Yates County Chronicles by Richard S. MacAlpine

Author:Richard S. MacAlpine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

YATES COUNTY AND WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

Rosalie Jones was a suffragette from Long Island. In 1912 and 1913, she organized a series of “suffrage hikes” around the Northeast to drum up support for getting women the right to vote. The following story comes from the June 20, 1913 issue of the Yates County Chronicle and describes a humorous scene at the Four Corners in Penn Yan:

Suffragettes on the Corner—Two members of the Rosalie Jones band of suffragettes were in Penn Yan Wednesday night and held a meeting near the corner of Main and Elm Street. At the hotel where they put up, one registered as “a militant from England” and the other as “a plain suffragette from New York.” The “militant” suffragette who came here was a fraud. She and her companion selected a spot on Bordwell’s corner where they intended to hold forth and then went for supper. When they returned, a man had taken possession of the place and was offering a variety of articles for sale. There was a chance for Miss Suffragette to show her militancy. But instead of shoving Mr. Man from the vantage point previously chosen, she meekly led her partner to the opposite side of the street and climbed up on a little box about a foot square to begin her talk. Just as she was ready, another man with a popcorn and peanut wagon came along and wheeled it right up by the side of the Misses Suffragette and again the militant one failed to show any sign of fight or even of anger. In fact, the two suffragettes seemed to enjoy the situation just as much as did the young men who gathered around. While Miss Suffragette was talking, many women passed by on the opposite side of the street but none gathered around the crusader or offered the least encouragement. The tooting of automobile horns, the clanging of street car bells, or the occasional joshing by somebody in the charmed circle did not ruffle the temper of Miss Suffragette in the least, so we know she was a fraud. No militant suffragette from England would stand for any such treatment without starting something.

New York State women did not have to wait for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919. An amendment to the New York State constitution extended the vote to women two years earlier. In 1917, New York became the first eastern state to grant full voting rights to women, the twelfth state overall. However, that didn’t happen without a struggle.

It was natural that Yates County would play an active role in that struggle. In 1855, just eight years after the first women’s rights convention in nearby Seneca Falls, a similar convention was held on Main Street in Penn Yan. The main speaker at that convention was Susan B. Anthony of Rochester, who clearly stated that full voting rights for women was a primary goal of their movement. The issue slowly picked up momentum during the next half a century.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.