around the state and lectured on the different agricultural boards, and she attended marches. She attended a march in Washington in 1920.

CM Marihugh  23:21

The whole aspect of World War One and how the suffragist dealt with it is interesting. Certainly, the mainstream groups often favored switching a focus to war relief efforts to show their patriotism, to also show what women were capable of, the more militant groups like Alice Paul's National Women's party did not agree to suspend their work, so they used a very different approach. Where are we heading to next? 

Robyn Young  23:57

And now I think we should head to Philadelphia, which is on the eastern side of the state, to the home of Charlotte Woodward Pierce. And Charlotte was at the 1848 Seneca Falls convention in New York. And when I found out she lived in Pennsylvania, I thought, well, what brought her to Pennsylvania? And I found out she had married a Quaker dentist, and he had moved to Pennsylvania, and she went with him from she was in New York. 

So when she- lived in Waterloo, New York actually four miles from Seneca Falls, she was- worked at home then, and she was 18 years old, and she sewed gloves at home. And so she would do piece work for like a factory, and do all these gloves, and then take them to the factory, get paid, go home with another pile, make gloves. And that's what she did for a living. She knew she wanted to do something else. 

So when she married Dr Pierce and they moved to Philadelphia, he was on- he worked at the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia, which was a medical college opened in 1853, first Women's Medical College in the United States. Not A lot of women, first graduating class of eight- you know, 1853. I think it had seven women that graduated, and anyway, her husband was one of the dentists that taught dentistry at the Medical College, and she was also on the board and did volunteer work, but she also did suffrage work. 

She was elderly at the time, and in 1920 when it was time to vote, she was too ill to vote, even though she was one of, I think, three suffragists that were at the original 1848 convention. She was a Vice President of the Pennsylvania Women's Suffrage Association in 1869 when it first formed. So the suffragists in Pennsylvania knew that she was from Seneca Falls. And there were some great women that came that were from Pennsylvania, that went to Seneca Falls, like Chris amont, they went as a visitor, but there were two others, Dane hunt, where they had Mary Ann McClintock, and they lived in Seneca Falls.

CM Marihugh  26:13

And where is our next stop, Robyn?

Robyn Young  26:16

Pittsburgh, the western part of the state, which was a very active suffrage area. They were more active in the western part of the state than they were in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was lagging behind because a lot of the early suffragists were elderly. By then, they had passed away, and it was kind of stagnant in that part of the state. And that's why they decided to form, you know, the Pennsylvania Women's Suffrage Association make the headquarters in Harrisburg to bring the two groups together. 

And so in Pittsburgh, Hannah Patterson, Jennie Roessing, all these important white women there were also black women, suffragists who were making a name for themselves, who had gone to college were teachers who had never been born slaves. And there were sisters Emma Ritt and she had two sisters, Pauline and Mary. They were African Americans. What they would do is they didn't have the money to send all of the women to the conventions throughout the state. 

So every year they had the convention like in Williamsport or Scranton or Philadelphia. Then, so they would try to send a representative, like one of these African American women would attend the suffrage convention. She would take notes and come back to Pittsburgh and sit with all the different groups. And they would do what they called Echo meetings, where they would repeat what was said at the conventions and share with the other women, and then they would go to their book clubs or their other church group and share that information. 

And they were very successful at it, and that's how they spread the word amongst themselves. The home still stands. They lived on Susquehanna street. They were actually leaders of their in their communities. They were involved in starting a library, and they did work together on the 1914 march that was held in Pittsburgh, where I talked about earlier, where they marched together and the Rich sisters were on the planning committee.

CM Marihugh  28:22

It's very encouraging to hear about those instances when black and white suffragists did work together. We have plenty of examples where black women were excluded, but it's good to hear about these examples where they work together. I also read that Emma's family papers, including her husband's, are kept at the Heinz History Center, so that would include their photographs, letters, newspaper clippings. As we close Robyn, could you give us an overview of what happened regarding the 19th Amendment in Pennsylvania during ratification?

Robyn Young  29:01

On June 24 1919, Pennsylvania became the seventh state to ratify the 19th Amendment. Right away, they started having meetings to train women how to vote and how to register first, and they were under a deadline. They only had, like six weeks until the first primary, and so they had to quick- train women, get them registered, and a lot of the early suffrage groups became the League of Women Voters. And then in the first vote, women were elected to office. Eight women in Pennsylvania were elected. 

1923 Pennsylvania had the highest number of women elected to office. Eight women were elected to Pennsylvania's House of Representatives, and they were from all around the state. Some were older women, some were young. Some ran just to say the women can run, and they just wanted to show other women you can do this. But they had problems. Homes getting bills passed because they didn't know how to network with the previous quote enemies who had opposed the right to vote, so they had to, like learn to lobby and Hobnob and what committees they should get on, and a lot of them went right to education and limiting working hours for children. Those were the first laws to be passed with women politicians getting elected.

CM Marihugh  30:28

Yes, there was a real learning curve for women over this entire period, but also when they finally got the vote, registering to vote, going to the polls, running for office, serving in office. It didn't happen overnight, but they persisted. Do you have any other thoughts on the suffrage movement?

Robyn Young  30:51

 It was a big movement, and I think people don't treat it as such. I've gone to Civil War reenactments and Revolutionary War reenactments with different friends of mine and those men at those rallies and things. Can name every button they can say, "oh, that clock was made in Oxford. That's that's where they had that mill. They know everything about their movements and their their battles. We had a 72 year battle, and I feel like we should have these artifacts in museums where we can go and say, you know, this is our our battle. This these are our artifacts. These women, they gave us the right to vote, which I think is important, even today, I worry that we may lose the right to vote someday, so we have to keep it front and center.

CM Marihugh  31:41

I agree. I am just going to close by quoting something that was in your book that really struck home with me, that's related to what you just said. It says, "Our foremothers fought the battle for the right to vote for 72 years, and did so without firing a shot. They had their own flags, banners and colors. They also had armies of women who marched for our right to vote. Why are these efforts not considered historically significant to the general public? One way to memorialize these brave women and hold them in high esteem as our own heroes, is to install historical markers at their homes or other important sites, and, of course, to vote. Thank you so much, Robyn for being with us today and telling us about the movement in Pennsylvania. 

CM Marihugh  32:34

Thank you for joining us this week. We hope you 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  33:11

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.