Youre watching American History tv. Let me tell you about our speaker tonight. Wynn fellowed gallaghers books include how the post office created america, just the way you are a New York Times notable book, working on god, the power of place and new, understanding our need for novelty and change. She has written for numerous publications such as the atlantic monthly, Rolling Stone and the New York Times. If her newest book, new women in the old west from settlers to suffragists, an untold american story, is available for purchase from politics and prose. If you use the link in the chat box which is also available on our web site, youll be able to purchase the book with a 10 is discount 10 discount. Just be sure to use the code special 10 when checking out. Now, please join me in welcoming to the smithsonian Winifred Gallagher. Hi, wynn fellowed. Hi, kathy. Thanks so much, its wonderful to be with you. Before i begin, aye like to see a few id like to say a few words about the woman you see on your screen from north dakota. She was a Norwegian Immigrant who spoke no english at all when she arrived in the u. S. , but she filed her homestead claim, lived on it for five years, then sold it for a nice profit which she used to start out in a new career as a photographer with her own studio. Like the other women well talk about tonight, she made the most of the unusual opportunities that the American West afforded to new women. Id like to explain also that well pick up with slides later in my talk partly because the women, because women in general particularly the ones that im going to talk about were not much photographed until the womens Rights Movement really picked up later in the 19th century. If i began thinking about new women in the old west during my 12 years of living half time in rural wyoming. I was impressed by the strong, versatile women starting with the 80yearold mayor who pretty much ran local affairs from government to business, and thats not even counting the actual cowgirls. Was there something in the water . I did some research and found that my friends were carrying on a long tradition of independent, competent and civicmindedness. It began in the old west era of the 1840s into the early 19th into the early 20 century when more than half of america was settled. But historians failed to notice, however, that women busy building homes and communities from scratch not only joined, but at a crucial moment led the massive human rights revolution that enfranchised half the nation. Indeed, by the time the 19th amendment was finally ratified in 1920, most western women had already votedded for years, sometimes for decades before their sisters in a single state back east. The colonization of the west and the Suffrage Movement were overlapping epochs, and three generations of women were critical to both. Yet their doublebarreled achievements have simply been neglected. According to or the foundational myth, strong silent men won the west. In fact, women were equal ily are essential equally essential to the process. Moreover, they were not just stereotypical martyrish or quakers with hearts of gold who supported men in various ways, but single homesteaders and doctors, entrepreneurs and suffragists. In their experimental, improvised Settler Society, these hard working, determined women found unique opportunities; social, political, economic to become more equal to men by acting more as equals. All of these white, black and asian women were new to the west, but some of them and some of the native american Hispanic Women they displaced also came to per sonify what was called the new woman. These new women rejected the 19th century selfsacrificing domesticity and anticipated the early 20th century, more liberate model of womanhood based on the kind of independent, fulfilling way of life traditionally limited to men. Officiating womens experience in the west requires understanding something about their position in larger American Society which was terrible. By ageold law and custom the, they were citizens in name only. They had no official place in civic life and very few legal rights. According to americas version of English Common law, a married woman a wife became a [inaudible] who was covered by or officially absorbed into her husbands person. In exchange for his support and protection, she was legally obliged to serve and obey him. She could not own, inherit, control property including her own she could not sue in court, run a business, divorce or even claim custody of her own children. The connection between womens lack of economic status and lack of rights was highlighted in america just after the revolutionary war. While the men fought, many women including abigail adams, the future first lady capably ran their families farms and enterprises. In recognition of their service and patriotism, new york, new jersey, massachusetts and New Hampshire allowed them to vote. Then the men returned from the war. By the time of the constitutions ratification in 1788, most women had been disenfranchised. New jersey held on until 1807. By the mid 19th century as the Industrial Revolution rapidly gathered steam and rapidly urbanized america, womens status declined still further, at least those of the middle and upper classes in towns and cities. In the old agrarian economy, home and work were intermeshed on farms where the labor of both sexes sustained the family. Especially in the booming urban areas, mens jobs in the new factories and offices now supported their wives and children. Eager to codify this huge shift, Victorian Society confined the sexes to what were routinely called desperate spheres separate spheres. Men got the public world of the home excuse me, men got the public world of industry and commerce, law and politics, women got the private world of the home. They continued to do housework and childcare, but they lost the status of economic coproviders for their families. Their only acceptable career was marriage. Indeed, they could compromise their respectable reputations simply by seeking a mans education, in quotes, much less a profession. Just as westward migration began, however, social reformers started to renovate this cloisteredded victorian home, turning it into womens new power center. They built upon a theory involving since the 18th evolving since the 18th century that women were not so much inferior from went as different from them. They were weaker, of course, but also elevated, nurturing. In a treatise on domestic economy which quickly became a secular bible on how respectable people should live, Katherine Beecher a champion of female education and a mother of Home Economics puppet the home