ARCHIVE.
Woman Suffrage Archive
From the Files of Edna Lamprey Stantial,
Archivist of the N.A.W.S.A.
An extraordinary archive of materials related to woman suffrage, including several significant items from the crucial decade preceding the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, from the files of Edna Lamprey Stantial, archivist of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The bulk of the archive is comprised of the correspondence of Alice Stone Blackwell, Maud Wood Park, and Carrie Chapman Catt, each of whom played a central role within the N.A.W.S.A., as well as in other arms of the suffrage movement. The archive also includes a remarkable collection of photographs of suffragists; a scarce catalog of suffrage literature and materials from 1914; a substantial number of ephemeral items related to the movement; and several items relating to Lucy Stone, Henry Browne Blackwell, and other important suffragists. Not directly related to suffrage but of special interest to the women’s movement, is an extraordinary letter from Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell to her sister Dr. Emily Blackwell, discussing key developments in the entrance of women into the medical field.
Stantial provided invaluable assistance to Carrie Chapman Catt in assembling the collection of suffrage materials which Catt donated to the Library of Congress in 1939 on behalf of the N.A.W.S.A. She played a similar role in assisting Maud Wood Park in assembling the outstanding “Women’s Rights Collection” which Park donated to Radcliffe in 1943, and which founded and forms the core of the Schlesinger Library. She also served as both legal and financial guardian of Alice Stone Blackwell for a time, and thereby came into possession of a substantial amount of suffrage-related material. Stantial’s preservation of the materials which comprise this archive is of great significance to the history of the suffrage movement, and represents a lasting legacy to future generations of women.
Elizabeth Blackwell to Emily Blackwell
on Several leading Figures of Women’s Medicine
and
on the establishment of the new york women’s hospital
Blackwell, Elizabeth. Autograph letter signed, “E.” [Elizabeth Blackwell] to [Emily Blackwell], May 22, [1854], 1 bifolium, 4 pp; two horizontal folding creases, faint browning to fold.
A candid and substantive letter from one of the prime agents in the reform and advancement of women’s health, Elizabeth Blackwell, to her collaborator, colleague, and sister, Emily Blackwell, involving other central actors at a crucial moment to the cause.
On May 22, 1854, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell wrote to her sister, the newly minted Dr. Emily Blackwell, recently arrived in Edinburgh to continue her studies with Sir James Young Simpson, with “two little items of news” that would prove to be quite major. “There is,” she writes, “a prospect of establishing a large hospital in New York for the treatment of female diseases and obstetrics.” Blackwell elaborates by describing her meeting that day with Dr. J. Marion Sims, whom she had recently heard lecture on the “necessity of such a hospital,” and whose recent experiments in gynecological surgery marked the beginning of modern obstetrics. During the course of their meeting, which Blackwell details at length, Dr. Sims spoke of being “resolved to explode fully [the] hypocrisy, cliqueism and old fogyism” he’d encountered among N.Y. physicians, and Blackwell assesses that “he is thoroughly in favor of women studying, and will treat them justly, which is all we want.” She presciently concludes her report on Dr. Sims’ plans,
The whole affair will be much grander than anything I can hope to establish for many many years, and would answer our purpose, if his ideas can be carried out. I think I shall help him in every way I can, and that his coming will be an important matter to New York Medicine.
The following year, Dr. Sims would establish Woman’s Hospital, on Madison Avenue and 29th Street. Consisting of thirty beds on four floors of a rented house, it was the first hospital devoted entirely to obstetrics. While Emily Blackwell would be considered for the position of chief assistant to Dr. Sims, for political reasons she was passed over.
The second bit of news was of even greater consequence to the lives of the Doctors Blackwell, and to the state of women’s medical health in general: “I have at last got a student,” Elizabeth writes, “one in whom I can take a great deal of interest. Marie Zachkrohefska [sic], a german about twenty-six.” Blackwell recounts her new pupil’s history: she had served as chief midwife in “the great Berlin hospital,” and had taught over 200 students at the medical school attached to it; on the advice of a Viennese doctor, she emigrated to the United States following the death of her mentor, only to be discouraged by a German doctor in New York who insisted “she must be a nurse.” Finally,
thoroughly disheartened at the end of a year, every feeling rebelling at the idea of going as nurse, she went in desperation to the House of the Friendless, where the Matron told her of me. There is stuff in her, and I am going to do my best to bring it out. She must become Doctor... She has a natural love for the profession, but she must be widened out by the other branches and the title is essential.
Blackwell reports that her student “has commenced reading Medicine with me,” and that she has been helping at the Dispensary for Poor Women and Children that Elizabeth had opened the year before. Blackwell asks her sister to make an estimate of the costs she would incur to study at the medical school at Western Reserve, from which Emily had just graduated with honors.
From the point of view of women’s medicine, the convergence of these three women is nothing less than providential. Marie Zakrzewska would go on to obtain her medical degree from Western Reserve, and upon graduating would return to New York to help Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell found, in 1857, the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, the first hospital staffed and run entirely by women. Zakrzewska served as resident physician at the infirmary for two years before relocating to Boston, where she founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children.
In the final third of the letter, Blackwell offers a vision for action mixed with a bit of self-criticism:
I have been thinking whether it would be of any use to try and organize the women at present in New York into a society for medical improvement and aid. I sometimes think I am too conservative in my feeling and action, and am really not doing all I might do for the cause from this very reason.
