Research Guides: Radcliffe College Suffrage: Maud Wood Park

Maud Wood Park

Maud Wood Park graduated from Radcliffe College in 1898 and was active in suffrage and civic work in Boston for more than fifteen years. With Inez Gillmore Irwin, she organized the first chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League in 1900. During the next eight years she worked to establish local chapters in Massachusetts, New York, and the Midwest. Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Park served as the first president of the National League of Women Voters (1920-1924). In 1943 she facilitated the donation of extensive materials documenting the suffrage movement and women's history post 1920 to Radcliffe College. This collection, called the Woman's Rights Collection, formed the nucleus of the Women's Archives, later the Schlesinger Library. She also wrote Front Door Lobby recounting the lobbying experience of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Most of Park's papers are collected at the Library of Congress and in the Woman's Rights Collection at the Schlesinger Library.

Papers of Maud Wood Park in the Woman's Rights Collection [Call Number: M-133]
This collection provides information about Park's time at Radcliffe, her involvement in Massachusetts and national woman suffrage campaigns and her activities after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. It also documents organizations with which she was affiliated, some of the people with whom she worked, her trip around the world, and her speeches and writings. There is almost no information about her family and personal life.
[Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault. This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
Papers of Edna Lamprey Stantial [Call Number: MC 733]
Edna Lamprey Stantial was the secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government and the archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. As Maud Wood Park's close friend and secretary, Stantial helped Park gather the papers that she gave to Radcliffe College in 1943. These papers, the Woman's Rights Collection, formed the nucleus of the Women's Archives, later the Schlesinger Library. Throughout the 1950s, Stantial continued to collect papers of leading figures in the movement for women's rights.
[Information regarding Park can be found in Series II, which includes correspondence, writings, clippings, legal documents, and photographs.]
Records of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government [Call Number: M-133]
Suffragists Maud Wood Park, Pauline Agassiz Shaw, and Mary Hutcheson Page were among those who founded the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (BESAGG) in 1901. Its purpose was "...to promote a better civic life, the true development of the home and the welfare of the family, through the exercise of suffrage on the part of the women citizens of Boston..." (1918 by-laws). The organization educated women about the functions of government to prepare them to be responsible, well-informed, voting citizens. After 1920, BESAGG became the Boston League of Women Voters.
[Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault. This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
Records of the College Equal Suffrage League in the Woman's Rights Collection [Call Number: M-133]
In 1900, suffragists Maud Wood Park and Inez Gillmore Irwin founded the first College Equal Suffrage League in Boston. During the following decade, Park traveled across the United States in an effort to persuade recent college alumnae to take an interest in suffrage work. The league was variously called CESL, CESL of Massachusetts, and CESL of Boston.
[Digital content can be found in ProQuest's History Vault. This database requires a Harvard ID to access.]
Records of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America [Call Number: RG XVIII]
The Schlesinger Library had its origins in the gift of the Woman's Rights Collection by Maud Wood Park to Radcliffe College in 1943. Organized as the Women's Archives in 1948, it was renamed The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America in 1965 in recognition of the Schlesingers' support of the Library and College.
[Information regarding Maud Wood Park and the Schlesinger Library can be found in Series 1 of the collection, entitled, "Woman's Rights Collection: early organization and correspondence with donors, 1942-1949".]

Front Door Lobby by Maud Wood Park ; edited by Edna Lamprey Stantial
Recounting the lobbying experience of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), this book was published in 1960 after Maud Wood Park's death (1955).
[Digital content can be found in HathiTrust. This database does not require a Harvard ID to access.]