and the home put the home and the homemaker at the very center of americas rapidly changing society and its westward expansion. Women were [inaudible] she insisted, but the rightful arbiters of mores, manners, child rearing, religion, charity, important matters previously adjudicated by men. Indeed, beecher went so far as to proclaim that what was later termed womens moral authority, perhaps even superiority, created a balance of power. She said it has been america alone that women it is in america alone that women are raised to an equality with the other sex. That was a pretty radical thing to say back in 1841. This glorification of their domestic role endowed women with a potent religious and social gravitas that elevated their social standing. It also provideed a platform for launching their campaign for further empowerment. Theres a certain irony there that women turned on this which was keeping them down at a certain level. They turned it into an advantage and used it to go from home to world. Enslaved women who had to work could not emulate this new genteel model. Others, whether agrarian wives, bohemians or the first female teachers and nurses [inaudible] if at all, but the aspirational ideals of the domestic american madonna, the sentimental religious Victorian Society and my greated to the west. Migrated to the west. Most 19th century americans, including beecher, considered politics too base a pursuit for women but not all. In july 1848 as migration increased, Katie Stanton elizabeth Katie Stanton, who we see here in all of her mag magnificence [laughter] and lucretia mott, both abolitionists, famously held a meeting in seneca falls, new york, to discuss what were first called woman rights. The event was later promoted as the birth place of suffrage, the right to vote in National Mobile elections, sit on jury, run for office. But seneca falls really only helped to formalize and publicize a cause amid e the ferocious battle to abolish slavery. By the 1830s black abolitionists soon personified by Sojourner Truth upheld universal suffrage or the right to vote regardless of race, sex or creed. They inspired white women abolitionists to rebel against their own second class status which was based on gender instead of race. Stanton and mott were well aware that in their own upstate community the native women of the Iroquois Confederation had long owned property, divorced and elected leaders. After two days, stantoning wrote a declaration of rights and sentiments that elegantly rephrased thomas jefferson. All men and women are created equal. Two little words. Despite the lofty language, the activists first role were distinctly practical and domestic. They prioritized the rights to control property, divorce and maintain child custody, laws that would help protect their families from improvident or abusive husbands. Even these zealots considered suffrage so farfetched that they included it in their declaration only after black abolitionist Frederick Douglass last minute argument. In mainstream society, however, the woman rights proclaimed at seneca falls including equal education and employment were considered so ludicrous that newspapers the idea simply by printing a list of womens rights. In that same year of 1848, change roiled the west. That vast territory stretching past the mississippi river. Gold was discovered in california, the u. S. Annexed the vast oregon territory and also claimed what is now our enormous southwest as spoils from the mexicanamerican war. The rush to the new frontier began in earnest. The west differed from the rest of america in significant ways that affected womens positions starting with demography. Until the turn of the century, white men significantly outnumbered white women there, particularly in towns and cities. And womens scarcity increased their value. Overall supply and demand. So far less popular [inaudible] the west was also home to the great majority of the countrys native american, hispanics and asians which conditioned the white anglosaxon, protestant women who dominated at least early migration to be cast as maternal civilizers among savages in an alleged wilderness. Indeed, the west quickly became a hoe case for the vir showcase for the virtuous homemaker in her snug cabin. She was not only the moral heroine of beechers society, but also of americas transcontinental expansion. Womens status also benefited from conditions in the wests Settler Society which by definition was simpler and more interested in progress than in tradition. It was all hands on deck. Even was needed to do whatever needed doing, and people just didnt pay too much attention the these victorian ideas about womens work and mens work. In the west, as in most of america today, it took two industrious partners to support a family which increased the value of womens work. No man wanted to homestead without a wife to do all the Domestic Work and also, importantly, earn money from there her home production whether selling eggs or bread or taking in sewing or boarders. By the time the pioneers got to the west, they were often very cash poor. Even if they wanted to hire help, there was really no help to be had, so this gave women a lot of opportunities. And the cash that they made really for the first couple years often supported their families. Not surprisingly, agrarian women had their suitors. Not enough of women, too many men, women were able to be picky. In mining towns they used their domestic skills to market hot meals and clean laundry to the overwhelmingly male population. The pioneer woman of song and story may be the proper, bonn especiallied why have bonn innocented wife in her homestead, but women like [inaudible] have an equally valid claim to the title. In 1849 after barely surviving an especially taxing migration from missouri, she and her family arrived in the gold rush town of sacramento tattered and penniless. She was one of 3 women among 6,000 men. One morning a miner offered her 5 for a hot breakfast. Thats 5 for a hot breakfast. Thats about 168 today. And she noted that he would have paid her 10 if she had asked for it. He soon bought her first she soon bought her first boarding house and prospered in the Hospitality Industry at a time when few women ran businesses elsewhere. The final hotel that she called wilss hotel, the previous one burned down, so she loaded her cook stove in the wagon and took her kids, and they stopped at a nice spot, and they got some hay bills and she hay bales, and she hung up a sign, and her first guest slept on the other side of the hay bales. She was a very good cook. The west Settlers Society was also free of an entrenched, highbrowed establishment