Votes for Women Trail for Kentucky

Miss Lizzie Hunt Chinn (16 August 1877 - 10 September 1921) was one of the organizers and speakers mentioned by Christine Bradley South in the 1915-1916 President's Report for the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA). That year the KERA activity ramped up with a total of 83 counties visited and 186 speeches made by national activists, e.g., President Carrie Chapman Catt from the National American Woman Suffrage Association, as well as state and local advocates from Frankfort: Atlanta (Mrs. Arch) Pool, wife of the Frankfort State Journal editor, Rebecca Averill, and Lizzie Hunt Chinn. Chinn was the daughter of Elizabeth Elliott Hunt Chin (1848-1890) and Franklin Bryan Chinn (1845-1922), an attorney in Frankfort. She was the second of four daughters: Anna Bell Chinn Thatcher (1875-1960), Prudence Blackburn Chinn Mason (1880-1961), and Virginia Clement Chinn Carr (1884-1962). While there is not much information of her clubwork other than the mention in KERA President South's report in 1916, she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (tracing her lineage through the Chinns). During the Boone Day celebrations with the Kentucky Historical Society in 1919, Lizzie Hunt Chinn was given the honor of unveiling the Stephen Foster bust while her aunt, Jennie Chinn Morton, read an original poem.

According to an auction house website, Lizzie Hunt Chin was close friends with the artist Paul Sawyier, and her descendants have a pastel sketch by Sawyier of her as she was canoeing on the Kentucky River.

Lizzie Hunt Chinn died on 10 September 1921 at her home, 514 Wapping Street (where she lived still with her widowed father), from heart failure due to typhoid fever. She is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section L, Lot 254A, Grave 3 with the rest of her family.

Amelia Katherine Weitzel (4 December 1871 - 18 October 1955) was a member of the Franklin County Equal Rights Association, and in 1916 she co-chaired (with Rose Sower) the Kentucky Equal Rights Association's literature committee. She grew up in Frankfort with six siblings; her parents Caroline Boland and Jerome Weitzel owned and operated the Capital Hotel until it burned down in 1917 (see the Paul Sawyier painting here). During World War I, Amelia attended the first class of the National Service School for two weeks in Washington D.C., and then she was appointed assistant State Director for the Womens' Bureau of the Red Cross in Kentucky. After the war she moved to Washington D.C. where she lived with her older sister Carrie and younger brothers George (a lawyer), Nicholas (electrical engineer) and Robert (government research staff). She died at her home in Washington D.C. on 18 October 1955, and she is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section E, Lot 52, Grave 11.

Lucy Monroe Flint (1864-1916) was a Louisville suffragist, educator and businesswoman. She served on the National Afro-American Council and served as a corresponding secretary and bookkeeper for the Baptist Woman’s Convention, the Baptist Foreign Mission Board, and the Baptist Women’s Educational Convention. She also served as a director of the Louisville Colored Orphans Home. Flint became a secretary, bookkeeper, and traveling companion for Madam C. J. Walker. When Walker retired, Flint became general manager of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Walker attended Flint’s funeral, and Flint is buried in the Louisville Cemetery. In the image below, Madam C.J. Walker (driving) is seen with (left to right) her niece Anjetta Breedlove, her factory manager Alice Kelly, and company bookkeeper Lucy Flint in 1911.

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Rose E. Edwards Sower (22 August 1878 - 29 November 1930) was an active member of the Franklin County Equal Rights Association especially in 1915 and 1916. She was the daughter of James S. Edwards of Pleasureville, Shelby County Ky., and Josephine "Josie" Ecton Edwards, daughter of Mildred (1819-1885) and Smallwood (1821-1893) Ecton through whom she traced her lineage as a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She married John Rodman Peter Sower (1877-1937) of Frankfort on November 1898 and they had three children together: John Peter Leonard Sower (1899–1943), Mary Anita Sower Smith (1901-1947), and Frank William Sower (1910–2012). They lived at 112 Wilkinson Street, and the Sower hardware store was located at 217 St Clair. Image supplied by her descendent, John Sower of Frankfort.

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As a member of Franklin County Equal Rights Association, she was appointed to a committee in 1915 to organize "a permanent suffrage window in the city," and she was appointed the chair of the statewide suffrage organization's ways and means committee that year to organize a whirlwind of fundraising activity. In 1916 she was appointed with Amelia Weitzel of Frankfort as co-chair of the statewide Literature Committee, and chaired the State Publicity Council for the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. She was honored then with the role of representing Kentucky on the Publicity Committee for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She served also as the corresponding secretary for Franklin County ERA, and reported to the state convention that fall a very busy year, incluing a "Votes for Women" automobile parade at the Franklin County Fair in August 1916.

Sower died on November 29, 1930, at the age of 51 after a short illness. She is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section F, Lot 53N, Grave 6.

Pearl Mackey VanZant (January 11, 1875 - September 22, 1949) was one of the fifteen delegates from the Kentucky Equal Rights Association who participated at the "Golden Lane" silent protest at the Democratic National Convention in St. Louis on June 14, 1916. Kentucky's anti-suffragist governors J.C.W. Beckham and A.O. Stanley attended as delegates-at-large, and the official delegates of the Democratic Party of Kentucky were directed by the state convention on May 24th which still refused to endorse a woman suffrage plank. VanZant is listed as an attendee by the name of "Mrs. H.S. Vansant of Frankfort."

Pearl Mackey, daughter of Sarah Clementine Grubbs (1833–1923) and John Cottonton Mackey (1830–1896), was born in Randolph, Kentucky on January 11, 1875, the eighth of ten children on a farm in Metcalfe County. On December 11, 1892, she married Henry S. VanZant (1873-1917), also of Metcalfe County. He ran in 1894 as a Republican candidate for county clerk and lost by one vote. He then studied for the bar and worked finally as a trial lawyer. Their only son Russell was born December 7, 1900. In 1902 Henry S. VanZant was appointed as a U.S. gauger and they lived in Owensboro for five years until he was appointed chief clerk in the insurance department of the Commonwealth. They then came to live at 321 Shelby Street in Frankfort by 1910. After her husband's death in 1917, she continued there as a boardinghouse keeper which was "a second home to legislators and Capitol employees" (Advocate Messenger, Sept. 25, 1949). She died on September 22, 1949, after an illness of several months and is buried in Randolph, Kentucky at the Pleasant Hill Cemetery near her parents and siblings.

Adele Frances Gaines Murray (26 September 1873 - 31 January 1957) was a member of the Franklin County Equal Rights League and the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1915 she worked with Mary Rogers Newman and Rose Edwards Sowers to maintain a "permanent suffrage window in the city, in which literature and other suffrage advertising matter would be displayed." (Woman's Journal, October 2, 1915)

Adele Gaines was the third of four children born to Elizabeth Ann "Bettie" Noel and John Wesley Gaines of Frankfort. She married Joseph Howard Murray (1877-1937) who was a storekeeper and distillery gauger and then an inspector and Prohibition officer for the federal government. Adele Murray died in Danville, at the Kentucky State Hospital from chronic myocarditis due to arterioscorosis. The year of her birth on her gravestone (1873) is different from that on her death certificate (1874) - which might have been a clerical error by the hospital. She is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery Section P, Lot 16, Grave 4.

