Research Guides: National History Day 2020-2021: Communication in History: Suffrage

Images from Schlesinger Library

Suffrage as Communication

The Schlesinger Library holds a great deal of material related to the woman suffrage movement. Archival collections with relevant digital material can be found on this page of the guide. More information from the Schlesinger Library pertaining to woman suffrage accessible online can be found in the For more information about the Schlesinger's holdings pertaining to suffrage, see the Women's Suffrage Guide and the Radcliffe College Suffrage Guide.

Other relevant resources can be found in the Long 19th Amendment Project Portal and the Suffrage School, two new tools launched by the Schlesinger Library in 2020, supported by funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Portal is an open-access digital portal that facilitates interdisciplinary, transnational scholarship and innovative teaching around the history of gender and voting rights in the United States. The Suffrage School is a platform where a broad array of researchers, writers, and teachers have been invited to create a series of digital teaching modules. Each lesson in the Suffrage School connects in rich and unpredictable ways to the Library’s Long 19th Amendment Project, which tackles the tangled history of gender and American citizenship.

Archival Collections

Blanche Ames (1878-1969) [in Woman's Rights Collection]
Blanche Ames, artist and suffragist, published a number of political cartoons promoting suffrage. She was a member of several suffrage associations and served as an officer in the Massachusetts League of Women Voters, the Birth Control League of Massachusetts and the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. The collection includes correspondence, printed items, photographs, and suffrage memorabilia. Two folders of correspondence with fellow suffragists Alice Stone Blackwell, Maud Wood Park, and Mary Hutcheson Page, a program for the Woman's Centennial Congress of 1940, and selected photographs from the collection are digitized and available in the finding aid for the Papers of Blanche Ames.
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Best known for her lifelong crusade for woman's suffrage, Anthony was first active in the temperance and anti-slavery movements. In May 1869 she organized the National Woman Suffrage Association, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president. From 1891 to 1900, she was the second president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The Susan B. Anthony Digital Collection includes resources from all eight Susan B. Anthony collections at the Schlesinger Library and is openly available online.
Blackwell Family
The most prominent members of the Blackwell family were Elizabeth and Emily, among the earliest women doctors and founders of the New York Infirmary and College for Women; their brother Henry Browne Blackwell , his wife Lucy Stone, and their daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950), known for their leading roles in the abolition, woman suffrage, and prohibition movements; and their sister-in-law Antoinette Louisa (Brown) Blackwell, the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States and an active speaker on behalf of abolition, women's rights and prohibition. The Blackwell Family Papers have been digitized in their entirety and are included in the Blackwell Family Papers Digital Collection. The Schlesinger also provides open online access to the Woman's Journal, a periodical about women's rights founded and run by members of the Blackwell family.
Olympia Brown (1835-1926)
Universalist minister Olympia Brown, the first American woman to be ordained by full denominational authority, had parishes mainly in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Wisconsin. She was active in the movement for women's suffrage primarily in Wisconsin and then on the national level. The papers of Olympia Brown contain correspondence, sermons, speeches, articles, photographs, and suffrage material. The collection has been digitized in its entirety, and is available online in the finding aid for the Papers of Olympia Brown.
Mary Ware Dennett (1872-1947)
Suffragist, pacifist, artisan, and advocate of birth control and sex education, Mary Coffin (Ware) Dennett was a founder of the National Birth Control League, director of the Voluntary Parenthood League, and editor of the Birth Control Herald. She worked for woman suffrage, the single tax, proportional representation, and free trade, and was a leader of the People's Council, a radical antiwar group, and the Woman's Peace Party. She was also involved with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The bulk of the material in this collection deals with her work on behalf of suffrage, birth control, and peace. The digitized material from this collection, which can be found in the finding aid for the papers of Mary Ware Dennett, largely has to do with the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Claiborne Catlin Elliman
Claiborne Catlin Elliman was born in the south (perhaps in Baltimore, Maryland) probably in the 1880s. In 1914, Elliman had success creating publicity for a suffrage rally by riding a horse through downtown Boston. This gave Elliman the "idea of campaigning on horseback for Suffrage that summer." Described in the newspapers as a "'suffrage' beauty," for four months she rode "astride" through southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, and as far west as Worcester. By the middle of October she estimated that she had covered 700 miles and given 70 talks. The adventure was cut short by four days when her horse broke a leg. Images of her saddle bags and her shoulder sash have been digitized and made available in the finding aid for the Papers of Claiborne Catlin Elliman. Elliman chronicled her journey on horseback in a diary she called "Stirrup Cups," which has been digitized and attached here for the purposes of this guide:
Stirrup Cups: Part 1 [PDF]
Stirrup Cups: Part 2 [PDF]
Stirrup Cups: Part 3 [PDF]
Stirrup Cups: Part 4 [PDF]
Ellen Dwight Eaton (1832-1907)
Ellen Dwight Eaton was a first cousin once removed of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist and women's rights activist. This collection consists of letters written to Ellen "Nellie" Dwight Eaton, most of which are from Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A few mention the founding of the suffrage periodical, The Revolution, while others concern Stanton's travels and activities for suffrage. This collection also includes a letter from Susan B. Anthony encouraging correspondence with Eaton, and a letter from Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell discussing Eaton's health. Also found in this collection is a letter from suffragist Martha Griffith Browne to Elizabeth Cady Stanton asking Stanton to meet abolitionist Mary Estlin from Bristol, England. Some letters include descriptive notes by Elizabeth Selden Rogers. The entirety of the collection has been digitized and made available in Harvard Mirador Viewer.
Maryland Suffrage Collection
This collection contains suffrage yearbooks, newspapers, and reports of the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore, the Just Franchise League of Talbot County, Maryland, and the State Equal Franchise League of Maryland from the years 1910 to 1912. The majority of the collection has been digitized and is available online in the finding aid for the Maryland Suffrage Collection.
Inez Milholland
This collection is digitized and accessible through the finding aid for the Inez Miholland collection (Call#: MC 308).
Feminist, suffragist, and lawyer, Inez Milholland specialized in criminal and divorce practice and was active in the women's suffrage and peace movements, and the effort to abolish capital punishment. In 1913 she married Eugen Jan Boissevain, a Dutch businessman living in New York, and as a result became concerned with citizenship rights of married women. The papers of Inez Milholland contain personal and professional correspondence, speeches, articles, class notes and clippings. The personal letters illuminate, often in intimate detail, Milholland's marriage to Eugen Jan Boissevain and her friendships with Max Eastman, Upton Sinclair, Irving E. Robertson, and other artists and radicals in Greenwich Village.
New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage was founded in 1895. The collection contains pamphlets, speeches, and newsletters published by the Association. Some letters, leaflets, and pamphlets from the collection have been digitized and are available in the finding aid for the records of the Association. The Schlesinger also provides online access to Views on Woman Suffrage, a publication from the Massachusetts Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, a related organization.
Alice Park (1861-1961)
A socialist, vegetarian, pacifist, founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and campaigner for women's rights, Alice Park wrote the California law, passed in 1913, granting women equal rights of guardianship over their children. She was a delegate and speaker at the Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance in Budapest, Hungary, in June 1913, and a delegate to the Tenth Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance, held in Paris in May 1926. Through her connections with many women's rights organizations, Park acquired a library of feminist books, as well as buttons, leaflets, and posters. This collection includes 55 different posters of the women's suffrage movement collected by Alice Park, mostly British. All of the posters from the Posters of Alice Park have been digitized and are available on HOLLIS Images.
Maud Wood Park (1871-1955) [in Woman's Rights Collection]
Suffragist, civic reformer, and writer, 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 Haynes Gillmore, she organized the first chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League in 1900. Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Park served as first president of the National League of Women Voters. The material she donated in 1943 to Radcliffe College later became the nucleus of the Women's Archives, later the Schlesinger Library. The vast majority of her papers have been digitized and are available in the finding aid to the Papers of Maud Wood Park.
Woman Suffrage Study Club
On November 15, 1909, Gertrude Foster Brown invited a group of women to listen to Anna Howard Shaw, President of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association, as well as other speakers on the women's suffrage movement in New York City. The Woman Suffrage Study Club was formed as a result of this meeting; Gertrude Foster Brown was President. The purpose of the club was "political education, advancement of industrial, legal, and educational rights, leading toward the ultimate enfranchisement of women." The collection consists of a bound volume of minutes of the Club from its inception in 1909 until 1913. That volume is digitized and is available online in the finding aid for the Woman Suffrage Study Club collection.