determined to keep women in their place. Building new communities required every pair of hands, and the town mothers who organized many of the first schools, churches and charities greatly enhanced womens position in public life. One of the things that really annoyed me when i was doing research on the book was that because women didnt have the legal right to start an institution, to found corporations, the women would do all the work at the school or the hospital, and then their husbands would appear in the newspaper that it was his school, his hospital, and he got the credit for being the town father instead of the town mother. During sarah royces first years in gold rush california, she held Church Services in her familys tent. This went on for more than five years, i believe. When they finally settled in grants valley, california, in 1854, the teacher turned her modest onestory house into a school. Her only resources was a book she had found in an abandoned wagon, a bible, a volume of milton, some fables. Her home schooled son became a famous harvard philosopher. And her daughterinlaw, as her daughterinlaw later put it, quote, wherever she was, she made civilization even when it seemed that she add had very little, indeed, from which to make it. Kind of a great quote that applies to a lot of these women that were talking about tonight. When she a arrived in central city, colorado, myra rah brown, a black freed woman, worked as a washer woman until she could start her own laundry. As her business expanded, she. Ruledly invested shh rudely invested in mines and became a philanthropist. She helped the needy of all races and other freed people to my great to colorado to migrate to colorado. At the age of 82 after years of searching for the four children who had been sold away during slavery, she finally found her daughter eliza jane. The local paper marked to case, describing brown as still strong, vigorous, tall, her hair thickly streaked with gray, her face kind. Women like wilson, royce and brown were not considered equal to men, but they had narrowed that gap. Their record of hard work and dedication won respect and made them a political force; albeit not electoral to be reckoned with. During the civil war, small but influential groups of western women began to capitalize on two unique opportunities to get ahead. In the process, they wld also be treated as equals by the federal government, a very important legal precedent. In 1862 as the civil war raged, president lincoln and his more genderegalitarian republicans passed two Ground Breaking laws that recognized womens importance to the greater reconstruction. We have far too narrow an idea of the reconstruction. It actually lasted from we have our too narrow an idea area of the reconstructed. It lasted 1845 to 1877 and it was meant to create a coasttocoast nation that had never existed before. Most of america on the east coast and the south, there gold was discovered in california and there was a lot of nothing in the middle. The greater reconstruction created this new transcontinental country by not just reunifying the south after the war but by colonizing the west so if you wanted to study an interesting period of American History i think the greater reconstruction of 45 to 77 is worth more attention than it gets. A lot of stuff is going on. In what is more than half of america, people forget the west is more than half of america. It doesnt get the same press because it is considered flyover country but history is phenomenally interesting. Anyway. In 1862 Congress Passed the homestead act which enabled female as well as male heads of household to claim 160 acres of free land in the west at a time when most women had few Economic Opportunities at all the chance to own real estate that could support an independent life to sell later for sizable profit was a stunning advance. Bear in mind women of ample means or wealthier women, the only thing they were allowed to have was marriage. If no one would marry them they had 2 more or less live as an unpaid servant for one of their male relatives, nannies to their brothers children autocare of grandpa in his old age. If you were a poor woman the only opportunities you had were domestic service. The idea that a woman could own her own property and support herself on her own land was a pretty phenomenal advance. Women especially didnt have the opportunity to accumulate capital. The idea that you could own this land and sell it and end up with 30 or 40,000 in todays money was an amazing breakthrough. Importantly, women attain landowner status which in the days of the agrarian founders, washington and jefferson, had been tied to citizenship and social standing. At first in america the only men allowed to vote were white men who owns property. The women homesteaders names on tax rolls besides men became an important women citizenship. Few single women elsewhere could dream of a home of their own much less land for a farm but in 1873, pauline osjohn, scandinavian immigrant, a lot of these women were middleaged filed for homestead on the remote minnesota friend here. She lived near where laura angles wilder set her fourth book in the little house series, on the banks of plum creek. Pauline lived near plum creek. Broiling summers alternated with arctic winters, wildfires and periodic plagues of grasshoppers wiped outcrops and houses and farms in moments. Despite the challenges, five years later, when pauline finalized her homestead claim, she owned a 14 x 16 foot cabin, cattle, a pig, and chickens. She produced 400 bushels of wheat, dozens of eggs and 150 pounds of butter for sale. She lived off the land for 14 years then sold it for 1280. More than 30,000 today. To make additional income for her retirement, she are carried the mortgage. A lot of the women homesteaders would hang onto the land and rent it to a farmer and have income for the rest of their lives in many cases or until they wanted to do something else. This was a very unusual thing for a woman to have her own money in that way. Very few 19th century americans especially women had access to college and professional life but in july 18, 62 just a few months after the homestead act, Congress Passed a moral land grant act, a law created nearly one hundred tuition free educational public colleges and universities. 