Sarah Anne McGarvey (3 June 1865 - 20 June 1951) was the daughter of a strict traditionalist Rev. John William McGarvey, President of the College of the Bible in Lexington. Her father preached for many years at the Broadway Christian Church but took his family out of that church in protest of the introduction of instrumental music in 1902. They began attending the Chester Street Christian Church instead. Meanwhile, Sarah McGarvey had studied piano at the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City and was a pupil of Rafael Joseffy there. She also studied with Moritz Moszkowski in Berlin. She was a music teacher at Miss McElhinny's School as early as 1898 and by 1903 she had been hired to teach piano at Hamilton Female College. She marched with the Hamilton College delegation in the 1916 suffrage parade in Lexington.

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Sarah A. McGarvey lived with her parents and various members of her large family, traveling often to Europe, and she never married. She was still working as a music teacher at the age of 74 according to the 1940 census. She was living at the Goodrich Nursing Home in Lexington when she died after a stroke in 1951. She is buried in the Lexington Cemetery near her parents in Section F, Lot 23, Part S

Alice Tribble Karr (24 May 1881 - 15 July 1972) was a mathematics instructor at Transylvania University when she participated in the state's largest suffrage parade in Lexington in 1916. She and her two siblings, Anna May Karr Wilkerson (1878-1962) and Edwin Matt Karr (1884-1936), lived together with their parents, Olive Tabitha Phelps (1848-1931) and Perry Culbertson Karr (1844-1913) in Lexington all their lives. Participating in the parade did not seem to hurt her position at the University since by 1920 she had become dean of women for the Hamilton Female College - the women's school that was part of Transylvania until it was closed in 1932. Before Hamilton closed, Karr went to work for Henry Clay High School as a mathematics instructor until she retired.

Alice T. Karr outlived her siblings and died in Lexington in 1972 at 91 years of age. She is buried in the Lexington Cemetery.

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Lucy Phenton Pattie (4 December 1842 - 14 November 1922) of Farmdale had been teaching for several years before she ran for and won the 1893 election for Franklin County public school superintendent, nine years before all Kentucky women could vote in school elections. She had been a frequent speaker at local and regional teacher institutes as well as Sunday School conventions. She won again in 1894, 1898, and finally in 1904. She was elected President of the new League for School Improvement. After she retired from teaching in 1911, she was hired as an assistant to the State Superintendent of Public Education, and worked in that office for many years thereafter.

Lucy Phenton Pattie was the daughter of Mary Jane Smart and William S. Pattie who lived on a farm near the Kentucky Military Institute (KMI) and later the Stewart Home School. She is also famous for being the only woman member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity since she had, during the Civil War, safely kept the fraternity papers from the chapter at KMI. She and her sister Mary Lou sold the family farm in 1905 and they went to live in Frankfort on Fourth Avenue. She then became active in and became president of the Joseph H. Lewis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She died after a stroke of apoplexy in her home at the age of 80 and is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery in Section A, Lot 10, Grave 10.

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Alice Bridgeford Carrier Day (8 March 1878 - 10 January 1954) contributed to the work by the Louisville Woman Suffrage Association running the suffrage tent at the 13th Annual Kentucky State Fair in September 1915. Mrs. Day instituted a "Corn Day," which served as a fundraiser for the Kentucky Equal Rights Association as many farmers were induced to contribute a bushel of corn to the cause. That year, as was reported to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, "beat all previous records in every respect, and a progressive suffrage spirit was noticeable in the attitude of the thousands of visitors.... More cards were signed in the six days than there were members of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association three years ago."

More about Mrs. Day can be found in her KWSP biosketch. She is buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville in Section D, Lot 59 - near her son (Robert M. Carrier, Jr.) and not far from her parents, Madeline Robinson and William Lawrence Bridgeford. Her two husbands (Robert Moorhead Carrier and Edward Marvin Day) are buried elsewhere.

Halcion "Hallie" B. Hanks Speer (February 14, 1874 - December 23, 1946) was appointed state chair of the State and County Fair work by the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1916. She was very likely a member of the Franklin County Equal Rights Association and might be part of the group photographed during the 1916 "Golden Lane" protest at the Democratic convention in St. Louis since her husband Kentucky Senator George Grove Speer (1869-1959) was sent there as a Kentucky delegate. He retired from his second term representing Anderson/Franklin/Mercer counties to serve as State Banking Commissioner under Governor A.O. Stanley.

Hallie Speer was born in Lawrenceburg to a large combined family of her mother Harriet "Hattie" C. Taylor and Joseph M. Hanks. She married George Grove Speer, a lawyer in Lawrenceburg, on April 18, 1894. They moved to Frankfort sometime after the birth of their son Carroll William Speer (1895-1955) where George became the vice-president of a bank. By 1921 George had created his own company, Speer Service Agency (accountants), and they lived at 120 West Second. Hallie Speer died from her illnesses due to heart disease at the King's Daughters Hospital in Frankfort on December 23, 1946. She is buried in the Lawrenceburg Cemetery next to her husband in Section 13, Lot Number 74, Grave Number 5.

Eliza Eloise Brown Baily (11 December 1845 - 25 October 1923) had returned as a widow to Frankfort when she joined up as a new member of the Frankfort Equal Rights Association in 1904. She had been married to Col. Joseph Baily, V.S.A. Medical Director in the Department of Texas. She returned upon his death in 1894 to live in her childhood home, Liberty Hall, with her sister Margaretta Mason Brown Barret and Mary Yoder Brown Scott. She was also a charter member of the Susannah Hart Shelby Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and served as a president of the Woman's Club of Frankfort.

She died in Frankfort and is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section N, Lot 190, Grave 7.

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Mary Brown Russell Day (1846? - 29 October 1939) was a founding member of the Frankfort Equal Rights Association. She was the daughter of the well-connected socialite Ann Maria Julian and wealthy steamboat Captain John W. Russell, growing up on a large farm outside Frankfort. By 1860, John W. Russell held 35 people enslaved there. Mary was the third of five siblings: Cordelia Russell Gaines; Margaret "Maggie" J. Russell; John J. Russell (born c1850); and, Anna P. Russell Maus.

In 1880 Mary Russell married a Chicago newspaper reporter William E. Day, and according to the 1880 census they lived on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. He died on November 6, 1881, in Frankfort. She went to live with her older sister Margaret in Frankfort and died there on October 29, 1939. She is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section L, Lot 225, Grave 14A next to her husband and near her parents.

Margaret Julian Wood Gaines ((29 November 1829 - 11 January 1919) was a charter member of the Frankfort Equal Rights Association. She was the daughter of Ellen Julian (from Virginia) and William Wood (from England). She married in 1854 a merchant and distillery owner William A. Gaines (1831-1872) of Gaines, Berry & Company whose offices today can be found at 229 West Main Street in downtown Frankfort, Kentucky. They had three children, two of whom lived past childhood: the elder, Jennie Page (3 April 1855-3 July 1916) was briefly married in the 1870s and is listed in the 1880 census as "Jennie Crutcher" living with her mother. William A. Gaines was born 7 November 1856 but no information is found on him after 1870. As the widow, she continued to fight for her husband's most successful legacy, "Old Crow" bourbon. By the 1870s, despite the death of William in 1872, their company had expanded their holdings on Glen's Creek to nearly 50 acres with several different distilleries, including The Hermitage and Old Crow. After a dispute over ownership of the name, “Old Crow” was decided in 1915 by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of Gaines. National Distillers purchased Gaines in 1934. The Old Crow brand prospered and became one of the first national sour mash whiskey brands.

