President D. B. Johnston, of the Girls' Industrial and Normal College, and John J. McMahan, State superintendent of instruction, have done much to advance the educational status of women, and both believe in perfect equality of rights. Among other advocates may be mentioned the Hon. Walter Hazard, Dr. William J. Young, McDonald Furman, B. Odell Duncan, George Sirrene, Col. John J. Dargan, Col. Ellison Keith, the Rev. Sidi H. Brown, Col. V. P. Clayton, the Rev. John T. Morrison, Samuel G. Lawton, J. Gordon Coogler and William D. Evans, president of the State Agricultural Society.
Miss Martha Schofield, superintendent of the Colored Industrial School at Aiken, regularly enters a protest against paying taxes without representation. Other women who have been devoted workers in the cause of suffrage are Miss Mary I. Hemphill, editor with her father of the Abbeville Medium; Mesdames Marion Morgan Buckner, Daisy P. Bailey, Florence Durant Evans, Lillian D. Clayton, Gertrude D. Lido, Cora S. Lott, Abbie Christensen, Martha Corley and Mary P. Screven; Dr. Sarah Allen; Misses Claudia G. Tharin, Iva Youmans, Annie Durant, Kate Lily Blue and Floride Cunningham.
Legislative Action and Laws: In 1892 Mrs. Virginia Durant Young petitioned the Legislature for her personal enfranchisement, adopting this method of presenting the arguments in a nutshell, and as "news" they were widely published and commented on. At this session Gen. Robert R. Hemphill, a stanch advocate, presented a bill in the Senate to give women the franchise and the right of holding office, and brought it to a vote on December 17; yeas, 14, nays, 21.
In 1895 numerously signed petitions for suffrage were sent to the Legislature by the women of Fairfax, Lexington and Marion. The right of petition was also frequently used by the members of the State W. C. T. U.
In 1896 Mrs. Young addressed the Legislature in behalf of Presidential Suffrage for women.
In 1892, '93, '95 and '98 the laws were improved in regard to married women's property rights, allowing them to hold real estate independently of their husbands, restraining husbands from collecting debts or wages owing to their wives, and making the wife's signature necessary to the legality of mortgage.
In 1895 was enacted by the Constitutional Convention that, "The real and personal property of a woman, held at the time of her marriage, or that which she may thereafter acquire, either by gift, grant, inheritance, devise or otherwise, shall be her separate property, and she shall have all the rights incident to the same, to which an unmarried woman or a man is entitled. She shall have the power to contract and be contracted with, in the same manner as if she were unmarried."
Dower prevails but not curtesy. If either husband or wife die without a will the other has an equal claim on the property. Should there be one or more children, the survivor receives one-third of the real and the personal estate. If there are no lineal descendants, but collateral heirs, the survivor takes one-half of the entire estate. If there are no lineal descendants, father, mother, brother, sister, child of such brother or sister, brother of the half-blood or lineal ancestor, the survivor receives two-thirds of the estate and the other third goes to the next of kin. If there is no kin, the survivor takes the whole estate.
A homestead to the value of $1,000 is exempted to "the head of the family."
South Carolina is the only State which does not allow divorce.