2 thirds of these schools were in the rapidly developing west which desperately needed expertise. Given access to careers that enabled them to support themselves women graduates who chose to delay family life now had an alternative to marriage and they were the first coeducational schools in the world. In the world. And for coeducation frowned upon in the east, as you know, College Girls back east at that time went to girls schools but western girls went to college with men. Given access to careers that enabled them to support themselves, they could delay family life. Many became teachers but almost 15 of these career oriented to new women entered traditionally male fields like medicine, journalism and the law. Almost twice Womens National rate of 8 , kind of an impressive statistic in these towns, in this region where people are just coming up out of the mud living in these towns, yet we have twice as many women going into the professions as back east. A classic western new woman, independent, adventurous and as good as any man, well lets have a cut a dashing figure at the university of nebraska which was landgrant School Provided by the moral act. A journalism major who sometimes styled herself William Cather junior and sometimes favored conventionally male haircuts, clothes, and mannerisms, she was a popular editor of the college newspaper. Later, consummate poet of the western ferry and its women, she based her most beloved characters, earthy antonia should murder of my antonia, ambitious alexander berkman, full pioneers, on the women homesteaders, often immigrants who she had met as a girl on her grandfathers nebraska homestead. The world publicized adventures of the wests new women helped americans come to terms with womens evolving role in a rapidly modernizing society. Now we can go back to slides because it was a rapidly modernizing society. There we go. One favorite of the American Public was mary hallock, an eastern debutante who migrated with her minor husband who studied mining at yale and then went west and she decided she was a talented artist, she would represent low west from a distantly female perspective in art, journalism and novels. No heroic boys alone on the prairie for her. She was determined to show that women were just as important as men to western development and that indeed, the women you could tell from the demeanor of the man and woman in the picture that the men were by no means swashbuckling heroes but few women could compare with caroline lockhart. She is a special place in my heart. She began her writing career as a girl stunt reporter for the boston post. Nelly bly started this, send a girl reported to do something crazy, carolyn would dive in a wetsuit to the bottom of boston harbor, jump off a building into a net the firemen were holding. Anyway, she went west on assignment and fell in love with cody wyoming. He published the local newspaper, she cofounded the famous, still ongoing book cody stampede, and annual rodeo, but she was most celebrated for her westerns, novels that challenged stereotypes of good guys and bad guys, race and gender. Several of her westerns became major hollywood movies including the fighting shepherdess based on the life of Lucy Morrison more, the socalled cheap queen of wyoming. Readers and moviegoers loved lockharts mastery of western speech. Since we are talking plain, i dont like you know how. I dont like the way you talk. I dont like the way your face grows on you. If i never see you again, it will be soon enough. The hard drinking, hard partying cowgirl never married but joined many unofficial liaisons. At the age of 54 she became a cattle queen and her own light on her 6000 acre ranch and lived to the age of 91. Just as the west gave ambitious women unique opportunities to own land and attend college it gave them a special advantages in their pursuit of more rights. Indeed in 1854 just six years after seneca falls conference and one year after the washington territory was founded, it failed to pass in the washington Territory Legislature by a single vote. A National Movement may have been in the east when the cause reemerged, imposed by the civil war, it caught fire in the west. The Suffrage Movement was a messy, fragmented phenomenon that waxed and waned over decades. Internal squabbling and public debates. Many separatists did not consider people of color including fellow suffragists as they are equals. Some leaders wanted to first focus on womens right to go in School Board Elections. You would think why cant women vote in the School Board Elections . It was very contentious issue seen as both in the end of the wedge. If you give them an inch they will take a mile. Others claimed Women Deserve full enfranchisement. Some of them insisted that women were mens equals but many more argued that women were mens moral superiors. They insisted that as municipal housekeepers women would vote to protect and care for the homeland just as they protected and cared for their homes. What the movement lacked any logical consistency it made up for in sheer grit over three generations. In the west suffragists maximized the special advantages that women enjoyed in the region. Legislators in the sparsely populated territories were eager to increase their electorates because that was how you got more power in washington dc. They also wanted to entice white women because they needed to help balance the white gender ratio and also to counter the ballot of men of color but legislatures tried to lure women with liberalized laws regarding property and divorce, not just suffrage. Indeed by the 1850s unhappy wives made california the first of the wests many divorce mills. Passing controversial laws such as suffrage was also much easier and loosely governed socially fluid territory than state encumbered by a century of laws and traditions and legal precedent. Importantly, territories transitioning into states had to write constitutions which required the legislatures for legal rights and political compared to men in the south east, witnessed service during ongoing settlements and notably more receptive to their empowerment particularly to mens political advantage. For all these reasons, in 1869 the women of the wyoming territory who were outnumbered by men by a ratio of 9 to 1 became the first women in your American History to be fully enfranchised. A year later, Esther Hobart morris, a suffragist from South Pass City wyoming, was appointed as the nations first woman judge. Despite her lack of formal Legal Training she was so capable that none of the 27 cases she tried were appealed or reversed. She was treated by the crude press as a freakish celebrity but one respectable National Weekly called her, quote, the terror of all rogues and an infinite delight to all lovers of peace and virtue. She acknowledged that her appointment was, quote, a test of womans ability to hold public office, then added the, quote, in performing all of these duties i do not know that i have the respect of my family anymore the new ordinary