In February 1904, Mrs. M.J. (Margaret Julian) Gaines, a founding member of the Frankfort Equal Rights Association, was listed as an attendee of the club's meeting with Laura Clay, president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, at the home of William and his daughter Rebecca Averill. By 1912 Margaret and her daughter Jennie were listed in the city directory as living at 108 W. Clinton Street. She fell in her home at the age of 89 and died soon thereafter (11 January 1919). She is buried near her husband in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section L, Lot 218, Grave 11.

Stella Rose Van Arsdell (25 July 1871 - 16 August 1957) was born in Harrodsburg - the third daughter of parents Rebecca Williams and David Van Arsdell, a merchant/tailor. She married on October 14, 1896, Marvin Dennison Averill 2nd (30 Dec 1869-11 July 1927), a pharmacist in Frankfort. They had three children: William David (5 Jan 1898 - 8 Jan 1983); Carolyn Rose Averill Stevenson (20 Mar 1904 - 27 July 2004); and, Margaret Allen Averill (11 May 1905 - 26 Oct 2001). In the early years of her marriage, she lived at 206 Washington Street, the home of her husband's father William H. Averill, sister Rebecca G. Averill, and older brother Thomas P. Averill and his wife, Mary. Together they founded the Frankfort Equal Rights Association in 1902 at a meeting in their home.

After the death of her father-in-law in 1904, she moved her family next door (207 Washington Street) where she lived until she became ill late in life. Her children married and they all moved to Ohio. Stella V. Averill died at New Castle Sanatarium in Henry County of a blood clot in the brain due to arteriosclerosis. She is buried near her family in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section L, Lot 22812, Grave 9.

Rebecca Gordon Averill (18 January 1862 - 21 October 1941) was born in Frankfort and lived all her life there. She served in many capacities at the First Presbyterian Church where her father, William H. Averill, was an elder. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR ID No. 76600) and regularly attended the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs meetings from 1901 onward. In 1902 she helped create the Frankfort Equal Rights Association which met in her home, 206 Washington Street, serving as secretary and then president in 1914. In 1909 she petitioned Kentucky Governor Willson to establish a society for African Americans "similar to that of the Kentucky Children's Home Society" which ran an orphanage in Louisville. She also taught in a Free Kindergarten for the poor children of working class and impoverished families in Frankfort. During World War I, she served as the KERA Chairman of Church Work - sending letters to every minister in Kentucky urging them to preach on woman's suffrage on Mother's Day. She also contributed to raising awareness about Home Service work of the Red Cross during World War I; and by 1919 Averill was elected Regent of the Susannah Hart Shelby Chapter of the NSDAR. From 1920-22 she worked on creating a DAR "mountain school" at Hueysville in Floyd County, modeled on the Hindman Settlement School.

At 79 years of age, on October 21, 1941, she died in her home of complications from bone cancer and is buried in the Frankfort Cemetery near her family in Section L, Lot 22812, Grave 17.

Dolly Frances Winsett Manire (November 6, 1874 - December 27, 1965) was active with the Christian County Woman Suffrage League, and she served as an election official in the Haley’s Mill Precinct of Christian County, Kentucky from 1920 to 1957. She also was elected sheriff, Judge and county clerk. She was the eldest daughter of Celia Jane Keith and Silas Jackson Winsett, and she grew up in Scates Mill, Christian County. She worked as a teacher in the public schools of Christian County, and married Jeptha Lemuel Manire in 1896. She then worked as a teacher only periodically as she began having children: six daughters and four sons. They lived on a farm on Route 2 near Crofton, and by 1912 she and her husband had organized the construction of the Haley's Mill Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints of which he became an Elder. J.L. Manire died in 1934, and in 1965, Manire died of a heart attack in the Jennie Stuart Hospital in Hopkinsville. She is buried near her husband and several children at Haley's Mill "Mormon" Cemetery on North Greenville Road in Christian County.

Anna Dudley McGinn Lilly (22 February 1872 - 30 July 1948) was born in
Maysville, Kentucky, the 2nd child and daughter of daughter of John B.
and Mary E. (Sheppard) McGinn. Her older sister was Evelyn Austin McGinn
Pates (1869-1952) and younger brother Samuel Rogers McGinn (1883-1952).
She lived with her family in Versailles where her father was minister of
the Christian Church, and she was married there on October 19, 1883, to
Grant Everett Lilly (1865-1940) of Estill County, Kentucky. According to
the 1910 census, they lived in Richmond (424 Lancaster Avenue) and had
four children - three living: daughter Austin Page Lilly (a teacher), a
son John Marion Clay Lilly (an electrical engineer), and a younger son,
Grant E. Lilly, Jr., who died at the age of 12 in 1916. Anna D. Lilly
was very involved in civic work, joining the Daughters of the American
Revolution in 1912 and leading the Richmond Women's Club, and she worked
as the editor of the Kentucky Register from 1916 until the family sold
it in 1917. That year she chaired the Madison County Woman's Committee
for selling Liberty Bonds - and was mentioned in the Report for the KERA
convention in 1917 for her work in raising $40,000. She was also
co-chair for many Madison County Red Cross campaigns. The Lillys moved
to Lexington in 1918 (living in the prestigious new suburb Mentelle
Park), and she joined the Central Kentucky Woman's Club and the D.A.R.
chapter there where she eventually became regent (and of the state
1923-26). In 1920, according to an oral history interview in 1990 with
her daughter, she traveled by train with Austin to Chicago to attend the
National American Woman Suffrage Association convention. She was a
member of the Colonial Dames of Kentucky, and she was organizing
president of the Kentucky branch of the Huguenot Society of the Founders
of Manakin Towne and of the Paul Revere chapter of the Children of the
American Revolution. She served on the board of the Henry Clay Memorial
Foundation and began work on making Ashland a state shrine. Her work
with Sesqui-centennial Jubilee Celebration of Lexington in 1925 included
the creation of the film "Historic Lexington," and many visuals featured
in the film are archived in her papers at the University of Kentucky.
She is probably most famous for leading the charge in 1928 to petition
the state legislature to approve a bill designating "My Old Kentucky
Home" as the official state song. She is buried in Section J, Lot 692 of
the Richmond Cemetery next to her husband and children.

Louise A'Glaire Parlin Lillard (March 13, 1876 - August 14, 1965) served as Auditor for the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) in 1915 and 1916 and she also served as KERA Chairman for the 8th Congressional District of Kentucky to keep in touch with the legislators and lobby for suffrage. She is buried next to her husband, William Franklin Lillard (1869-1918) in the Lawrenceburg Cemetery, Section 9, Lot Number 73, Grave Number 9.