Though few then or now would charge Elizabeth Blackwell with inactivity, and though it would be impossible to measure the effects of such a self-assessment, a period of great activity did follow this letter, in which Elizabeth, with the help of her sister Emily and her student-cum-colleague Maria Zakrzewska, would accomplish much of the work that today defines her legacy.
One of the most remarkable letters we have seen in this area, and one which Elizabeth Blackwell herself cites in abridged form in her autobiography, it records a moment of great poignancy in the history of women’s health, and in the Women’s Movement as a whole.
(#13610)
Woman Suffrage Catalogue
[Suffrage] Catalog and Price List of Woman Suffrage Literature and Supplies, January 1914. New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1914.
8vo; staple-bound catalog; faint crease; a few pencil marks within.
An apparently unique copy of a scarce mail-order catalog of literature and supplies, produced by an N.A.W.S.A. Literature Committee chaired by Mary Ware Dennett with Frances Maul Bjorkman as its chief editor, to bolster suffragist efforts across the country. The front cover features a small map of the United States indicating to what extent each state has obtained suffrage (full, partial, or none), followed by twenty pages listing individual items for sale along with a brief description of each. Available literature includes The History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Stanton and Anthony, et al; “Shall Women Vote?” by W.I. Thomas, “a clever and satirical article...adapted to catch the attention of the indifferent;” “The Guardianship of Children,” by Catherine Waugh McCulloch, “a brief statement by a lawyer of the laws concerning the rights of mothers over their children in the United States;” and “Twenty-five Answers to Antis,” by twenty-five eminent suffragists, consisting of “five minute speeches by famous people in answer to all the stock objections.” The booklets section lists, among others, Suffrage Songs and Verses by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Suffrage and the Working Woman, a “set of six different booklets by six different wage-earning women.” “Supplies” include Votes for Women buttons, bannerettes, regalia, posters, stationery, stickers, playing cards, umbrellas and tea cups, as well as lantern slide lectures and a traveling picture gallery.
The growing enterprise of suffrage goods was in keeping with an increased commitment on the part of suffragists to public spectacle as a political tactic, and to the adoption of the methods and materials of consumer advertising. As late as 1909, it was only with a great deal of difficulty that a local suffragist group could assemble any significant collection of suffragist literature and supplies. That changed substantially in the following decade when the N.A.W.S.A. established its national catalog service, greatly furthered by the legislation creating the free parcel post in 1913. These catalogs became a crucial component to the dissemination of suffragist ideas and materials throughout the country.
An early reference to an N.A.W.S.A. catalog comes in the second edition of Selected Articles on Woman Suffrage, which includes the catalog of 1911 in its Bibliographies section. (No mention of the catalog is made in the first edition of 1910.) Though the catalogs were published on a regular basis, only a very few have survived. OCLC locates a single copy of the catalog from 1912, one from 1915, and two from 1916. This is the only known copy of the catalog from 1914.
See Selling Suffrage by Margaret Mary Finnegan (New York: Columbia, 1999), esp. p. 123 ff.
(#13611)
Photographs of Early Suffragettes
[Suffrage] 51 Photographs, 2 5/16 x 3 5/8 inches to 7 5/8 x 10 3/4 inches, several signed, many with written identification on reverse.
Highlights of this superb collection of photographs of women instrumental to the suffrage movement include signed photographs of Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, and Carrie Chapman Catt; a rare photograph featuring Eline Hansen, Adele Spady and others at the International Suffrage Alliance in Budapest in 1913; several photographs of both Alice Stone Blackwell and Maud Wood Park; original photographs of Emmeline Pankhurst, Florence E. Allen, Esther Ogden, Elizabeth Hauser, Mrs. I.H. Harper, Mrs. Samuel B. Woodward, and several of Edna Stantial; and second-generation photographs of Susan B. Anthony and Catherine Breshkovsky. Also present are a photograph of Henry Browne Blackwell mounted above a small calendar of 1909; a photograph of Robert Hunter (2nd husband of Maud Wood Park); a signed photograph of Senator John F. Shafroth (who spoke on the Senate floor in support of suffrage in 1916); and a few unidentified photographs.
Gathered by Stantial in her capacity as archivist of the N.A.W.S.A., a truly extraordinary collection of photographs of eminent suffragists.
Alice Stone Blackwell
Blackwell, Alice Stone. Suffrage Correspondence. 1880-1949.
52 Letters Signed, mostly Autograph but a few Typed, primarily to Edna Stantial, secondarily to Kitty Barry, others to Anna Child Bird, Maud Wood Park, Henry Browne Blackwell, Florence Blackwood Mayhew, Sara Algeo, and Dr. Hagopian, September 14, 1880 - April 26, 1949. Also present are 4 signed holiday postcards.
Blackwell belonged to a family of eminent activists which included her mother, Lucy Stone, her aunts, Doctors Elizabeth and Emily Stone, and Antoinette Brown Blackwell; and her father, Henry Browne Blackwell, himself a tireless suffragist. She served as editor of The Woman’s Journal, the most important women’s rights newspaper in the country, for thirty-five years. Blackwell also held a number of important posts in both the N.A.W.S.A. as well as the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, including that of President. The collection of materials below pertains to these roles as well as several others she played in a lifetime of committed activism. NAW I 156-58.
In addition to the highlights below, the letters contain updates on health, travel plans, and family news. Other material present includes a 12 line manuscript poem titled “Easter Greetings;” a handwritten notice, “My beach is private, and all trespassing is forbidden;” two pages of handwritten quotations related to woman suffrage;” and a holiday greeting card.
