One hundred years ago on August 18, the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. We are lucky to have a first-person narrative about the Montclair Equal Suffrage League our archives. It was written by a woman who referred to herself only as “Old Timer.” Here’s what she had to say:
“It was at a meeting of Unity Alliance in Unity Church in the spring of 1910 that Woman Suffrage raised its timid head in Montclair,” recalls the anonymous writer who was involved in the fight for women’s right to vote. She continues, “Mrs. Clara Laddey of Newark spoke on the status of women. It was an emotional speech and given with a slight German accent, which in those days sounded particularly warm and inviting.”
“To my amazement, at the end of her speech I stood up, my umbrella clattering to the floor. It was the first time I had ever raised my voice in public, and a quavering voice it was indeed. ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’ Mrs. Laddey pointed her finger at me and cried, ‘Form a suffrage league in Montclair and you be president.’ I sat down in consternation and recovered my umbrella.”
Women in New Jersey had not always been denied the right to vote. New Jersey’s first constitution in 1776 allowed “all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds…and who have resided in the county for twelve months” to vote. Wealth and the length of time lived in the state mattered more than gender. In fact, in 1790, the New Jersey constitution was even amended to read “he or she,” further ensuring women could vote. Because a woman gave her property over to her husband upon marrying, only single women could be “worth fifty pounds” and therefore eligible to vote.
Women – single that is – continued to vote until 1807 when New Jersey restricted voting rights to tax-paying, white male citizens. According to an article by the National Park Service, “this was done to give the Democratic-Republican Party an advantage in the 1808 presidential election. Women often voted for the opposing Federalist Party, so taking away women’s voting rights helped the Democratic-Republicans. This law also took voting rights away from African Americans.” Early voter suppression.
One hundred and twelve years later, a small group of Montclair women went to Newark to hear Mrs. Laddey’s talk on women’s suffrage. “Old Timer” continues her story, “Those who were interested were asked to gather round the piano at the end of a meeting. There were not more than eight or ten of us. I declined with alacrity to be president, but arranged for a meeting at my house, and there after much discussion, we chose a name, the Montclair Equal Suffrage League. We thought it had a dignified sound. The first officers were: President, Jannetta Studdiford; Vice President, Alice Parsons; Treasurer, Caroline Francke; Recording Secretary, Margaret Reed; Corresponding Secretary Mary Clark; Auditor, Florence Foster. We had plenty of officers, so now we set about getting members.”
“Montclair in 1910 had a population of 21,500,” she explains. “It was a pleasant town with many open fields. The women were interested in their homes, their children, their church work. The Upper Montclair Women’s Club probably had a committee on civic affairs, but Woman Suffrage was often spoken of as Women’s Rights, and to many, that suggested a strident type of women with an aggressive voice, mannish clothes and short hair – no windblown bob, just short. Some regarded her as the enemy of man. At all events, she was no lady. We determined to be ladies, and yet get the vote.”
The women set dues at fifty cents a year, “in order that there should be no financial stumbling block to membership,” and began talking to friends and influential people in town.
The women organized a meeting and reached out to a well-known English actress, lecturer, writer, and suffragist to be a guest speaker. “We knew that the success of this meeting was vital, and we must have an outstanding figure. Whom to get? We wanted a woman and there was one with the glamour of the stage, the glamour of a great name, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson. Our dauntless president wrote to Miss Robertson explaining that we were an infant league without a penny, with a great need of a boost. Would she come to us? She would.”
“When the great night arrived, the weather was propitious, and as we watched the crowd stream into the church we knew that Montclair was interested in Beatrice Forbes Robertson if not in us. And why not? She captivated her audience with her dramatic appearance, her lovely voice, her wit, but above all with the subtle flattery whereby she almost convinced us that we were as logical, as clever and as witty as she. We took up a silver collection [coins] at the end of her speech, and there was flurry of excitement when it was whispered that a gentlemen in the balcony, an anti-suffragist at that, had put a dollar bill in the plate. Folding money! Our first!”
After their opening hit, the Montclair Equal Suffrage League began to attract new members, including Miss Mary Waring at the Kimberly School who “gently chided those mothers who objected to any of her teachers working for the suffrage cause. She allowed us to use the auditorium of Kimberly School for our little dramas, ‘How the Vote was Won,’ and others, heavily weighted with propaganda, but thrilling to the actors if not the audience.” The women also won over some clergy in town, often to the dismay of their congregations.
