The earliest agitation of the suffrage question in our State arose from the advent of Miss Lucy Stone in Louisville, in 1853, at which time she delivered three lectures in Masonic Hall to crowded audiences. George D. Prentice gave full and friendly reports in the Courier-Journal. In later years, Anna Dickinson and others have lectured in our chief cities. But the first note of associated effort is that given in The Revolution from Glendale, which says:
We organized here an association with twenty members the first of October, 1867, and now have fifty. We hope soon to have the whole of Hardin county, and by the close of another year the whole of the State of Kentucky, enlisted on the side of woman's rights.
In the winter of 1872 Hannah Tracy Cutler and Margaret V. Longley were granted a respectful hearing before our legislature at Frankfort. In May, 1879, self-appointed, I represented Kentucky at the May anniversary of the National Association at St. Louis. In the autumn following, Miss Anthony, during an extended lecture tour through the State, stopped in Richmond several days, and aided us in organizing a local suffrage society.[530] Letters were at once written to the leading editors asking them to publish articles on the subject. Many favorable answers were received, and we have largely availed ourselves of the columns of the papers to keep up the agitation. My sister, Sally Clay Bennett, edits a column in the Richmond Register, sister Anne a column in the Lexington Gazette, and Kate Dunning Clarke, a column in the Turf, Field and Farm. Mrs. Clarke is also associate editor of the Kentucky State Journal. The Misses Moore are making a success of a daily paper at Milledgeville.
In May, 1880, Mrs. Bennett and myself were delegates at the great National Mass Convention in Farwell Hall, Chicago. In October, 1881, the American Association held its annual meeting in Louisville. It was largely attended and fully and fairly reported by the press of the city. At its close, a Kentucky State association was organized, with Laura Clay as president.
In January, 1882, the Richmond and Louisville clubs secured a hearing before the judiciary committee of the Senate, Mrs. Bennett and myself representing the former, and John A. Ward the latter. With the valuable aid of Mrs. Mary Haggart of Indianapolis we made a most favorable impression upon our legislators. The points in which our laws are defective and upon which our appeals and arguments were based are well indicated by the pleas of our several petitions:
That women might have municipal and presidential suffrage by statute; that in marriage women might own their property as men own theirs; that women who were married might be the legal guardians of their children's property and persons as well as the father; that women should be appointed with equal responsibility and authority as assistant physicians in insane asylums, and that the appointment of all the officers in such asylums should be made by the legislature, and not by the governor, as now; that women be appointed on boards of visitors and commissioners to all asylums where women are inmates or prisoners.
In 1884, all of the Clay sisters—Mrs. Bennet, Mary, Laura and Anne—with Mrs. Haggart, again went to Frankfort, and held meetings in the legislative hall, which were largely attended by the best classes of the citizens of that city, as well as by members of the legislature.
For several years we have had a woman for State Librarian. In Fayette, one of our most aristocratic counties, Lexington being its county seat, a woman was elected to the office of county clerk by a majority of 200 over her male competitor. In two other counties women are also county clerks. Each of them had served so efficiently in her husband's office, that at his death she had been elected in his place.
That woman has to fight every step of her way to the recognition of her rights as a citizen equal before the law, is shown by the following despatch from Frankfort, dated December 18, 1885:
Mrs. M. C. Lucas was elected by the vote of Daviess county to the office of jailer, to succeed her husband, who was killed by a mob while in discharge of his duty. When she appeared before the county court to give bond for the office, the Judge refused to allow her to qualify. A writ of mandamus from the Circuit Court was applied for to compel the court to allow her to qualify, but the motion was denied. An appeal was then taken to the Court of Appeals. Yesterday that court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court, that a woman cannot legally hold the office of county jailer.
A woman in Madison county acted as census-taker, and performed her duty well. She was the niece of Mr. Justice Miller of the Supreme Court of the United States. Gen. W. J. Sanderson, internal revenue collector for the eighth district, employed two young ladies as clerks, Miss Brown and Miss Price, the former of whom is said to be his best clerk. She is the sister of Mrs. Smith, the circuit clerk of Laurel county. The successor of General Sanderson, employs his two daughters as clerks, and they receive the same pay as men who do the same work.