Eugenia S. Dunlap Potts (April 14, 1839 or 1840 - February 29, 1912) was a journalist, businesswoman, poet, musician, a clubwoman and philanthropist. A member of the Lexington chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), Potts worked to support the goals of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA). She included in 1891 a column in her newspaper, The Lexington Record, that praised the work undertaken by Laura Clay on behalf of women "breadwinners" in Kentucky. In 1901 she wrote on behalf of KERA to stop the Kentucky Senator who eventually championed the law revoking Lexington's partial suffrage law allowing women to vote in school board elections. At 71 and in poor health she continued to attend meetings of the UDC. In early January 1912 she came from a meeting in the Confederate Room at the Fayette County Courthouse, slipped on the stone steps in the snow and broke her hip. Potts died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Lexington on February 29, 1912, and her funeral was led by the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Lexington. She was buried in the Lancaster Cemetery in the Dunlap lot near her parents in Section 4, Lot 7.
 

The sculptor Enid Bland Yandell (6 October 1869 – 12 or 13 June 1934) was a strong advocate for women's rights. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Yandell traveled extensively and was one of the first women to join the National Sculpture Society. She set up her first artist's studio in her parents' home on Broadway (between 3rd & 4th Street) in Louisville as early as 1891. She lived for two years in Chicago while working in the artist community working on the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, then she moved to New York City and lived at 23 East 75th Street with her studio located at . She often traveled to Paris and lived there from 1895-1903 while living with the Hungarian expatriate Baroness Geysa Hortense de Braunecker (1869-1960). She had a studio in the Impasse du Main while living in Paris. In 1908 she founded the Branstock School in the old Thaxter Academy building, and operated a tea house and garden nearby while living in a home at the corner of Davis Lane and School Street in Edgartown, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, she got involved with the vibrant activism in New York Ciity with the working women's campaigns for women's suffrage - participating in at least one suffrage parade that has been documented by biographer Juilee Decker with a photograph of her marching at the head of a group of women sculptors in New York City. She also contributed to at least two suffrage-related art exhibits in New York. She died in Boston, Mass. and was buried in Louisville next to her parents and sister Maud at the Cave Hill Cemetery. Her grave site is in Section O, Lot 396.

Kentucky First Lady Mary Jeanette "Nettie" Pitzer Black (10 December 1859 — 10 November 1942) was the wife of Lt. Governor then Governor James D. Black (Democratic) whose term lasted only from May 19, 1919 to December 9, 1919. She was born in Barboursville to Mary Elizabeth Glass and Thomas J. Pitzer and married on December 2, 1875, in Barbourville. The couple had three children: Pitzer Dixon, Gertrude Dawn, and Georgia Clarice. She was a vice president of the Civic League which undertook city beautification projects such as raising funds for the public square fountain and organized the Chautauqua summer program. She was also a member of other social clubs in Barbourville such as the Tuesday Club and the Methodist Episcopal Ladies Aid. It is not clear from the newspapers that she was ever a member of the Barbourville Equal Rights Association which started in 1897. However, there are instances where her husband, while Lt. Governor of Kentucky, was openly supportive of women's suffrage. In 1916 she was a part of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association's Democratic Suffrage Plank Committee. She died of chronic nephritis on November 10, 1942, and was buried in the mausoleum with her husband in the Barbourville Cemetery.

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Dr. Florence Brandeis (9 October 1860 - 8 January 1941) was one of Louisville's first women physicians. She was a member of both the Woman’s Club of Louisville and of the Woman Suffrage Association of Louisville (LWSA). She was a cousin of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and her brother was Albert Brandeis (1858-1913) who was also a member of LWSA. She and her brother are buried in Louisville at the Temple Cemetery in Plot A-5.

On January 6, 1920, Kentucky became the 23rd state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, which stated: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." This took place in the new Kentucky Capitol building that had opened in 1910, and was the result of many years of lobbying by Kentucky activists determined to win their right to vote.

Then on March 29th, and with the leadership of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) standing around him, Governor Edwin P. Morrow signed a bill giving women in Kentucky Presidential suffrage. This important event was captured in an iconic photograph archived in the Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/97510716/. Kentucky Governor Edwin P. Morrow is seated and the First Lady Katherine W. Morrow (former president of the Pulaski County Equal Rights Association) is behind himand KERA President Madeline McDowell Breckinridge is standing at his right shoulder.

Despite the fact that Kentucky ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in January, the fate of the amendment is still in question, since one state was still needed to ratify it. This state law guaranteed that Kentucky women would be able to vote in the November 1920 Presidential election, regardless of the status of the federal amendment. Even though KERA (and Governor Morrow) opposed a state constitutional amendment - a goal that Laura Clay, with funding from her sister Sallie Clay Bennett, continued to lobby for - the General Assembly moved forward with a statewide suffrage bill.

Katherine Hale Waddle Morrow (25 November 1878 - 8 September 1957) was the eldest daughter of eight children of Mary Austin Hail and Hon. Odolphus Ham Waddle, a lawyer and judge in Somerset. (Note the difference in spelling of her middle name - her grandparents' name is spelled "Hail" on their tombstones in Somerset.) She married Edwin Porch Morrow (1877-1935) on June 18, 1903, in Somerset; and, they had two children: Edwina Haskell Morrow (12 July 1904- 6 June 1998) and Charles Robert Morrow (11/12/1905 - 1/5/1962).

According to a report by the Courier-Journal in 1916, she participated with Mrs. Edward C. (Virginia Hazelrigg) O'Rear, Mrs. Augustus E. (Mary Ekin) Willson and Mrs. John Glover (Christine Bradley) South in the Kentucky Equal Rights Association's Suffrage Plank Committee for the Republican Party. The Republican National Convention met in Chicago in June 1916 and narrowly passed a suffrage plank which was a modified version of the language presented by the National American Woman Suffrage Association - adding a clause that asserted the states would determine the fate of woman suffrage.

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Her husband, Edwin P. Morrow, was the city's attorney and for a short time the U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. After several failed bids for state office as a Republican, he finally was elected the 40th Governor of Kentucky from December 1919 to December 1923. Soon after taking office, he signed the bill ratifying the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and it is likely that his wife Katherine is in the famous photo of this event. Perhaps she is the person standing behind the governor with her hands on his chair (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Morrow_signs_Anthony_Amendment.jpg). A few weeks later signed into law a statewide woman suffrage provision in case the federal amendment did not succeed in time for the 1920 presidential elections. He was the first cousin of Christine Bradley South, president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association; and he was the nephew of Governor William O. Bradley, whose wife Margaret Duncan Bradley was also a leader in the Kentucky suffrage movement.

Katherine Waddle Morrow is buried near her husband and two children in the Frankfort Cemetery, Section N Lot 199C.

Mary Elizabeth Ekin Willson (15 August 1847 - 29 July 1934) was the First Lady of Kentucky 1907 to 1911 when her husband Augustus Everett Willson (1846-1931) became the 36th Governor. She was the daughter of Diana Craighead Walker and General (USA) James A. Ekin, and she married Willson, a lawyer, on 23 July 1877 in Louisville. The Willson's built the house around 1888 and occupied it until approximately 1892. In May 1916 Mary Ekin Willson participated with Mrs. Edward C. (Virginia Hazelrigg) O'Rear, Mrs. Edwin P. (Katherine Waddle) Morrow and Mrs. John Glover (Christine Bradley) South in the the Kentucky Equal Rights Association's Suffrage Plank Committee for the Republican Party. The Republican National Convention met in Chicago in June 1916 and narrowly passed a suffrage plank which was a modified version of the language presented by the National American Woman Suffrage Association - adding a clause that asserted the states would determine the fate of woman suffrage.

