Kentucky Woman Suffrage Project

Submitted as a Biosketch for the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Project by Heather Kuzma, independent scholar, Lexington, Kentucky.

Sometime in the month of August in 1913, the Mason County Woman Suffrage League was formed and took on as its first task to host a tent at the Germantown Fair August 27-30th. Former KERA president Laura Clay spoke on the first day of the fair, and the Hon. A.D. Cole of Maysville spoke on the second day. In October, Ida Withers Harrison of Lexington spoke at five different sites in the northern part of the county and by November, the League could report to KERA that they had 241 members enrolled: "92 men...

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, gave a speech at the Anderson County Teacher's Institute on July 17, 1913, and there she handed out women's suffrage pledge cards. Thirty cards were signed and turned in, and Mrs. Breckinridge appointed a county chairman to call a meeting and create a suffrage association. The next day, the Anderson County Woman's Suffrage League was organized with six officers; Mrs.

The Catlettsburg Equal Rights Association is formed in Boyd County on May 15, 1905, after a parlor meeting in the home of Mrs. Mary (Arthur F.) Morse at which the Kentucky Equal Rights Association president Laura Clay gave a talk. The club comprises six members with Mrs. James Patton, president; Mrs. R.H. Kilgore, treasurer; Mrs. Mary (Arthur F.) Morse, vice president; Miss Mary E. Morse, Miss Grace D. Runyon, Mrs. James Hughes.

The fifteenth annual convention of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association is held in Lexington at the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky. Officers include: Laura Clay, President (Lexington); Mary Barr Clay, First Vice-President (Richmond), Mary C. Cramer, Second Vice-President (Lexington); Nancy S. McLaughlin, Third Vice-President (Covington); Mary C. Roark, Corresponding Secretary (Lexington); Emma M. Roebuck, Recording Secretary (Newport); Isabella Shepard, Treasurer (Covington).

The Louisville Equal Rights Association is founded at a meeting in the home of Susan Look Avery. The main organizers are Avery, Margaret A. Watts and Caroline Apperson Leech.

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