Many women in our State manage their own farms. My mother, during my father's absence as minister to Russia, took his farm of 2,500 acres (he making her his attorney), paid off a large debt on the property, built an elegant house costing $30,000, stocked the farm, and largely supported the family of six children, with money which she made during the war. She fed government mules, and did it so well that she would return them to camp before the time expired, in better condition than most feeders got theirs. She is now, 1885, conducting her own farm of 350 acres, selling several thousand dollars' worth of wheat, cattle, and sheep annually, giving her personal attention to everything, at the age of seventy. During the adventurous and perilous period of my father's life she shared his dangers, and was ever his mainstay in upholding his hands against slavery; and in that crowning point of his life, when he was mobbed in Lexington, my mother sat at his bed-side, and wrote at his dictation, "Go tell your secret conclave of dastardly assassins, Cassius M. Clay knows his rights and how to defend them."
Two of my sisters, Laura and Anne, and myself are practical farmers, each having under her immediate superintendence the workmen, both white and black, on 300 acres. We raise corn, wheat, oats, cattle and sheep, buying and selling our own stock and produce. We took possession of the land without stock or utensils, and by our observation and experience, prudence and industry, have greatly improved the lands and stock, and annually realize a handsome income therefrom.
Miss Laura R. White of Manchester, sister of Hon. John D. White, who ably advocated our cause in congress as well as in his own State, was graduated with marked honor from the Michigan State University in 1874. Since that time she has studied architecture in the Boston Institute of Technology one year, worked as draughtsman in the office of the supervisory architect of the treasury department at Washington, two years, studied in the special school of architecture in Paris one year, and is now, 1886, prosecuting her studies with a liberal selection of French and English architectural works at her mountain home in Kentucky. Mrs. Bessie White Heagen, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Sarah A. White, was graduated with honor from the Roxbury High School of Boston, and from the school of Pharmacy of Michigan University. Being denied examination and the privileges of college graduates of the college of pharmacy at Louisville, where she was employed by a prominent pharmacist, she brought suit and obtained a verdict in her favor.
Early in 1882, Dr. J. P. Barnum employed young women in his store with the expectation of being able to educate them in the college of pharmacy. But the hostility of the students to the proposed innovation, and the lack of a systematic laboratory course, caused the relinquishment of that plan and the formation of the new school. Prominent gentlemen in the community assisted Dr. Barnum, and the Louisville School of Pharmacy was duly incorporated under the general laws of Kentucky.[531] Though sustained by men of wealth and influence, the school met with great opposition, the State Board of Pharmacy refusing to register the women who were graduated from it until compelled to do so by a mandamus from the Law and Equity Court, Judge Simral presiding. March 7, 1884, the legislature incorporated the Louisville School of Pharmacy for Women, and by special enactment empowered its graduates to practice their profession without registration or interference from the State board.
The school confers two degrees; its full course taking three years and requiring more work than is done in other schools. So far its graduates have been representative women, and all have found responsible situations awaiting them. Its faculty remains, with a few exceptions, as in the first session. Dr. J. P. Barnum, to whose indefatigable efforts the foundation of the school is due, is dean and professor of pharmacy and analytical chemistry; Dr. T. Hunt Stuckey, a graduate of Heidelberg University, who joined his efforts with Dr. Barnum at an early day, is professor of materia medica, toxicology and microscopy. Mrs. D. N. Marble, professor of general and pharmaceutical chemistry, and Mrs. Fountaine Miller, professor of botany, were graduates of the first class.
Mrs. Kate Trimble de Roode, in a recent letter says:
Kentucky has had school suffrage for thirty years, but as the right is not generally known or understood, few women have ever availed themselves of the privilege. The State librarian has for many years been a woman, and there are several post-mistresses also in this State. The State University has recently admitted women on equal terms to all its departments. As a general thing the young women of Kentucky are better educated than the men, the latter being early put to business, while most parents desire above all things to secure to their daughters a liberal education. We have a number of women practicing medicine in the larger cities, one architect, but as yet no lawyers, although several women have taken a full course of study for that profession. The question of woman suffrage has been but little agitated in this State, although the last legislature gave a respectful hearing to several ladies on the question. The property rights of married women are in a crude state; the wife's personal property vests in the husband; the profits and rents that accrue from her real estate belong to him also. She can make no will without the assent of her husband, and if given, he can revoke it at any time before the will is probated. The wife's wages belong to her husband. She cannot sue or be sued without he joins her in the suit. The wife's dower is a life interest in a third of the husband's real estate, whereas the husband's curtesy, where there is issue of the marriage, born alive, is a life interest in all the real estate belonging to the wife at the time of her death. This is the statutory law, but the wife by obtaining a decree in chancery may possess all the rights of a femme sole. A bill securing more equal rights to women passed the House of the last legislature, but failed in the Senate. The courtesy of Kentucky men to women in general, has kept them from realizing their civil and political degradation, until, by some sudden turn in the wheel of fortune, the individual woman has felt the iron teeth of the law in her own flesh, and warned her slumbering sisterhood. We are now awaking to the fact that an aristocracy of sex in a republic is as inconsistent and odious as an aristocracy of color, and indeed far more so.