shopping. In 1870, the women of the largely mormon utah territory were enfranchised as well. I think we will see there she is. Suffragists such as the journalist emily wells, one of her third husbands second wives, insisted that because sister wives shared domestic chores, polygamy gave women more freedom. The whole enfranchisement of women in utah backfired and the republican partys between evils of the era where slavery and polygamy and they assumed that if they gave mormon women the vote that mormon women would vote to eliminate polygamy but mormon women were just as religious as the mormon men and polygamy was part of their religion so that backfired on the republicans. Importantly both wyoming, the wyoming and utah territories and franchised women a halfcentury before the passage of the 19th amendment. It is often said that western men gave women the vote that after those two gifts other territorial and state governments responded only after women persistently lobbied for bills that were defeated and tried again. In the 1870s and 80s activists like Abigail Scott dunaway, there she is. She really is the Elizabeth Cady stanton of the west, there she is, women such as abigail fought on in legislatures and courtrooms to include womens rights to own property and divorce as well as folk but abigail became a suffragist when her in countersigned alone of his friend, the friend default on the loan and mrs. Dunaways home which she shared with 5 or 6 children, the bank seized the home, she was so outraged, she worked like a dog establishing their second farm, establishing the farm and getting things up and going that she on the spot became a suffragist and as was true often of early feminists, what she really wanted was womens Property Rights because if women had no money they had no power. So abigail is busy in court rooms trying to make the case but other western women continue to accumulate political power by moving from Community Building to largescale social reform which was also catching on in the late 19th century, later 19th century america. Many women enlisted in the powerful, nationwide womens christian temperance union. It began as a campaign against what jeopardized the family particularly drunkenness and prostitution. Before long, however, wctu embraced suffrage and abroad do everything agenda, that is what was called that included sanitation, labor regulations, pure food and drug laws, rehabilitation of prostitutes, starting up kindergarten. This pragmatic shift was especially popular in the very practical west. Contrary to its lofty image, wctu still one of the largest and most important political organizations in American History gave tens of thousands of women a path from the home into the larger world of personal growth, social reform and politics by strongly influence Public Policy before women could even vote, wctu strengthen their claim to the rights of full citizenship. There were many many many more women in the Temperance Movement than in the Suffrage Movement. It to neglected area of American History probably because it was dominated by women. Western suffrists have been stereotyped like eastern counterparts as white but a surprising number were women of color. Native americans, hispanic, black and asian women, political activism first and foremost meant ensuring their Family Survival amidst the systemic racism that was just as bad in the west as in the east. Many of the wests First Chinese women had been sold back in china by their indigenous parents or kidnapped to become sex slaves in california, yet polly venus who we we see here escaped from sexual slavery to marry and become a beloved homesteader on idahos famine river. Or homestead is now a National Historic landmark. Despite difficulties but we can hardly even imagine, stalwart suffragists later emerged from the ranks of women of color to amplify their peoples voices as well as their sexes. They want to speak up for native american women, black women, asian women as well as women. They include Elizabeth Ainslie, a black teacher and cofounder of colorados nonpartisan equal suffrage association. A very Important Organization at a time when a lot of the Suffrage Movement was segregated in many instances, and Elizabeth Ainslie helped provide an alternative to that. And lolita algar, a hispanic journali and rights activist from texas, she is shown here, at one point the Texas Rangers came to break up her Printing Press and she prevented them, barred the door and repelled them, prevented them from getting in to do that. Native american activists such as suzette lefresh and sarah luca, there she is, a writer and or rater, inspired influential white women to join their fight for equality for the west aboriginal people. One of their recruits, helen hunt jackson, a prominent journalist, went on to write a century of dishonor, a blistering history of treaty violations. She sent a copy to every member of congress. Then that didnt work so she wrote ramona, which perhaps many of you read. It used to be on High School Reading lists, a perennial bestseller that presented the injustices of governments treatment of native peoples, in more accessible fictional form. Unfortunately she died before she knew that it had really captured the publics attention and started some of the reforms that she wanted to see happen for the California Mission indians. Suffragists have also been stereotyped as traditional wives and mothers. A striking number of these activists like women in general were single like hallie morse, homesteader who is the first female fire lookout, divorced, like Clara Shortridge fowlkes. A mother of 5 who became the first female lawyer. She was a real firebrand. Her brother became a senator. Of course she should have been a senator, but she actually started the position of public defender which was considered a radical thing, she championed the cause of public defenders and now they are everywhere but the first was in passed the bar and went on to become a crackerjack lawyer. Others were gay like montanas jeanette rankin, the first woman elected to the u. S. Congress. Or bisexual, like adelina warren. A new mexican educator and politician. By the 1890s, huge numbers of women such as luna kelly, a Nebraska Farm wife, help make the west the National Capital of the new progressive politics. She was also a poet who wrote a very rousing ballad called stand up for nebraska that brought everybody to their feet. Progressives upheld womens rights and importantly Economic Justice for average people and opposed the corrupt political machine, the corporate monopolies of the eras rapacious 1 . Up until this time there had been rich people in america but until