Highlights:
4 ALS, to Anna Child Bird, May 26 – June 11, 1918, 8 leaves, 15 pages, folding creases, rust from paperclip. Written following a heated election within the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association which resulted in Mrs. Charles Sumner Bird, the wife of a conservative U.S. Senator, being installed as chair of the Executive Board, these letters pertain to discussions on significant points of policy and strategy in the final push for woman suffrage.
In the first letter, Blackwell, having opposed Bird in the election, diplomatically offers her support: “Accept my congratulations on your election. Although I supported Mrs. Pinkham, I believe it is better for the cause, on the whole, that you were chosen.” Then, in an eight page letter which followed on May 28, Blackwell lays out, point by point, the strategy the MWSA has been asked to pursue by Catherine Chapman Catt at the N.A.W.S.A. (“Mrs. Catt has greatly strengthened the suffrage work throughout the country by unifying it,” she writes, referring to Catt’s “Winning Plan,” discussed above). The points include holding “250 public meetings...to protest against the delay in passing the Federal Amendment;” getting up “a huge suffrage petition, signed by at least 266,000 women;” obtaining headquarters near the State House; and identifying and working against candidates for state office who oppose woman suffrage. In the next letter, dated June 2, and marked “Confidential,” Blackwell writes to express her stringent opposition to appointing Mrs. Fitzgerald to the chair of the Organization Work Committee, explaining that
when she worked for the Association before...she was very able, very pleasing, but also completely unscrupulous . . . If she becomes Organization Chairman...she will be able completely to dominate the Association at the next annual meeting...I am a sure of this as I can be of anything.
In the final letter to Bird, Blackwell assess two candidates for executive secretary, and again expresses opposition to Mrs. Fitzgerald, this time for the position of vice president, on the grounds that she “has publicly campaigned for Wilson and the Democratic party,” and as the MWSA “has always striven to keep itself nonpartisan.”
TLS, to “District Leader,” May 29, 1919, 2 leaves of MWSA letterhead, folding creases, slightly browned at edges. The letter opens with a paragraph by Anna Tillinghast, chair of the Legislative Committee, writing that she has misunderstood “our policy toward candidates.” An explanation by Blackwell, then President of the MWSA, follows on the same page: “It has been the rule of the National Association of its State Branches that we might work to defeat anti suffrage candidates, but that we should not work to elect any candidate.” Blackwell then offers a four paragraph explanation and examination of pros and cons of such a position, and a recapitulation of the debate that took place at the recent national meeting, and concludes that “a good deal can be said on both sides. . . Personally I am inclined to think that our old rule is the better way, but I am open to conviction.” An important policy missive from the crucial months preceding the suffragists’ ultimate victory.
TLS, “to the Editor,” undated, 1 leaf; folding creases. Headed, “Letter From Russian’s Little Grandmother,” Blackwell writes on behalf of Catherine Breshovsky’s efforts to gather clothing and materials for the children of her orphanage at Uzhorod, in Czechoslovakia, who are, according to the three paragraph letter Blackwell reproduces within her letter, utterly destitute. One of the many causes Blackwell was devoted to in addition to woman suffrage was the Friends of Russian Freedom. Blackwell was one of the organizations founders, and through it she became fast friends with Breshkovsky, more famously known as the “Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution.”
7 ALS to Maud Wood Park, April 8, 1936 – April 26, 1949. These letters show that the admiration and esteem Park felt for Blackwell was reciprocal. In a letter dated August 17, 1943, the elder suffragist writes her “very dear Mrs. Park,”
You have been a brilliant and wonderful leader in the women’s cause, and as unselfish and self-effacing as brilliant.
The material comfort that surrounds my declining years is chiefly due to you. It was you who conceived the idea of raising an annuity for me, and you stirred up all the others.
I lack words to express the deep admiration and affection that I have for you.
She expresses a similar sentiment in her letter of April 8, 1936: “You were the fairest and our rarest, during the fight for woman suffrage.”
A letter from October 14, 1947, written in the hand of an assistant and signed by Blackwell, tells of a visit Blackwell’s had from a young scholar writing her thesis on Lucy Stone. The woman, Lillian O’Connor, brought Blackwell copies of 3 early speeches she’d made from the files of the National Anti-Slavery Standard (included in this archive), and wanted to know how she could obtain copies of Blackwell’s biography of Stone. O’Connor told Blackwell that on her research travels across the country she discovered “that there is now great interest among young women in learning about the early advocates of Woman’s rights.” A wonderful letter bearing witness to solidarity among women of several generations, from Lucy Stone to Alice Blackwell to Maud Wood Park to Lillian O’Connor, and also including Edna Stantial and the unnamed scribe who took dictation from Blackwell for this letter.
In another letter of January 28, 1948, again in the hand of an assistant and signed by Blackwell, the latter refers to an old friend “who is, I fear, in danger of being drawn in to support the miscalled Equal Rights Amendment.” In the letter of June 16, 1948, Blackwell again inquires whether any measure have been taken against the ERA. Here, as elsewhere in this archive, the controversy of the ERA amongst women activists makes itself felt.