 This house is where Mary Jane Warfield Clay lived for some time after leaving her farm, Clermont as it was known at the time, when her husband Cassius Clay returned. She came to live in Lexington with her sister, Anne E. Warfield Ryland, and her daughters - and by 1878 her divorce was finalized. Letters to her family members, and particular to her daughters (especially Mary Barr, Sallie, Anne, and Laura), show her intense interest in current events and politics. Her eldest daughter, Mary Barr Clay, began traveling to national suffrage conventions in the 1870s - she invited the great suffragist orator Lucy Stone to come to Lexington to stay with her mother Mary Jane. By 1879 the Clay women had started the Fayette County Equal Rights Association. Mary Jane would mail Kentucky newspapers to her daughter Laura at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. At some point, she moved out of her sister's house into a nearby house fronting North Broadway. Her calling card with the address "78 North Broadway" is archived in the Laura Clay collection at the University of Kentucky's Special Collections and Research Center. Many thanks to the help from Peter Bourne who translated the house number from the nineteenth century into the current site now numbered 182 North Broadway. The house was built in 1838 for and by Reverend Stephen Chipley, a member of the City Council of Lexington. She lived here when in town and also with her brothers in Madison County when working her farm there.

Mary Creegan Roark (September 1, 1861 – February 1, 1922) was a college professor from Iowa who came to Kentucky after she married Ruric Nevel Roark; and, they led the Normal School in Glasgow before moving to Lexington for Ruric's job as Dean of the Normal School Department at the Kentucky State College (now the University of Kentucky). While in Lexington, she started the Lexington chapter of the Sorosis woman's club and she was a charter member of the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky. They lived in a house very near the college campus - the Lexington Directory for 1895 shows the address as 420 South Limestone, but the numbers changed in 1902.  Mary C. Roark was elected to the Lexington Public School Board in 1895, the first year when Lexington women could vote - and she became an officer for the Ky. Equal Rights Assoc. (corresponding secretary) by 1898. She chaired the Woman's Council Committee in 1903 which organized events for the Lexington Chautauqua that year in Woodland Park, and she continued to serve as an officer in KERA until 1911. She chaired the Education Committee of the Kentucky Federation of Women's Club after the Kentucky legislature revoked the partial woman suffrage law in 1902 - her work eventually paid off in 1912 with a law enacting school suffrage for all women in Kentucky. They moved to Richmond when her husband was appointed the founding president of Eastern Kentucky State Normal School there; and, after his death she was appointed the second president of what now is Eastern Kentucky University. Roark was the first female to serve as president of a public higher education institution in Kentucky history.

Dr. Mary Ellen Britton (April 5, 1855 - August 27, 1925) was an educator activist who spoke out for women's rights and suffrage as early as in the 1880s. Her speech, "Woman's Suffrage: A Potent Agency in Public Reform," in Danville in 1887 at the State Association of Colored Teachers was published on the front page of the American Catholic Tribune. She was one of the founders of the Colored Orphan Industrial Home and president of the Women's Improvement Club in Lexington. She was the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Lexington. She practiced out of her home at this site (which is still extant as a private residence) and often traveled to nearby towns to serve black populations unable to be admitted to hospitals. Her medical training was in hydrotherapy, phototherapy, thermotherapy, electrotherapy and mechanotherapy.

William Seidner Giltner (18 May 1827 - 15 December 1921) was the second husband of Mary Ellen Ogdon Duncan Giltner (1835-1920), president of the Twentieth Century Club in Covington and served in leadership roles in the Kenton County Equal Rights Association, the Newport Equal Rights Association and on the Executive Council of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. He had been president of Eminence College and a minister of the Eminence Christian Church - he too was a suffragist, often providing the invocation at Kentucky Equal Rights Association conventions. Professor Giltner was the last living member of the Eminence I.O.O.F. lodge, No. 140, of which he was a founding member since 1858. He sold the former Eminence College was sold to the State I.O.O.F. to serve as a home for Odd Fellows, wives and Rebeccas. Mary Giltner was his second wife - he is buried in the Odd Fellows Section of the Eminence Cemetery beside his first wife, Sarah Elizabeth “Lizzie” Raines (1838-1894).

Burial site of Mary Ellen Ogdon Duncan Giltner (15 September 1835 - 1 March 1920) of Covington, Kentucky. While she was president of the Twentieth Century Club in Covington she advocated for women to take an active role in serving on and voting for the local school board. Her home (1554 Madison Avenue in Covington) hosted many Twentieth Century Club events. She also served as treasurer of the Newport Equal Rights Association, and president of the Kenton County Equal Rights Association. She represented KERA on the Executive Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1903 to 1911. She was married twice: first to Joseph Duncan (1830–1889) and she was buried next to him in the Battle Grove Cemetery. Her second husband, William S. Giltner (1827-1921) had been president of Eminence College (which he founded in 1888) until it closed in 1895, and then he moved to Covington where he married Mary E. Ogdon Duncan in 1900. Professor Giltner was also a suffragist, often providing the invocation at KERA conventions -- he was a minister of the Eminence Christian Church. He is buried in the Odd Fellows Section of the Eminence Cemetery in Henry County.

The 28th annual Kentucky Equal Rights Association convention was held at the Phoenix Hotel in Lexington November 30 through December 1, 1917.

Tea on Friday was hosted by the Fayette County Equal Rights Association at the Y.M.C.A.; and that night there was a joint meeting with the Eastern Kentucky Educational Association featuring Mrs. Nellie McClung of Canada as the suffrage speaker, introduced by Madeline McDowell Breckinridge. On Saturday after committe work, a luncheon featured Mrs. McClung, as well as the Hon. Jeanette Rankin and Mrs. Breckinridge as speakers. The Central Kentucky Woman’s Club joined with KERA to for their program on Saturday afternoon.

A total of 66 delegates and members of the Board were present – President Christine Bradley South’s report indicated four new clubs formed, Laura Clay and Mrs. Harry Whiteside went to New York and aided in the campaigning there. Letters have been sent from State HQ to every member of the legislature of 1918 as well as personal interviews. “Sentiment is vastly changed and it seems now that this session will look kindly upon suffrage legislation (11).”

Officers for the year are: Christine Bradley South of Frankfort (President), Jessie Leigh Hutchinson of Lexington (First Vice President), Laura Clay of Lexington (Second Vice President), Caroline Leech of Louisville (Third Vice President), Elise Bennett Smith of Richmond (Corresponding Secretary), Virginia Robb McDowell of Louisville (Recording Secretary), Rebecca R. Judah (Treasurer), Mrs. Joseph Alderson of Middlesboro (Auditor), Josephine Post of Paducah (Member of NAWSA Executive Committee), and Julia D. Henning of Louisville (Chairman of Congressional Work). Plans to work for a federal amendment and state amendment granting suffrage are both presented, and the organization ultimately focuses on the federal. At this convention there is also a focus on patriotic work for the "war to end all wars."

Local reports were received from: Clark County, Crittenden County, Fayette County, Franklin County, Fulton County, Grayson County, Hardin County, Irvington, Kenton County, LaRue County, Madison County, Mason County, Middlesboro, Pulaski County, Scott County and Shelby County. In the Fayette ERA report was an interesting strategy combining patriotic work with suffrage campaigning - they printed pencils to be donated the to Red Cross and Y.W.C.A. to be put in the comfort bags for the Army and Navy:

"For the long, long day,
For the taxes we pay,
We want something to say,
VOTES FOR WOMEN."

