Mary Reddig Cramer (1847-1915) of Lexington was a Vice President of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association from 1892 to 1913. She was also a member of the Woman's Club of Central Kentucky and the Kentucky chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She attended many of the conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association between 1893 and 1912. This image was supplied to H-Kentucky for the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Project by Walt Cramer, her great-grandson.
Perhaps it was the charisma of the vision that the new president Burris Jenkins had for a rejuvenated Transylvania College soon after he arrived in 1901. Perhaps it was the long tradition of Lexington's support for women's professional education and higher learning. At any rate, new faculty hires at Transylvania and the newly merged Hamilton Female College in the early 1900s created a unique grouping of women's rights activists.
Irene Tanner Myers, Ph.D. (11 April 1861 - 30 January 1941) was an ambitious academic leader and women's rights advocate who worked for nearly two decades in Kentucky. She was born in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, at the outbreak of the Civil War, and her parents Charity Cox and Andrew Emmons Myers moved to West Virginia.
Julia Woodworth Connelly (18 August 1857 - 28 July 1948) was Director of Expression and Dramatic Art at Hamilton College in Lexington, Ky. She was recruited by Luella Wilcox St. Clair (later Moss) to Kentucky in 1903 from St. Louis, Missouri. Connelly had been teaching speech and drama at Lindenwood College for Women (now Lindenwood University) and Alma College.
Laura Sutton Bruce was born on August 16, 1853, in Lexington, Kentucky. She was the third of seven daughters of Elizabeth T. Colesberry and William W. Bruce. Her father was a wealthy man whose fortune came from hemp and bagging manufacturing, having partnered for some years with the Lexington millionaire Benjamin F. Gratz. W.W.
Title: "A Tour of Downtown Lexington, KY of Sites Relating to Women's Suffrage History"
Publication: Developed by Randolph Hollingsworth, PhD, in support of Breaking the Bronze Ceiling - an initiative to build a monument commemorating women's history in the Bluegrass. See more at breakingthebronzeceiling.com
Date: [2019]
Jessie Leigh Hutchinson (1878-1932) grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and when she married E. L. Hutchinson in 1901 she came with him to live in Lexington. Their home was at 631 East Main Street. She served as Vice President of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association in 1907, 1912-15, and in 1917.