52 ALS, to Edna Stantial, August 6, 1920 – October 3, 1943, ca. 160 pp.; in pencil on blank sheets, darkened, chipping to edges of several, without loss of text. The letters show Blackwell addressing Stantial as her intimate assistant, requesting a multitude of domestic errands related to the family estate at Martha’s Vineyard, the use of which Blackwell generously allowed to many women involved in the suffragist movement, for vacations and other purposes, through the 1930’s. More than half of the letters pertain to the sale of Vineyard Haven properties, and include a dozen letters from Meyric R. Rogers, curator at the Art Institute of Chicago and purchaser of a large portion of the Blackwell estate, as well as a few from others associated with the legal aspects of the sale, along with 13 pages of handwritten details of property boundaries and rights. Among the highlights of the letters not pertaining to the sale of the family estate is a letter of November 1, 1927, wherein Blackwell appoints Stantial alternate executor of her estate. On June 18, 1932, she thanks Edna for her work in the League of Women Voters, saying “you have been invaluable to it.” She also gives updates on other suffragists, and refers various other causes with which she is involved. For example, a December 12, 1920 ALS on Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News letterhead, encloses a hand written notice about a craft fair to benefit the Armenian relief fund. In an undated letter [ca. 1927], she tells Edna that she’s willing to write a letter in support of “Divers Good Causes” if “you will give me the necessary points. But this might not be a propitious time, as I am about to speak at the Sacco Vanzetti meeting which will of course offend most of the people with money.”
Among the correspondence is a collection of autograph notes, in envelope marked “Blackwell notes to Edna to type,” ca. 40 pp. in Stantial’s hand, made during and following Stantial’s visits with Alice Stone Blackwell, largely giving directions to Stantial as to what should be done with Blackwell’s papers and miscellaneous property after her death. The notes also contain intriguing private revelations, for example the following about an unknown Mr. G.:
I’m grateful to my friends for keeping Mr. G’s. name quiet. I have always been afraid of him. He threatened me in a letter once and I begged Mrs. Catt not to make his name public. But when I am gone I hope he will be made to, no—not suffer—to realize what he has done.
Also present are 4 typed pages detailing a difficult conversation with Blackwell’s cousin Howard about the funeral arrangements for Alice Stone Blackwell.
13 ALS, to Kitty Barry, September 14, 1880 – October 23, 1892, ca. 20 bifoliums and 10 single leaves, ca. 100 pp., four on The Woman’s Journal letterhead. In these youthful and vivacious letters to her cousin Kitty Barry (the adopted daughter of Elizabeth Blackwell), Alice covers every leaf and most margins with news of her famous activist family, witty observations of local townspeople and family guests, and humorous anecdotes of life at Martha’s Vineyard. She updates her cousin on the books she’s reading, her newfound interest in photography, and on various lurking suitors. More significantly, she includes news and opinions related to her early days of involvement with the women’s movement, especially in letters written following her graduation from Boston University and during her subsequent employment at the Woman’s Journal.
Her letter of May 28, 1882, for example, announces the birth of the seminal and highly influential “Woman’s Column”: “Papa has struck out another brilliant idea. He wrote a letter in mother’s name and sent to almost every newspaper in New England, offering to furnish them weekly with a column of news-items about women, if they would publish it. Between 100 and 200 papers have accepted the offer...” Blackwell herself would begin to edit the column in 1887.
In a letter of August 31, 1890, Blackwell, by this time busy with the business of Women’s Journal, copies a letter recently received from her father, in which he describes his organizing efforts in South Dakota and his address to members of the Mississippi Congress about woman suffrage. Of the latter, Alice Blackwell notes that the lawmakers “are at their wits’ end” on how to retain power, and “to enfranchise women of property or education is really the only way they can do it.”
In an incomplete letter of October 5, 1890, she writes that her father’s return from the Dakota campaign, and his certainty that the suffrage amendment will not be carried there, in spite of his positive feelings about the climate in general, with which Alice agrees. She also mentions an article her father is sending around to the Dakota papers, on “Wool, Water and Woman Suffrage,” the three things, in his opinion, that Dakota needs.
A letter from November 30, 1890 again reveals Blackwell’s raised political consciousness when she recounts a Thanksgiving dinner conversation about discrimination against Jewish girls at New York City schools, and about the relevance of personal morality to the realm of politics.
2 ALS, to Henry Browne Blackwell, August 6, 1900 and August 9, 1907, on American Woman Suffrage Association and The Woman’s Journal letterhead, in which Alice updates her father on family news from Chilmark.
Typed Letter carbon, [1922], Alice Stone Blackwell to “the editor,” 2 pp, stringently opposing the Johnson Bill (H.R. 10860) and the Shortridge Bill (S. 3403), which proposed to require resident aliens to register and pay a fee once a year as a means of keeping track of possible foreign dissidents.
ALS, to Florence Blackwell Mayhew, August 30, 1909, about her father’s ongoing illness. She tells her cousin that the doctor says, “if Papa goes, he will go all in a moment, like the blowing out of a candle.” Henry Browne Blackwell died the following week.
ALS, to Florence Blackwell, undated, from Alice’s days at the Jane Andrews school in Newberry, Mass. Includes three humorous childhood drawings and news of the cat.
(#13615)
Alice Stone Blackwell Fund
8 pledge cards and 1 receipt, Alice Stone Blackwell Fund, completed in autograph by the donor.