Sophonisba "Nisba" Preston Breckinridge (1 April 1866 - 30 Jul 1948) graduated from Wellesley College with a mathematics degree and in 1892 was the first woman to pass the Kentucky bar. Her attempt to open a law practice in Lexington was not successful so she left to earn a Masters degree in political science and in economics at the University of Chicago - the first woman to do so. When she graduated from Chicago's School of Law with a J.D. in 1904, she was top in her class - and the first woman admitted to the Coif. She taught economics, policy and legal affairs in the University of Chicago's Department of Household Administration - and spent much of her vacation time working at the Hull House, a settlement home in the city. She also helped found the Chicago Women’s Trade Union League and the Chicago Chapter of the NAACP. She was an early member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1911 was elected as a national vice-president. In 1914 she ran for the seat of alderman representing the 7th Ward in Chicago - but lost in the primaries. She helped Jane Addams and others start the Women's Peace Party (serving as treasurer), and she joined the American delegation of the International Congress of Women (ICW) held at The Hague in 1915 which led to the creation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

When philanthropist/reformer Julia Lathrop created the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, Breckinridge was appointed dean. She and Edith Abbott, a former student of hers, began using research to train social workers in the field while taking graduate classes in research. In 1920 she was serving as acting president and negotiated with the president of the University of Chicago to merge her school into a new unit there. The University of Chicago's Graduate School of Social Service Administration was the first graduate school of social work in the country to be affiliated with a major university. In addition to adding new curriculum to the social workers' training, she introduced the case study method of instruction - a pedagogical approach used by law schools. By the 1920s she and Abbot had established The Social Service Review, the first scholarly journal dedicated to social work issues. She became a full professor of Social Economy in 1925 and in 1929 she became U. of Chicago's Samuel Deutsche Professor of Public Welfare Administration. She retired from the University when President Roosevelt in 1933 sent her as a delegate to the 7th Pan-American Conference in Uruguay - making her the first woman to represent the U.S. government at an international conference. She published many scholarly and journalistic works throughout her life, including a biography of her sister-in-law, the suffragist Madeline McDowell Breckinridge. She died in Chicago in 1947, and was buried in the Breckinridge plot in the Lexington Cemetery, Section O, Lot 126.
 

Carolyn Parker Verhoeff (12 August 1876 - 27 June 1975) worked with the College Club in Louisville, an organization that focuses on furthering women in education. A vegetarian, she wrote children's books on the humane treatment of animals. She was the Louisville Woman Suffrage Association's Chair of a Committee on Information, and she represented Louisville in the 1916 convention of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. That year she also participated in Chicago’s suffrage parade. Verhoeff began in 1922 working on behalf of animals - including the welfare of laboratory animals at the University of Louisville - and in 1963 an Animal Care Center was dedicated in her name at the UofL Medical-Dental Research Building. She lived until 1971 in a three-story brick-and-stone home at 731 S. Second Street. She died in 1975 at National Health Enterprises Northfield and was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Section F, Lot 491, Grave 9.

Lucy Adams Nield (1862? - 13 July 1930) was president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Kentucky, head of the Civics Department of the Woman's Club of Louisville and the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs. In 1908 the Louisville ERA elected her as first vice president and she served as president also - that year the LERA changed its name to the Woman's Suffrage Association of Louisville. She served as an orator for the Free Lecture Bureau of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association; and, she was elected in 1908 to chair the KERA Committee on Industrial Problems Affecting Women and Children. Nield died at her home, 1048 Cherokee Road, in Louisville and was buried with her husband at Elmwood Cemetery in Mount Vernon, Kentucky.

Caroline Apperson Leech (1850-1929): one of the earliest supporters of the suffrage movement in Louisville and president of the Louisville Young Women's Christian Temperance Union as well as a member of the Louisville ERA. She hosted peace activist and suffragist Ethel Snowden when she came to speak in Louisville. She advocated for women’s suffrage movement at the national convention of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1914, and she was elected president of the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs in 1917. She served as an officer in the League of Women Voters and chaired the Louisville Republican Women's Campaign Committee. She was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery, Section O, Lot 204, Grave 2.

This is the home that Adelaide (Addie) Schroeder Whiteside (1869-1942) and her husband Harry R. Whiteside built, overlooking the Cherokee Park in Louisville. Addie Whiteside helped initiate the Free Kindergarten Association in Louisville and spoke regularly in support of women's suffrage. She was a member of the Louisville Woman's Club as well as the Women's Progressive Service League. She lobbied the state Democratic conventions to include a woman suffrage plank and she served as a delegate to the Progressive Party convention in Chicago. A leading member of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, she spoke at state conventions and throughout Kentucky to help keep the local leagues going; she also campaigned in New Jersey and New York in 1915 on the issue of women's suffrage. In October 1915, she participated in New York's 28-hour campaign of suffrage speeches at Columbus Circle and carred the Kentucky banner in the suffrage parade up Fifth Avenue. In 1916 she served as the Kentucky representative for the national alliance for Charles Evans Hughes, Republican nominee for President, traveling through the Midwest on his “Golden Special” campaign train. In Fall 1918 she became the principal at the George D. Prentice School in the Louisville Public School System - and she continued as principal at that school until retiring in 1941 shortly before her death. She is buried in the Cave Hill Cemetery in the Schroeder family plot though there is no headstone to mark her grave.

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Louise Parlin Lillard was the auditor of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1915. She is also known as Mrs. W.F. Lillard.

In November 8-10, 1915, the Phoenix Hotel was the meeting site for the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. After an automobile parade down Lexington's Main Street on the afternoon of November 8th, the suffragists gathered for an afternoon reception, called a "Boston Tea Party" hosted by KERA President Madeline McDowell Breckinridge at Ashland (Henry Clay estate). That evening at the Old Opera House on North Broadway, the Lexington Mayor J.E. Cassidy welcomed the group and they listened to a lecture by Ethel Snowden, of London, England. A pacifist and socialist, the Viscountess Ethel Snowden was a speaker for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies in England and was on a world-wide lecture tour when she and her husband, Philip, came to Lexington. She was opposed to the use of violence in any form, including the tactics undertaken by the British suffragettes under the leadership of Mrs. Pankhurst. She had been in Kentucky several times before, at the Louisville Chatauqua in 1907, at the Louisville Woman’s Outdoor Art League in 1908, again in Louisville in 1913. She had been commissioned by the Fayette County Equal Rights Association to give a speaking tour of 10 lectures around Kentucky organized by Mrs. E.L. Hutchinson of Lexington: Covington Nov. 5^th, Richmond Nov 6^th, Lexington at the convention on the 8^th, Frankfort Nov 12, Louisville Nov 14, Owensboro Nov 18^th and Paducah on the 19^th. Her book The Feminist Movement (London, 1913) includes chapters on making the case for woman suffrage.

On November 9th, the meeting opened in the Ball Room of the Phoenix Hotel. The convention offered several other items of interest to the whole community, including a presentation by Madame Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary on the international peace movement. Schwimmer had been working since 1913 as an international press secretary of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, and she was living in London when the war broke out. She came to the U.S. to find champions in the woman suffrage movement for a neutral mediation of what came to be known as the Great War. She lectured on woman suffrage to support herself, but it was her stories about the horrors of war and her appeals for peace that got her the paying audiences she needed.