the gilded age started after the civil war there werent these enormous inequities that separated the superrich from everybody else so this was something americans were just coming to terms with and that is how the Progressive Movement developed. The kansas homesteader turned lawyer, Mary Elizabeth lease, cofounded the new Peoples Party before she could even vote. The electrifying or rater held audiences in thrall for hours warning in her irish contralto voice that the us had become a government of wall street, by wall street and for wall street. Many progressive women also quietly helped to shape the laws of new western states down to the more genderneutral wording of their constitution. When progressive state of colorado and idaho and franchised women in 1893, and 1896, the west, which was already the national hotspot of suffrage because of wyoming and utah became a global epicenter of suffrage as well sharing the spotlight with the other settler societies of australia and new zealand. As immigration surged in the early Twentieth Century the public heatedly debated the question of who was a real american. Women wanted to know how could barely literate immigrant men right off the boat, they could vote but an educated woman born on home soil could not. In the west suffragists pointed to womens long record of service during ongoing settlement still going on and demanded full citizenship. Devising a successful formula for winning the vote in the holdout states, suffragists built successful coalitions with other forwardlooking nonpartisan Good Government groups, progressive labor unions, liberal republicans, certain churches who needed womens votes to promote their own agendas and suffrage had always been kind of a bit of a snooty middleclass, upperclass thing, mostly associated with white women even though there were lots and lots of women of color and to win in the holdout state they had to break through these barriers of race and class under the banner of unity and diversity. They also recruited women from different ethnic groups and poor working women, waitresses. This was the times that women were starting to work in factories and tanneries and seamstresses and lived away from home, whole new working class that had to be integrated into the Suffrage Movement so all women of different races and classes were enlisted to join and unofficial labor union of hardworking citizens whether they were seamstresses or waitresses who were entitled to vote. In oregon, doctor esther paul lovejoy, so beautiful in her picture who made house calls during the alaska gold rush, then founded the multiracial everybody is equal suffrage league. Her partners included harriet redmond, offer Job Opportunities for black women of a very limited so she worked as a janitor at the Us District Court and was also the president of portlands colored womens equal suffrage association. The sophisticated thirdgeneration western suffragists also mounted new creative campaigns that changed american politicking forever with marches, publicity stunts and the first button totebag and electrifying. In seattle, doctor coral smith eaton coauthored the washington womens cookbook. Votes for women for ruth things to eat. She was an accomplished mountaineer, with the state of washington, six peaks, she led a party of men and women, the women had to wear knickerbockers, sort of canvas shorts that buckle under the knee. She led the party on a 3week camping trip to carry a suffrage banner to the summit of mount rainier. He or she is in washington. The other washington. By 1914, suffragists had won in washington, california, oregon, arizona, kansas, nevada and montana. Most western women could now vote, before women in a single state back east. Ironically, by the time of the suffragists triumphs that year, demography synchronized with the rest of the country. Women no longer benefited from the settlement areas unprecedented opportunities as world war i loomed, societys conservative turn aggravated by womens economic and political gains created the predictable backlash. Even though rugged rodeo cowgirls were replaced by rodeo queens who waved sedately from their palominos. The history of the old west in general, the record of its women is not a seamless march of progress. Their history charts a jagged trajectory of advances on one front and retreats on another. Progress for some and declines for others. There is no way to balance colonizations benefits for white settlers and their defendants with the terrible cost to the regions original peoples. Or to reconcile the racism endured by women of color including the women of the Suffrage Movement with the gains made by their sex. To move forward, however, americans must engage humbly with the tragedies of our shared past and also take part in its triumphs, including womens ongoing empowerment. Before the first eastern greenhorns arrived in their covered wagons west had changed countless times during the 14,000 years of its history. Indeed its landscape of red, blue, and purple continues to shift today. The inspiring legacy of the overlooked westerners who helped define the independent, capable, active american woman, later personified in western boots and blue jeans is an important part of that long record. American womens journey toward equality did not begin, nor has ended with suffrage. As the struggle continues, they can take heart from their western foremothers who proved that despite formidable obstacles change is possible, even for rules once seemingly written in stone. Thank you. Thank you, Winifred Gallagher. That was great. We have been keeping track of questions from our audience and we have a couple to get us started to our viewers please note that we welcome your questions now. So please post them in the queue and a box and we will ask them of Winifred Gallagher. First question, i understand that the homesteader landowner status was huge for women but why did Congress Pass it with that particular language, who was the instigator for getting women into that bill and who was responsible for everyone going along with it . Good question. A big part of it was that the west desperately needed women. It was overrunning as we talked about earlier, they really wanted to get women into the west to have families. Settlement, settlement of the west really was a matter of settlement. It wasnt so much like the cavalry, there was terrible genocide of the indians but it was really a colonization occurred through settlement, people starting farms and villages and towns and moving the native american hispanic people who had been there out of the way so settlement was, settlement conquered the west. You couldnt do that