By 1935, having lost most of her savings through the dishonesty of her business manager, Blackwell found herself in dire financial straits. However, Maud Wood Park, Carrie Chapman Catt, Edna Stantial, and other suffragist colleagues and friends came to her aid, establishing a fund and collecting contributions to provide Blackwell with an annuity on which she could live. The fund drive was an overwhelming success, and years later Blackwell expressed her gratitude to Park in the letter of August 17, 1943, quoted above: “The material comfort that surrounds my declining years is chiefly due to you. It was you who conceived the idea of raising an annuity for me, and you stirred up all the others.” Within this collection are pledge cards completed by Mary Gray Peck, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Anna C. Bird, Florence E. Allen and Helen Adelaide Shaw. Also present are several notes from various donors noting Blackwell’s passing and offering pledges to the fund.
Catherine Breshkovsky to Alice Stone Blackwell
Blackwell became acquainted with Breshkovsky, famously known as the “Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,” through her work with the Friends of Russian Freedom. The two maintained a close friendship with frequent correspondence, and Blackwell edited The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution: Reminiscences and Letters of Catherine Breshkovsky, published by Little, Brown in 1919. The correspondence below captures the admiration and affection the women had for each other, and date from a crucial period in Breshkovsky’s long struggle for social change in Russia.
10 Autograph postcards signed, July 20, 1913 to October 9, 1917, detailing Breshkovsky’s exile in Siberia, her health and spirits, and making reference to Blackwell’s writings (specifically her biography of Lucy Stone), and to the activities of other women activists. Breshkovsky frequently addresses Blackwell as “my beloved daughter,” and she writes on November 10, 1913, “It is wonderful and beautiful such friendship as our two souls found each other and were bound by a sympathy that nothing can shake or disturb.”
Most of the postcards date from 1913, when Breshkovsky was living in exile in Siberia, to which she had been banished following her release from prison in 1910. In the postcards she makes frequent reference to the difficulties she faced there. On October 2, 1913 she writes “many persons are arrested and [incarcerated] for being my help in my daily duty.” On October 16, 1913 she writes “we are cut off of the rest of the world. Only some packets are carried out on horses back...I wish [to] ... let you know, I get every line of your dear epistles, every dollar of your benefaction.”
The postcard dated November 10, 1913, was written just one week before Breshkovsky made a dramatic attempt to escape from Siberia, resulting in her apprehension a week later, a mere seven miles from a safe house in Irkutsk. As punishment Breshkovsky received two years of solitary confinement in prison, followed by banishment even further north in Siberia than where she’d been exiled previously.
One of the later postcards in this collection, dated October 9, 1917, finds Breshkovsky in Petrograd, having been liberated from Siberia following the February revolution. However, this respite would prove brief, as Breshkovsky was forced to flee following the Bolshevik revolution, which took place less than a month after the writing of this postcard.
In several postcards Breshkovsky laments the illness (which would prove fatal) of Isabel Barrows, the American women’s health pioneer and advocate of prison reform, and the first woman officially employed by the U.S. State Department. Barrows traveled to St. Petersburg in 1909 to petition for Breshkovsky’s release from prison, where the latter was serving time for her activities during the 1905 revolution.
George Lazareff to Alice Stone Blackwell
7 autograph postcards signed and 6 typed postcards, April 15, 1916 to December 6, 1934, relaying information about the whereabouts, activities, and deteriorating health of Breshkovsky (whom he frequently refers to as “Babushka”), as well as the details of money donated to Breshkovsky by various American activists. Lazareff, himself a political exile living in Switzerland and then in Prague, was Breshensky’s longtime friend and correspondent who frequently acted as a go-between for Breshensky and her American associates. Lazareff addresses Blackwell familiarly and affectionately throughout. Several of the postcards were written near the end of Breshkovsky’s life, and offer details surrounding her final year and a half (she died in September of 1934). Additionally included are 3 autograph postcards signed, one each from Lucy Wheelock, Irene Dietrich, and Helene Dudley, regarding Babushka.
Florence Blackwell Mayhew to Alice Stone Blackwell
104 ALS, the bulk to Alice Stone Blackwell, with several to Kitty Barry, and one to Henry Browne Blackwell, January 8, 1871 – July 12, 1936; some leaves browned, occasional light chipping with no loss to text, short tears to folds in a few spots, tears to two letters (May 13, 1929 and November 1, 1931) extending to text.
Florence Blackwell, daughter of Antoinette Louise Brown Blackwell, maintained an intimate lifelong correspondence with Alice Stone Blackwell, her cousin of roughly the same age. Though not a prominent activist herself, as were so many women in her family, Florence’s upbringing created in her a heightened awareness of the women’s movement, and she takes many opportunities in these letters to her famous suffragist cousin to voice her support for the cause. Florence occasionally took a more active role, as when she attended the National Suffrage Convention in 1910, about which she wrote to Alice in two letters described below. In addition to the highlights below, the letters pertain to school life, reading, church news, and life on Martha’s Vineyard, and they make frequent reference to the Woman’s Journal, Henry Browne Blackwell, Dr. Emily Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, Lucy Stone, and Antoinette Brown Blackwell. A majority of the letters date from the 1870’s through the 1890’s.
Highlights:
In a letter begun January 3, 1878, Florence reports an instance of the kind of discrimination her mother, the first ordained woman minister in the United States, faced her entire career: “My beloved Pastor has concluded he will not let Mother preach in his church (reason unknown, probably others objected to it).”
In a letter from February 7, 1883, Florence implores Alice to “do some missionary work in the Woman Suffrage line on the Vineyarders” and invites her to deliver a lecture. Alice evidently accepted, for in a letter of October 12th, 1883, Florence informs her that “your lecture was printed two or three weeks ago” in the local paper.