We organized here an association with twenty members the first of October, 1867, and now have fifty. We hope soon to have the whole of Hardin county, and by the close of another year the whole of the State of Kentucky, enlisted on the side of woman's rights.
That women might have municipal and presidential suffrage by statute; that in marriage women might own their property as men own theirs; that women who were married might be the legal guardians of their children's property and persons as well as the father; that women should be appointed with equal responsibility and authority as assistant physicians in insane asylums, and that the appointment of all the officers in such asylums should be made by the legislature, and not by the governor, as now; that women be appointed on boards of visitors and commissioners to all asylums where women are inmates or prisoners.
Mrs. M. C. Lucas was elected by the vote of Daviess county to the office of jailer, to succeed her husband, who was killed by a mob while in discharge of his duty. When she appeared before the county court to give bond for the office, the Judge refused to allow her to qualify. A writ of mandamus from the Circuit Court was applied for to compel the court to allow her to qualify, but the motion was denied. An appeal was then taken to the Court of Appeals. Yesterday that court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court, that a woman cannot legally hold the office of county jailer.
Kentucky has had school suffrage for thirty years, but as the right is not generally known or understood, few women have ever availed themselves of the privilege. The State librarian has for many years been a woman, and there are several post-mistresses also in this State. The State University has recently admitted women on equal terms to all its departments. As a general thing the young women of Kentucky are better educated than the men, the latter being early put to business, while most parents desire above all things to secure to their daughters a liberal education. We have a number of women practicing medicine in the larger cities, one architect, but as yet no lawyers, although several women have taken a full course of study for that profession. The question of woman suffrage has been but little agitated in this State, although the last legislature gave a respectful hearing to several ladies on the question. The property rights of married women are in a crude state; the wife's personal property vests in the husband; the profits and rents that accrue from her real estate belong to him also. She can make no will without the assent of her husband, and if given, he can revoke it at any time before the will is probated. The wife's wages belong to her husband. She cannot sue or be sued without he joins her in the suit. The wife's dower is a life interest in a third of the husband's real estate, whereas the husband's curtesy, where there is issue of the marriage, born alive, is a life interest in all the real estate belonging to the wife at the time of her death. This is the statutory law, but the wife by obtaining a decree in chancery may possess all the rights of a femme sole. A bill securing more equal rights to women passed the House of the last legislature, but failed in the Senate. The courtesy of Kentucky men to women in general, has kept them from realizing their civil and political degradation, until, by some sudden turn in the wheel of fortune, the individual woman has felt the iron teeth of the law in her own flesh, and warned her slumbering sisterhood. We are now awaking to the fact that an aristocracy of sex in a republic is as inconsistent and odious as an aristocracy of color, and indeed far more so.
V.—Tennessee.
We are indebted to Mrs. Elizabeth Lisle Saxon for the following:
Elizabeth Avery Meriwether is the chief representative of liberal thought in Tennessee. Her pen is ever ready to champion the wronged. I first came to know her when engaged in a newspaper discussion to reestablish in the public schools of Memphis three young women who had been dismissed because of "holding too many of Mrs. Meriwether's views"—the reason actually given by the superintendent and endorsed by the board of directors. A seven month's war was carried on, ending in a triumphant reinstallment of the teachers, a new superintendent, and a new board of directors. Public opinion was educated into more liberal ideas, and the Memphis Appeal, through its chivalrous editor, Mr. Keating, declared squarely for woman suffrage.
When Col. Kerr introduced into the Tennessee legislature a bill making divorce impossible for any cause save adultery, Mrs. Meriwether wrote the ablest article I ever read, in opposition, which Mr. Keating published in his paper, and distributed among the members of the legislature. The result was a clear vote against the bill.
With Mrs. Lide Meriwether and Mrs. M. J. Holmes, she publicly assailed the cross examination of women in criminal trials, either as culprits or witnesses, until the practice was broken up, and private hearings accorded. In 1876 she sent a memorial to the National Democratic convention at St. Louis, asking that party to declare for woman suffrage in its platform. Though her appeal was not read, hundreds of copies were circulated among the members in the hope of stirring thought on the subject in the South. It provoked much sarcasm because it was signed only by Mrs. Meriwether and Mrs. Saxon. In 1880-81 Mrs. Meriwether was one of the speakers in the series of conventions held by the National association in the Western and New England States.