While it’s hard to understand now, not everyone in 1910 believed women should vote and soon an anti-suffrage league was formed to oppose the Montclair Equal Suffrage League. “These ladies were ladies indeed, and ardent in their wish to save us from ourselves. One of our highlights was a debate with the anti-suffrage league given in the old Montclair Club House, which stood near the corner of Church Street and South Fullerton Avenue. There was a rousing audience. … Each side applauded its own violently, and each side was sure it had won.”
“Word came that there was to be a suffrage parade in New York, and we were urged to take part,” she writes. “It is hard to realize nowadays, when publicity is sought after on all sides, what an almost shocking proposal this was. Parading in the streets! No Lady – but we felt we must do it for the Cause, and our problem was whether to tell our husbands before we marched or after. Aside from our palpitating emotions it was a pretty dull parade, no bands, no costumes, no color – just a long stream of earnest women two abreast.”
“Our next parade was in Newark, where Mrs. Henry Lang stoutly marching over the cobblestones of Broad Street was almost run down by a mounted policeman, eager to keep the peace. I doubt if we made much impression on Newark, but we were learning about parades, and our next one in New York was a real parade.”
“We dressed in in white, with yellow sashes from shoulder to hip, and we had a banner eight feet long with the name Montclair Equal Suffrage League carried by two of our prettiest members. There were several bands, and throngs of marchers from all over the country gathered in the side streets around Washington Square waiting for the signal to start. Best of all this time the men joined us. They marched in a delegation behind the women and probably we received the applause while they got the catcalls. It was a perfect day and we seemed to float from Washington Square to 59th Street, our feet barely touching the ground. We were not all young either. Mrs. Powell Macy, well over seventy, walked the whole distance with us.”
“When I came home I brought two small yellow banners with the words ‘Votes for Women.’ We had carried them in the parade, and I thought our young daughters would like them. They did, to the extent of forming a sidewalk parade outside our house. The next day we observed that our neighbor across the street repeatedly called her little girl into the house. She was not to play with ‘those children’ any more. As a result our younger daughter came to me in tears, ‘Please Mummy, don’t be a Boats for Women lady any more.’ She was learning at an early age what happens to non-conformists.”
The Montclair Equal Suffrage League then decided to go door-to-door canvassing for new members. Our anonymous writer recalls, “I could never harden myself to that moment when the door opened, and the defender of the fortress looked at the outsider, ‘What,’ she seemed to say, ‘are you selling?’ It’s no easier to sell suffrage than books or brushes, and we were not always turned away politely.”
Members of the group took public speaking lessons with Beatrice Forbes Robertson, whose lecture in Newark had kicked off the Montclair Equal Suffrage League. They also attended a one-week School for Suffrage Workers in New York City run by Carrie Chapman Catt, a well-known suffragist and founder of the National League of Women Voters (1920). She recalls, “We left home in the early morning, returning in the late afternoon, and before the days of frozen foods, pressure cookers and babysitters that required a bit of planning. But Carrie Chapman Catt was a great leader, and we always came home in a mood of exaltation. Now we knew how to answer those arguments -- Woman Suffrage will merely double the vote. Women will vote as their husbands do. Polling places are unfit for women. They will lose their femininity. Woman Suffrage will only increase the cost of government. Woman’s place is in the HOME.”
As the nineteen-teens advanced, the League continued to bring noted suffragist speakers to Montclair. “In those days,” our narrator recalls, “before the radio showered its wealth upon us, a public meeting on almost any subject was a matter of stimulation and interest. There were no apathetic audiences. We held our breath to get a first look at the speaker and did not miss a syllable.”
Although several states and territories had begun to allow women to vote prior to the 19th Amendment, New Jersey was not one of them. In 1919, Congress voted in favor of women’s suffrage. Thirty-six states needed to ratify it before it would become the law of the land.
Our historian tells the rest of the story:
“We did not have the satisfaction of seeing New Jersey ratify the Amendment, but in 1920, Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state went over the top and the vote was won.”
“Mrs. Catt in her wisdom did not allow this great reservoir of patriotic enthusiasm to dissolve She summed all suffrage leagues in the country to meet and reform as an educational organization. Thus began the glorious history of the League of Women Voters.”
“Following Mrs. Catt’s orders, we held a victory luncheon with one hundred women present in May 1920, at Unity Church, the same spot where ten years before we had begun our work. In our groping, amateurish, and sometimes over-zealous attempts to make friends and influence people we had not dreamed that one day an organization would spring from us dedicated to the effective use of what we had won, an organization with world wide prestige, enlightened, scholarly and authoritative, one of the great forces of democracy.”
Today, 100 years later, the League of Women Voters of the Montclair Area continues to live out the vision of those early grassroots suffragists as an educational organization that serves as a force of democracy.