A letter from October 20, 1895 gives a first-hand account of the obstacles to voting that women faced, even where, as in Massachusetts, they had achieved partial suffrage. Florence tells Alice, “We have been having a D___l of a row over the Referendum. On Friday, Mrs. Jared Mayhew came into the store and told me that two of the Registrars of Chilmark...were going to refuse to let any woman register for the Referendum except the one (myself) who was already a voter...I blew up of course and Dan Vincent told me to write to the Secretary of the Commonwealth and he would sign his name as Chairman of the Refer. Com...”
A letter from May 25, 1905 notes the passing of a major figure in the women’s movement: “It must have been frightful to Uncle Harry to attend Mrs. [Mary A.] Livermore’s funeral so soon after seeing her at his birthday...Her death was a shock to Mother; and it does leave a large gap.”
Two letters from April 14 – 15, 1910, written from Washington, D.C., where Florence was attending the National Suffrage Convention with Emma Blackwell. (Alice was ill and at home.) “I’m having the time of my life,” Florence reports to Alice with genuine enthusiasm. “There are a lot of very bright suffrage women.” Of the current president, she also writes in frustration, “I wanted to shake Mr. Taft. He talked to suit every side and not commit himself too much to anything, he is not a good suffragist, or he is afraid of making enemies.”
Other incoming correspondence:
Several dozen items of incoming correspondence, February 20, 1882 – September 13, 1948, most with folding creases, soiling to several letters, chipping to a few. Also present are a letter from Henry B. Blackwell to S. Ellen Blackwell, with her reply on the verso; a letter from Adelaide A. Claflin to Lucy Stone; and a 3 page manuscript of a poem, “The Knight of the Pitcher,” by ASB. In addition to the highlights below, the letters pertain to the suffrage movement, The Woman’s Journal, ASB’s biography of Lucy Stone, the Blackwell estate in Martha’s Vineyard, ASB’s work as a translator, letters of appreciation, the anniversary of the Sacco and Vanzetti executions, and include several holiday cards. Correspondents include: Lillian D. Wald, Mary Beard, Mary Ware Dennet, Ellis Meredith, A.A. Roback, Jane Addams, Ethel Blackwell, Annie Mayhew, Doris Mayhew, Maria Barlow, Helen H. Gardener, Edna Stantial, G. Kerensky, Augusta and Emily Pope, Rose Herbert, Ann Morgan, Elizabeth B. Hooper, Mary A. McNaught, Alice Blackwell Belden, Susanna Carter, Cora Smith King, Gertrude L. Winslow, Edith A. Pope, Alma Lutz, Janette Rankin, Mrs. Samuel T. Jones, Louise S. Earle, Bertha S. Papazian, Fabio Fiallo, William Garrison, George W. Coleman, Robert Underwood Johnson, Eugene Barnett, Chester M. Poole, Alfred Baker Lewis, H.L. Tilton, H.A. Gibbs, Hans Kleiber, Paul Harvey, Gardner Jackson, the Thomas Brothers, Upton Sinclair, Booker T. Washington.
Highlights:
4 ALS and 1 TLS, November 22, 1929 to December 12, 1929, from Agnes (Blackwell) Jones, Ellen Hayes, Ethel Robinson (?), “Maria,” and “Hattie,” folding creases, short tears to two letters, in response to a circular ASB had sent asking for anecdotes of her mother and father, Lucy Stone and Henry Browne Blackwell. All of the letters contain multiple stories about the kindness or generosity of Stone and Blackwell, and more than one recalls Stone’s activism. For example, Ellen Hayes recounts:
It must have been away back in the ‘eighties when the antis thought they could make great argument against woman suffrage out of the fact that Lucy Stone kept her own name. We were [at] a small but public gathering...your mother was speaking and she had occasion to refer to the slur flung at her. Then, mentioning your father, she said with emphasis, “and we are as much married as anybody.”
TLS, Lillian D. Wald, April 15, 1914, 1 leaf of Henry Street Settlement, folding creases, browned. A letter from the famed nurse, activist, author and educator, informing her about a resolution passed by the Women’s Club of her Henry Street Settlement.
TLS, Booker T. Washington, January 31, 1893, 1 leaf of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute letterhead, folding creases, browning, brittle. Sending notice about the Tuskegee Negro Conference, in case the Woman’s Journal would like to send a correspondent.
ALS, “Adelaide A. Claflin” to Lucy Stone, August 25, 1891, 1 bifolium, 3 pp; soiled. Claflin worked closely with Lucy Stone for the suffrage cause, and in this letter she gives family news, and comments, “I really love to speak for suffrage.”
Other
Assignment of Copyright, “Lucy Stone – Pioneer of Women’s Rights,” March 21, 1928, transferring the rights of the biography from Alice Stone Blackwell to the Alice Stone Blackwell Committee.
Receipt, “One Hundred Fifty Dollars, for the purchase from Little Brown and Co. of the plates of the biography “Lucy Stone – Pioneer of Women’s Rights,” signed by Alice Stone Blackwell, creased.
Questionnaire, “Men of Mark in Massachusetts,” completed in holograph and signed by Henry B. Blackwell, March 18th, 1905; 3 pages, folding crease; “to aid in the preparation of a biographical sketch for ‘Men of Mark in Massachusetts.’”