The format of the organization changed slightly for this year, with the addition of special committees such as news correspondent or state and county fairs, and the creation of an advisory board made up of men and women from across Kentucky. Walter J. Millard of Cincinnati spoke on Wednesday evening in a program entitled “For Men Especially” with the topic of his lecture: “Chivalry Up-to-Date.” According to the KERA minutes, he defined chivalry as “a generous act without expected compensation,” and that the granting of woman suffrage would bring chivalry “up-to-date.” As in the previous two years, a large number of local reports were received, this year from: Louisville, Shelby County, Franklin County, Meade County, Hardin County, Crittenden County, Bell County, Carlisle County, Boyd County, Clark County, Daviess County, Madison County, Hopkins County, Mercer County, Warren County, McCracken County, Hancock County, Woodford County and Fleming County.

Standing at the corner of East Main and Limestone Street (formerly the Maysville Road), this version of the Phoenix Hotel had been constructed in 1897 on top of three other taverns that had been placed there since the early 1800s. The building was demolished by Governor Wallace Wilkinson in 1981 to make way for what he proposed to be the World Coal Center - but this proposed corporate headquarters of major coal companies did not ever get built. In its stead is Phoenix Park, a popular space for public demonstrations and often a refuge for those who wander the streets of Lexington.

Mary Creegan Roark (1 September 1861 - 1 February 1922) came from Brighton, Iowa and was educated at Nebraska University, Oberlin College and the National Normal School in Lebanon, Ohio. After earning both a Bachelor's of Science and of Art from the National Normal University she taught there for four years in Lebanon, Ohio. She came to Kentucky after she married Ruric Nevel Roark, a National Normal University graduate, on July 1, 1881. They served as principal and vice-principal at the Normal School in Glasgow from 1885 until 1889 when they moved to Lexington for Ruric's job as Dean of the Normal School Department at the Kentucky State College (now University of Kentucky). She started the Lexington chapter of the Sorosis woman's club and served as its President for many years. She was also a charter member of the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky. In the fall of 1895, Lexington's women voted in the local public school board elections and she was elected to the Lexington Public School Board. In 1898 she was elected as corresponding secretary for the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA), an important position that coordinated the reports for all the local clubs. In 1903 she chaired the Woman's Council Committee, a joint group of KERA and Fayette ERA volunteers that organized a program for the Lexington Chatauqua at Woodland Park. Roark served as an officer in KERA for nearly every year until 1911, also taking on the role of chair of the Education Committee of the Kentucky Federation of Women's Club after the Kentucky legislature revoked the partial woman suffrage law. She collaborated with Madeline McDowell Breckinridge in writing op eds and pamphlets on the role of women in educational reform and women's suffrage. In 1905 the Roarks moved with their four children to Worchester, Mass., where her husband could work on his graduate studies for a year at Clark University. They then moved to Richmond when Ruric was appointed the first president of the Eastern Kentucky Normal School. He fell ill with brain cancer, and while he was being treated in a Cincinnati hospital, the trustees appointed Mary as acting president. When he died two months later on April 14, 1909, she was then officially appointed as president, and she was granted his salary -- an important point in her advocacy for women in education. In her leadership role at Eastern Normal School, she guided the addition of sports leagues at the school, established the first all-female residence hall and oversaw the erection of two new buildings on campus: Roark, which was used for teaching the sciences and agriculture as well as her administrative offices; and the new campus power plant. She was the first female to serve as president of a public higher education institution in Kentucky history. After her role as president ended in April 1910, she stayed on as Dean of Women until 1915. Then she left Kentucky to earn her Masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1916. She died while she was in Baltimore, and her body was brought back to be buried beside her husband and one of her sons Ruric (1894-1918) Her daughter Mary Kathleen Roark (1898-1981) was also buried alongside her there in Section J, Lot 681 in the Richmond Cemetery.

Dr. Emily "Emma" Earle Chenault-Runyon (14 December 1857 - 2 April 1956) was a founding member of the Fayette County Equal Rights Association. This suffrage club was formed on January 6, 1888, under the leadership of her mother, Henrietta B. Chenault (1835-1918) and Laura Clay. She was educated at the University of Michigan and married about 1888 Dr. Asa Runyon of Virginia. She began practicing there where she was considered a pioneer woman physician. In an interview published in the Richmond Times Dispatch (9 June 1940) she is quoted as saying: "It's a wonder I have any hands at all after banging on a stone wall to make a hole for women to creep through. (p. 6)" Her sister, Dr. Pearl Chenault Evans (later Thum then finally Drew) was also a founding member of the Fayette Co. ERA and is listed in the membership roster as residing at the E.K. [Eastern Kentucky Insane] Asylum. Probably due to the influence of the Chenault women, the leaders of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association throughout the 1880s and '90s regularly petitioned the General Assembly to make mandatory appointments of women physicians in the Insane Asylums of the state. Dr. Chenault-Runyon is buried in the Lexington Cemetery Section D, Lot 38 in a plot together with her husband.

Kate Trimble Woolsey (1858-1936) was the daughter of Judge William Wallace Trimble of Cynthiana, and his second wife Mary Barlow Trimble (1831-1912) who was born in France but raised in Kentucky. Woolsey was an author and suffragist who often traveled with her friend Susan B. Anthony. Her mother Mary Barlow Trimble was was one of the founders of the Covington Equal Rights Club. Kate's sisters, Frances "Fannie" Trimble Fackler (1854-1930) and Helen Trimble Highton (1860-?), were also suffragists working for the local and state associations. Other siblings included William Pitt Trimble who became a millionaire in Seattle and Lawrence. Kate joined the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1880, and in 1881 she married Eugene H. de Roode (1857-1887) of Lexington who moved to Covington to live with her there. They had a son together, Trimble de Roode (1884-1965). While her husband was ill with malaria and dying, Kate applied to gain custody of her fortune and child by petitioning the court to act as a femme-sole. She summarized the status of Kentucky women under state law in Volume 3 of The History of Woman Suffrage (1885) which was appended to the Kentucky report submitted by Mary Barr Clay. At the age of 37, Kate married divorcee Edward J. Woolsey of Astoria, New York in 1893. When he died in 1895, she went to live in England. There she published her book "Republics versus Woman: Contrasting the Treatment Accorded to Woman in Aristocracies with that Meted Out to Her in Democracies" in 1903. She used much of her book for speeches given at suffrage meetings locally and at the national conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Her mother, a widow at 81 living with Helen in the Trimble mansion, died in 1912; she had appointed Kate to be the executor of her large estate which was shared among the five children. Kate died in 1936 and was buried near her parents, brother Lawrence and her son Trimble de Roode in the Battle Grove Cemetery in Cynthiana.
 

