Now from book to these recent visit to spokane, washington with all of our local cable partner comcast Vanessa Engle talks about the Womens Suffrage Movement and the Pacific Northwest. We are in spokane, washington at the museum of arts and culture. We are in an archives processing rooms where where we are looking at the papers. If premier suffragists in the Eastern Washington area. One of her biggest, most heartfelt messages was a message that she wanted to give women the right to vote and she was the most dominant advocate of women getting the right to vote in Eastern Washington, but in 1809, 1910, very well known. We are going to see today a couple of scrapbooks that happen herself put throughout her life, while mostly after she moved to spokane, but there will be scrapbooks here. Weve got photographs from her early life. She was a minor. She had some considerable wealth from the hurt of these mighty north idaho, so we are going to talk about that. She and her husband after 1900, around 1906 move to spokane and we will talk about her career. She gives us a window into what activist women were doing at that time. She also because she was suddenly a mine owner, May Arkwright hutton came into wealth. She was born into difficult circumstances. She was brought up by her grandfather, not her. In the she goes through life, shes a little bit of everything. She comes from poor circumstances. She worked at a boarding house in north idaho for many years and then they made it rich. They made a lot of money and then they move to spokane, thinking they needed more, a bigger venue, a bigger place for them to do their work, so they move to spokane. Shes a good voice of what was going on with women during that time. She traveled west. She was born in ohio and she traveled west. This is a picture of herself and her has been, excuse me, standing in front of their home in north idaho. She was a single woman when she came to spokane i mean, when she came to the Pacific Northwest, she was born in ohio. No one knows what happened to her mom. She was raised by her paternal grandfather. This is a picture of him. This is a set birthrate was his name and she was really the one who gave her start in life. He was a political junkie if you can call it that. Thats pretty modern term. But he loved reading newspapers. Hela demeaning political figures. He took eons made too Many Political programs 1890s there even earlier. He went blind in his later years and so she found herself is found herself is the leader as well. She cooked for him and found herself his reader. She got acquainted with is, will look here, this photograph, its a photograph of the train that was decorated for july 4 but the gentleman on the very far left of the picture is levi huntington, the man she later married. He was in charge of the. Translator was like the engineer for the train. They met in her boardinghouse. He would stop and eat and decided he liked what he saw, heard and eight and eventually got married. The picture we see here is a picture of them after they had raised, after theyve gotten their money from the hercules mind. He see the of the house and the two standing in front of the house. In the midcentury about 1905, 1906, they decided that they wanted to move to spokane. They had their wealth for five years, and they decided that it would be easier for how to do his business if they lived in spokane. Spokane was more the business center, for the area. And may could continue her activities with women and stuff like that. Theyre hoping she would get into some womens clubs and things like that. The mind owning women didnt accept her into their ranks in north idaho. She had run a boardinghouse and then you were too well what they thought they knew her too well or something and didnt want to accept her as a minority. When she came over here, she helped to get involved. In fact, she got involved in womens clubs in spokane before she lived in spokane. The actually interviewed her at one time, the newspaper interviewed at one time saying theres a woman whos already voting in north idaho. What you think about women voting . She was already coming over here to spokane to get involved. This photograph i think was taken after she moved to spokane. This is an organization that she got involved in. This is called the womens hotel. The womens hotel was created by women for working women basically. It was a place where young women who had jobs and were not married and they could go and find a place to stay and find a place to eat and be respectable. This is what these women were involved in. May here is the one in the middle. She also gets involved in women getting the right to vote. One of the things, just called her to be able to vote and i dont intend to come to washington and not be able to vote. It was, she just help so demeaned by not being able to vote. In fact, she wrote one letter one time and said i was just so, i felt so little. My friends and i, we went on election day, we went and sat around and felt sorry for ourselves basically because they couldnt vote. That was very much a part of who she was in idaho. She came to spokane and she couldnt vote, came to washington and was not allowed to vote. That was very important to her to get involved in that. What we have here are, these are two scrapbooks that May Arkwright hutton kept. These are her own scrapbooks. If you can see, theres clippings of newspapers that shes cut out of the newspaper and start in the scrapbook. Theres all kinds of fun things in these scrapbooks. Theres two of them, and well talk about both of them, but one of the things that made was very involved in was getting women into the Police Department in spokane. The way they did that was to ask for a Police Matron. What this meant was they wanted a woman in spokane to take care of the women who were incarcerated. They didnt think, they didnt like the idea of women incarcerated in jails and surrounded by men. They thought they should be at least one woman involved in the whole thing. They especially didnt like, they just didnt like the whole situation that women were in if they were in jail. This coalition that the women had created over the Police Matron controversy lends itself quite nicely to the effort to get the vote on the amendment for the state of washington. In november of 1910 washington voters gave women the right to vote. Theres this very funny cartoon that she has in her scrapbook that i wanted to show you. What you see is uncle sam with the Baby Washington in his hands. You have the other, washington was only the fifth state to give women the right to vote. That was in 1910. Youve got colorado thats not quite as old as colorado. You get utah and idaho. They look almost like twins in bed and then Baby Washington. And this is done here, uncle sams newest baby girl. He has five daughters now. So washington became the fifth state to give women the right to vote in 1910. In these last years where she was campaigning for the right to vote she was not well. Its a whole nother side of the issue, but she dies from the disease at the age of 55 in 1915. Her husband outlives her many years, and after she died, her husband took the wealth that they had in the mining well and put it in the Hutton Settlement. It was an organization. It was really before its time. It was an organization to help children, but what a lot of people did, in fact, there are women in spokane who did this, they created an orphanage like one big building all the children lived with a matron that supervised them. What al did when he created the Hutton Settlement was he created small cottages and the children were divided up your ills more of a homelike atmosphere, and so they were divided up in smaller cottages where they were. Ive got a picture here of, this is really close to win the Hutton Settlement opened in early 1920s. Her husband al had been put into, he actually grew up in a relatives house and was treated as a hand, not as a relative but as someone who worked for them. He had a really bad start to life as well, and i think thats one thing that brought may and al together to give both grown up without traditional family around them. I think of the two of them it was really much harder for al in his growing up years than it was for may who loved her grandfather. Lots of people in spokane who will tell you they grew up at the Hutton Settlement. Its still operating for children today. May Arkwright Hutton story is a story about an exceptional woman but her story is also a story is womens experience in the Pacific Northwest in many ways. And so you can look at her story as at least an example of women as they moved west, they do and how do they act. It ties in with the National Movements of the time. She was very much involved in campaigning for William Jennings bryan. She was actually the first woman in 1912, a woman delegate to the National Democratic congress shes very much part of the larger picture of whats happening in the early 20th century in the nation, and she also was a representative of the women in spokane. And stand in front of the Bridge Avenue spokane washington as we continue our look at the cities literary scene. Were here collecting the stories about people and its relationship to the landscape to the Pacific Northwest. So this is the spokane river coming in from east