6 Autograph Letters (one in fragment), copied in autograph by an unknown hand, Lucy Stone to Sarah Stone, Catherine Maugh to Lucy Stone, and Henry B. Blackwell to Lucy Stone, leaves browned. Also included are writings on suffrage by Alice Stone Blackwell and Henry B. Blackwell, ca. 25 pp, copied in the same hand.
[SARAH, I ADDED THIS ON 8/22] Several short anecdotes and poems, retyped from early 20th century journals, 8 pp, including “The Man in the Moon,” “Queer things about Mankind,” “Some Inventions by Women,” and “Our Old Nursery Rhymes.” It is unknown what these extracts were intended for, but a note in Stantial’s hand at the foot of one page reads “from the papers of Alice Stone Blackwell.” Also present is a poem titled “Vegetable Wrongs,” which states at the bottom, “from Mrs. Guy W. Stantial...Do not bother to return if not used.”
(#4653337 for additions)
Carrie Chapman Catt
Catt, Carrie Chapman. Suffrage Correspondence. 1916-1946.
14 Autograph and Typed Letters Signed to Edna Stantial, Maud Wood Park, Anna Child Bird, and Gertrude Halladay Leonard; March 7, 1916 – December 2, 1946. Ca. 25 leaves of National American Woman Suffrage Association and personal letterhead.
During her second, historic term as President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Catt formulated the so-called “Winning Plan,” a strategy of aggressive pursuit of state voting rights to coincide with the push for a federal amendment. The multi-front approach proved successful with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, and Catt’s leadership efforts during this period were such that, in the assessment of NAW, “it is to Mrs. Catt more that to any other single figure besides Susan B. Anthony that American women owe their right to vote.” The materials below pertain to this period, as well as to Catt’s efforts to assemble the substantial feminist library which she donated to the Library of Congress in 1938. NAW I 309-13.
In addition to the highlights below, the letters concern the ongoing effort to gather books, photographs, and other materials related to woman suffrage for the collection that Catt was assembling and had arranged to be housed at the Library of Congress; the whereabouts of women involved with the movement; Alice Stone Blackwell’s health and legal troubles; Maud Wood Park and her play about Lucy Stone; personal updates and travel plans; and gifts exchanged.
Highlights:
TLS, to Gertrude Halladay Leonard, March 7, 1916, 4 leaves of N.A.W.S.A. letterhead; folding creases; enclosing a letter for the Board of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association regarding their work with other state groups, as well as a sheet of proposed guidelines headed “Organization of the Congressional Work of Massachusetts as Part of the Organized Work of the National.” Catt also warns Leonard that:
ten anti suffragists have arrived [in Iowa] or are coming from Brookline, Mass...this makes 19 in the State of which we know...I have asked the State President to let down the bars and let us all come in and have a fight to the finish. If she consents...you may get a hurry call to send the whole Massachusetts Association to Iowa where you will be expected to catch every Massachusetts anti and give her a cold-water treatment.
ALS, to Maud Wood Park, August 1918, 2 leaves of N.A.W.S.A. letterhead, 4 pages. Written in a crucial period following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment by the House of Representatives in January of 1918 but prior to its passage by the Senate, the letter gives updates from specific state campaigns and discusses travel plans for Park, then Chair of the N.A.W.S.A. Congressional Committee, should Congress reconvene to vote on the amendment (which they did, only to defeat it in the Senate, on September 30, 1918).
2 TLS, to Park, January 7 and January 13, 1919, 4 leaves of N.A.W.S.A. letterhead, 4 pages. In the first letter, Catt expresses her support for a bill which would allow women to vote for members of Congress, “as a sort of a flank movement,” to full suffrage: “it certainly will arouse the antis and perhaps put some ‘pep into some people who don’t possess it now.” However, with action on the bill looming, Catt writes to Park in the letter of January 13,
I have never felt very enthusiastic over the bill . . . It did not occur to me at the time that you intended to push it to a quiet vote. My notion about it had been that you would have a flamboyant hearing which would give publicity and set the people of the country talking . . . I then read the Constitution and wrote you again that I could not see the constitutionality of it . . . [I]t does not seem as though this particular week is a good time to push to a vote . . . for the reason that we are hoping to get the Federal Amendment vote this week. If we get that, we don’t care anything about the other.
Catt goes on to give two pages of updates on developments and plans for action within various state associations. Taken together, the four letters described above constitute a major discussion of key points of strategy in what would be the final phase of the suffrage struggle.
TLS, to Alice Stone Blackwell, January 31, 1938, 3 leaves of personal letterhead; folding creases; paperclip rust. Discussing the “very good looking exhibition” Catt has recently seen at the Smithsonian about the N.A.W.S.A.; remarking that she is “quite sure there is no relic of your Mother [Lucy Stone] there” and wondering if “among your possessions, you have some things that marked historical events, or perhaps you have letters written to your Mother that would be important in after years.” Catt ends the letter by informing Blackwell of a significant development in what would be another of her great legacies:
[I] visited the Congressional Library and they are willing to receive the library I am collecting. . . It is really going to be a very historic and valuable collection . . . please think about the books you may have that will pass on to posterity and help tell the story of women’s freedom.