without women to be wives and mothers and to bear the children and increase the number. It was also lincoln and the republicans, his branch of liberal minded republicans were more generally gender a gala terry and. Both parties worshiped and adored and respected women but the republicans were much more inclined to give them legal empowerment. It was a big bone of contention in the Suffrage Movement that they wouldnt enfranchise women when they enfranchised formerly enslaved men. The republicans were afraid that if you put the women and too it would be too much and they would not be able to get the black men enfranchised. There were a lot of factors at work but i think the fact that they really needed women for settlement is a big one. Thank you. Heres another question that just came in. I dont recall the names of the women that Winifred Gallagher identified as gay. Im curious if these women lived openly as lesbians during that time period. Interesting question. It is very hard to identify western women as gay because unlike certain gay men, they would get arrested for doing something that was illegal in a particular town, they would appear in the papers, there was nothing attached to being a gay woman. It was considered perfectly fine. It was considered perfectly fine for women to be best friends, they hugged each other, kissed each other, except in the same beds, lived together as maiden ladies score in a boston marriage. There was no opprobrium attached to women living with and having partnerships with other women. But i think the number i want to say, about 4 of women in the west in this era lived alone or with another woman. I was struck by the number in the book who had their closest relationships were with other women. Frances willard, the president of the wctu who we talked about, she was known as, described as the Eleanor Roosevelt of her day. A real fireball. Very much like Eleanor Roosevelt and she had relationships with men and women. Thank you. What was the background and incentive for men, where there any, who championed women struggle for achievement and equality . That is really good question. There were a number of good guys in the west, demonstrably more than in the east or the south. I think just a lot of men knew that it was right. One man said my wife is as smart as any man and smarter than most. Theres a sense especially in Settler Society where everybody was pitching in. The women were working as hard as the men and doing stuff that men did. It was just in that kind of practical pragmatic culture like why would you say that she couldnt vote when she does everything that i do. There was general fairness, like i mentioned in a speech, the washington territory in 1854, suffrage lost by one vote. They were men voting. So i think we have to give the men credit. Western men credit because all of those, without men, none of those suffrage bills would have been passed. Women had to talk men into supporting them so that is a good point. Was the western womans inclination to be more inclusive or expansive in their efforts, women of several backgrounds part of their success where it may have hurt the groups in the east . I think so. Although to be fair, women were doing, suffragists back east were doing so poorly, they didnt get their first state until, was it 1915 or 1916, they were just losing across the board, you can tell from pictures of Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b anthony, these were well educated upperclass women who considered themselves ladies, dressed like ladies, but they werent getting very far with that. You had to reach out both in the east and west beyond those class borders and the race borders which certainly in the west because the west actually was more multiracial than the east so there again it was part of that this is a Settler Society, we dont have so many laws and rules and regulations. The racial question came in from one of our viewers saying if the western states it encouraged suffrage were primarily white, what about suffrage for native american men and women . Some native american women and men didnt get the vote until the 1920s and even later. A number of native american women and men got the vote from an act that the people who promoted thought with the wonderful thing for native americans and it turned out to be a disaster. The tribal reservations to be apportioned into what they gave different people, if you claimed one of those plots like a homestead you got the right to vote. Some did get the right to vote but a lot of native women as we talk about, they campaigned for suffrage because they wanted to empower people, give native people more of a voice. It was for them, to be a native suffragist or black suffragist was a more complicated thing than to be a white suffragist who was just interested in getting the vote for her sex. This was a more complicated story. Okay. Speaking of complicated stories, going back to the earlier question about gay women in the west. A lot of fun working on that. Someone wrote in to say this is kind of great, i am probably very naive but how do we get information about the sexual preferences of these women. I find this fascinating but im genuinely curious about the source of this information. There have been academics who have researched it and done some digging, there are occasional cases where a woman was suffering from Mental Illness or somebody else she was suffering from a Mental Illness, so that got into the papers. There are records like that. A lot of them come from census figures. If you see a woman who only lived by herself or with another woman for certain period of time, in this whole era, 95 of women married. What was happening. So women who remain single, the other way to tell was sometimes money. If they had women who had some properties. Some possessions. Mostly, as you get later in the century, frances willard, president of the wctu and a lot of other women left correspondence with the person who was there soulmate and can you say are you sure, even will cath or who you would say, you see pictures of willa with her crewcut and necktie, she had a very passionate relationship with a female student, at the university of nebraska, do we know what they did in bed . No we dont. Academic resists, we cant actually say she was gay even though all her abiding relationships were with other women. So fascinating. Next question. When suffrage was passed, you may have suffered this already, i apologize if i missed it but when suffrage was passed for women in various states did the right to vote include any minority women . Did minority women have the right to vote when suffrage was passed . In these