On the founding constitution of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, under the list of Advisory Committee members, you will find the name "Ann L. Quinby of Newport, Kentucky." She was born in 1830 in London, England, to John William and Elizabeth (Johnston) Laurie; and, her  parents brought her to the U.S. at a young age. She was a widow with four children when she met Joseph Baileys Quinby (1 July 1865 - 15 September 1889), an abolitionist in New Orleans who was originally from Cincinnati. She thereafter became the mother of thirteen: five girls and eight boys. In a biographical sketch of his parents, Laurie J. Quinby of Omaha wrote: "My mother used to tell me that she took me as an infant in arms to one of the first, if not the first, woman suffrage conventions, held in the United States. It was in the city of New York." He is very likely referring to the organizing meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association in May 1869 which happened as a result of a split in the American Equal Rights Association. While in Cincinnati, Mr. Quinby was editor of the Cincinnati Times and of the Newport (Ky.) Leader. According to their son, both he and his wife "took a copyright 30 Mar. 1872, on the Weekly Campbell County Leader. Mr. Quinby afterward lived at Dayton, Ky., was one of the three original members of the Union League and died at Dayton. When the Quinby family lived in Dayton, according to her son, she published at her own expense "a little paper called the Aegis, devoted exclusively to the cause of woman suffrage." She and J.B. Quinby are mentioned several times in Volume 3 of the History of Women's Suffrage, for their work with the Cincinnati Equal Rights Society (also referred to as the Cincinnati Equal Rights Association, which had formed March 28, 1868, as a chapter of the American Equal Rights Association). He was Vice President and she was on the Executive Committee of the local club. As a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association, she led the creation of several Business Committee resolutions and contributed a section of the history of Ohio's suffrage movement to Anthony and Stanton's Volume 3 of their history of women's suffrage (491-500). She died on November 18, 1897, in Dayton, Kentucky, and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery (also known as the Newport Cemetery) section 20, lot 88, near the graves of her mother and husband.

In April 1915 the Fayette County Equal Rights Association hosted at the Ben Ali Theatre the English suffrage leader Mrs. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, a prominent member of the Women’s International League for Peace and publisher of "Votes for Women" in England. She was on a speaking tour in the U.S. on behalf of the United Suffragists and was dedicated to connecting woman suffrage to the international peace movement. She and her husband were arrested in 1912 for conspiracy after a public demonstration led by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) that involved breaking windows. After their release from prison, the Pethick-Lawrences publicly broke with Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel because of their disagreement over the more radical forms of activism. She and Lexington-native Sophonisba Breckinridge attended the Women's Peace Congress at the Hague soon after leaving Lexington.

This was the site that once held the private residence of Desha Breckinridge (editor of the Lexington Herald) and his wife Madge.

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Established in September 1896 at Preston and Jefferson Streets in Louisville, Neighborhood House was one of the first settlement houses in Kentucky. In 1901 they moved to 428 South First Street to a house donated by Mrs. W.B. Belknap and became incorporated in 1902. It expanded into a community center and playground serving children and immigrant families from the surrounding low-income neighborhoods. Some of the social service workers lived in the building.

According to Dr. Ann Allen's biosketch, Cornelia Alexander Beach spent the winter of 1913 as a resident of Neighborhood House, and then moved there permanently in 1914 to live - she also took a teaching position in Louisville. Beach joined the National Woman's Party and travelled to Washington DC in August 1917 to join the protesters in front of the White House. She, along with Lucy Burns and eight other protesters, was arrested at the east gate of the White House on August 28th. She was released on a $100 bond.

In 1925 a large factory building nearby was bought to be used as a boy's club building, named the Lucy Belknap Memorial Building. None of the buildings or playground associated with this period of the Neighborhood House history can be seen today.

Josephine Williamson married in 1868 Capt. William Henry, a former Confederate soldier and principal of a school for boys in Versailles. She and Laura Clay founded the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1888, and became a featured speaker for the KERA across the state. She was the Prohibition Party candidate for clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1890 and 1894, and thus became the first woman in the South to run a public campaign for a state office. In the 1890s, she worked with KERA to lobby the legislature for various reforms - the most important for her was the passage of the 1894 Woman's Property Act. She was the first woman to run for statewide office in Kentucky and is credited with passage of the 1894 Kentucky Married Woman’s Property Act. On November 14, 1897, Mrs. Henry was nominated as the Prohibition Party candidate for president. 

Josephine and her husband, Captain William Henry, lived at this home that originally was part of a larger plot of land - they called it the "Home Place" to differentiate it from another building they owned where Captain Henry had originally located his Academy for Boys (now 246 Montgomery Avenue). In 1880, the Henrys began to offer a co-ed academy, and Josephine Henry was the "Principal Musical Department." At least by 1889, the Henry Academy is located at their home (now 210 Montgomery Avenue) - this is the house, complete with a cupola then, that is in the photograph in the newspaper that featured the Henry Academy on September 6, 1889. The property around the house was largely undeveloped and eventually they sold parcels over the years to homeowners. For example, the Henrys bought the lot for 224 Montgomery Avenue in 1875 and sold it in 1900 to Victoria Gray and Irvin Railey. The Railey's built the house that now stands there.Josephine Henry died at the age of 84 on January 8, 1928, in her home after suffering a stroke in the year before.

Site of speech concluding a Suffrage Parade on the morning of May 6, 1916, in Lexington, Kentucky. The nearly 1000 marchers of men, women and children had started at Gratz Park, marched from Third Street to Broadway, south on Broadway to Main Street to the Union Station and back west again to Cheapside. There, the crowds heard a speech by suffrage orator Walter J. Millard. See more about the parade on the KWSP blog, and a transcript of the Lexington Herald newspaper article covering the event is available also. Below is a postcard, courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society, showing a busy County Court Day in Lexington's Cheapside sometime in the early 20th century.

On February 20, 1885, the Union Literary Society of State College (now the University of Kentucky) hosted a lecture by Mrs. Belva Ann Lockwood. (You can see a photo of the all-male members of the Union Literary Society around that time here in the Kentucky Digital Library). Women had not been allowed to attend the college until 1880, and then only in the "Normal Department" for teacher education - women were not allowed to earn degrees at State College until 1888. So, it was during this transition time for co-education that the administration allow for the group to recruit Mrs. Lockwood to speak on campus at 8 p.m. on a Friday evening. A leader in woman’s rights and suffrage as well as the National Equal Rights Party’s presidential nominee in 1884 and 1888, Lockwood titled her address “The Woman of Today.”  The event was well-advertised and supported by the recently created Fayette County Equal Rights Association.  The lecture was viewed by local newspapers as a “major cultural and intellectual event.”  Held in the campus chapel within the Main Building (later known as the Administration Building) the event was packed with students and Lexington’s prominent citizens. See coverage in the Lexington Daily Press, February 17-21, 1885.

 Famous as a great patriot and orator during and after the Civil War, Mrs. Walling gave speeches on equal rights and universal suffrage while being billed as "The Banished Heroine of the South" --when introduced by Horace Greeley to a large audience in Cooper Institute, he declared her "the greatest female speaker of the age." She spoke in large cities in the North, and on 10th May 1866, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to have her speak from the Senate floor - never done by a woman before and not to be seen again until later in the twentieth century. She came to live in Louisville later in life to be with her sons, and after living in relative seclusion, died at home at 86 years of age.

Two statewide conventions of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association were held here at the Merrick Lodge Building in Lexington: the seventh Convention (October 24-26, 1894) and the eleventh Convention (December 11-12, 1899). This large meeting space, one block north of Main Street on the corner of West Short and North Limestone (old Maysville Road), was built by architect Henry A. Tandy who owned the African-American business, The Tandy and Byrd Construction Company, which had also built several notable structures including the old Fayette County Courthouse.