states, yes. Including minority women, minority women, although, it is tricky in cases where native american women were not enfranchised, different states have ideas about the legal rights of native people, some were relatively progressive. Oregon was not progressive at all. Even after the 19th amendment was passed in 1920, native american women still, some were not enfranchised. It is difficult to say in a statement, i would have to look at each state but generally, if you could if you could, if you could, if you could prove that you were a citizen, i would say yes, you could vote. Thank you. Next question. Were there traditional, this is in quotes, traditional women who worked against womens progressive politics, the women who help defeat the era . Yes. There was a vigorous antiSuffrage Movement, it was called the antisuffrage party. They were in fact, George Pattons mother. Beatrice patton. She led the troops in california. And they said that if women got the vote they would grow mustaches, men would have to stay home and change the diapers and the within would be cavorting around in jewelry boxes. They had this idea it was very lurid is that within would be flirting with men in jewelry boxes. A very vigorous antiSuffrage Movement in both places but i would say it was more very relevant. I am impressed women accomplished so much, childbirth and child rearing, how do they balance this. Scott dunaway, the mother of woman suffrage, this was a woman, homestead daughter, her parents went west in covered wagons, she grew up on a homestead, she married a homesteader when she was 14 or 15, she had 5 or 6 children. They developed one homestead, they sold, build up another farm and he lost it all in a stupid legal maneuver. And then he got hurt in a wagon accident and could never work again. Abigail moved the whole family to portland, started up a womans newspaper and started campaigning for suffrage and somehow supported everybody. So these women were made of sterner stuff. Sterner than me. I cant even imagine what they must have been that is just amazing. A specific question about the homestead act and acreage. Could men and women equally qualify for 180 acres . 160. For couple, was that doubled . Depends on where you were. In oregon in 1850, the nations land claim act was seen as a way, as a sign of womens empowerment, a single guy could only get 160 acres but a married man and his wife could get 320. She couldnt get it on her own but as a couple they could get 320. Mostly 160 acres. The homestead laws did not allow, in a funny way, a wife could not file her own claim separately from her husband. In a way it privileged single women many of whom were widows, were abandoned, various states of singleness. Thank you. This is a question to you. Was there ever a point in your research that you felt gratitude for being born in this time period. Do you feel you were born in the wrong century . No. How discouraged we get in america, between the pandemic and our polarization if ever there was a good time to be a woman it is now. If you look at what women went through, they were really they were chattel. Harriet beecher stowe, the author of uncle toms and famously said that a married woman has the same rights as a slave. They were their husbands property. The way they built their evolution from taking their Domestic Authority in their home, taking it out to the community by starting Community Organizations and broadening up to social reforms and finally suffrage, it was amazing, their efforts and i think my own mother did not have the opportunities that her brother had and this is just one generation back. I can remember when i was in high school and College Reading articles, young womens magazine saying if you were going out with a boy you better wear flat shoes if you were tall, dont act too smart. Act dumb. This isnt all that long ago. We have a great deal to be thankful for. I agree. We are just about out of time and running out of questions which i will leave you with this last question that circles back to your book. Who was your favorite woman from the book . A really hard question. I love doctor Esther Lovejoy and we did see her picture. She was the one washing clothes with her husband who was a surgeon. Born in a logging camp, very poor family, big family, lots of children. Almost no schooling but she was very impressed by the woman doctor who delivered one of her baby sisters and said to herself when i grow up i want to be a doctor. By the time she was a teenager, her parents moved into portland, worked in a hotel and one of the guests in the hotel was a professor who started tutoring her. She was very bright and by the time she got to the point she could apply to medical school, she clerked in the First Department stores in the west. She was a salesclerk. To make money to go to University Medical school. She was one of three women in her class around 1890. She married a surgeon in her class and they practiced for a little she married a surgeon in her class and they practiced for a little while in portland and said no, took off to the alaska gold rush. Started a hospital, prevented a terrible epidemic. She came back to portland. Only visited him for summers. Had a baby, got her mother to watch the baby, carried on her medical practice, started the suffrage campaign, broke all kinds of class and race berries, ran for congress in 1920. She didnt win, but she spent the rest of her life working for womens medical associations here and internationally and wrote two books. Host an astounding woman but everyone should look her up. Thank you so much, Winifred Gallagher. What a fascinating evening of fascinating women. We wish you all the best with of the book. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. I want to remind our audience that Winifred Gallaghers book new women in the old west from settlers to suffragists, an untold american story is available for sale from our partner, politics and prose. We are putting up a link in the chat box right now. If you follow that link, you can get a 10 discount on the book which i would like to extend a special thank you to every one of our viewers who joined us tonight and for your great questions. If you are enjoying American History tv, sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency, and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter today and watch American History tv every saturday or anytime online, cspan. Org history. Weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. Every saturday American History tv documents americas story on sunday, boov brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. 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