Catt’s collection forms the bulk of the 700-800 volume National American Woman Suffrage Association collection at the Library of Congress. (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawsacol.html)
TLS, to Park and Stantial, April 20, 1943, 3 leaves of personal letterhead; paperclip rust. In this letter, a “somewhat disturbed” Catt tries to enlist her colleagues in wresting a small collection of books and papers from Alice Stone Blackwell’s library away from an “alcove” set aside for it by Boston University, in order to place it within the N.A.W.S.A. collection at the Library of Congress. Catt has learned that “Dr. Marsh, the President of Boston University, is apparently without enthusiasm concerning the Blackwell collection,” and her strong reaction comes as no surprise, given the energy and passion Catt has devoted to the cause:
If you do not want that history to be buried in a university that does not respect the woman movement enough to want to have the Blackwell papers at once, then please let us find the proper channel through which to pass those papers into the Congressional Library where they will rest at peace with all the other papers of the whole woman movement. . . If you would like to do this without hurting the feelings of Mr. Marsh, I will not object, but if you want to give him a push or two that would make him squeal, I shall also not object.
Incoming correspondence:
TLS, “George S. Hawke,” December 31, 1919, 1 leaf personal letterhead, folding creases, paperclip rust; regarding the “Woman Suffrage Case.” Hawke was an attorney and counselor at law.
TLS, “William L. Frierson,” October 7, 1920, 1 leaf Department of Justice letterhead, folding creases; regarding legal challenges to the 19th Amendment.
Other:
Typescript, “Acceptance of Achievement Award Medal,” May 16, 1941, The White House, Washington, D.C., 10 pp. Catt focuses on the collective strength of the movement rather than her own individual achievement when she says
...I have achieved nothing personally. I have been only a single unit in an army, which numbered over two millions at the end...That army marched ceaselessly, tirelessly onward...for five straight generations of thirty-three years each.
Typescript, “Carrie Chapman Catt Commemorative Stamp,” 1 pp. The story, recounted from Alda Wilson, of how Catt came to be featured on the “10 stamp” in commemoration of the meeting of the International Suffrage Alliance in Turkey.
(#13612)
Maud Wood Park
Park, Maud Wood. Suffrage Correspondence. 1935-1951.
24 Autograph and Typed Letters Signed, primarily to Stantial, but also to Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Ellis Meredith, Martha Gelhorn, Harold Freedman, and Mary Anderson; May 12, 1935 – June 15, 1951; many on Eastland Park Hotel (Portland, Me.) stationery, a few on personal letterhead; one incomplete; folding creases; a few instances of wrinkling, one note chipped with no loss of text. Also present are 5 holiday cards and postcards, signed by Park.
Park’s significance to the suffrage movement is immeasurable. As a young woman she co-founded the College Equal Suffrage League, served as chair of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, and was executive secretary of the influential Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government. Her most crucial role came in the final years of the suffrage struggle, when she chaired the N.A.W.S.A.’s Congressional Committee, formed as part of the group’s aggressive “front door policy.” Following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Park became the first president of the League of Women Voters, as well as the head of the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee. She later assembled and donated the historic “Women’s Rights Collection” to Radcliffe College. The materials below relate to these and other activities. NAW IV 519-22.
In addition to the highlights below, the letters pertain to the health of family and friends; publication and response to Park’s play, Lucy Stone, which was based on Alice Stone Blackwell’s biography of her mother; travel arrangements and plans; well wishes and thank you’s. The letters to Stantial reveal not only a respectful working relationship, but an intimate and affectionate friendship as well. For the last several years of her life, Park lived with Edna and Guy Stantial in their home in Melrose, Mass.
Highlights:
Typed Letter Signed, “Maud Wood Park,” to Martha Gellhorn, one leaf folded once; signed in pencil, with pencil annotation in Stantial’s hand, “Suffrage Archive Committee.”
A founding document of the present archive. Park informs Gellhorn that all members of the old N.A.W.S.A. board will be receiving a copy of the same letter, bearing the “good news that Edna Stantial has been designated as official archivist for a documentary history of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.” Park requests that any letters, literature, meeting minutes, propaganda and memorabilia of any sort be sent to Stantial, to facilitate her important task of preserving “a record of our day-by-day struggle for women’s freedom.”
Typed letter carbon, January 13, 1919, Maud Wood Park to Carrie Chapman Catt, 3 page recto only, age toned, chipped at edges, pinhole at upper corners, addressed “Dear Chief,” regarding a vote in the House on the suffrage amendment, expressing concerns about challenges to the constitutionality of the amendment, the battle in various state Houses, and about receiving contradicting orders from Catt, including the plea about future directions, “please, please, please let them be non-reversible.”
Typed letter carbon, January 17, 1919, Park to Catt, 2 pp recto only, holograph annotations, regarding progress on the suffrage amendments in several states, including Oregon, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Nebraska.
Typed letter carbon, January 29, 1919, to Catt, 1 pp on verso of state suffrage resolution, wrinkling and edgewear, written at Park’s request to update Catt on the suffrage battle in the Kentucky State legislature.
Typed letter carbon, October 5, 1918, Maud Wood Park to “Congressional Chairmen,” 3 pp recto only of NAWSA letterhead, regarding the narrowly failed vote on the suffrage amendment which took place on October 1, 1918, pushing for another vote before the adjournment of the Senate the following March, commenting on President Wilson’s call for passage of the amendment, and challenging the amendment’s opponents. A document from the front lines of the suffrage movement in its final hours.
5 ALS to Alice Stone Blackwell, (July 1, 1939 – January 26, 1949), in which Park expresses deep admiration and respect for her fellow suffragist and collaborator on Park’s play, Lucy Stone. A letter dated September 12, 1944, with the Second World War in its advanced stages, captures the sentiment conveyed in all four:
I can find no adequate words in which to tell you how much I think this world of ours has been bettered because you were born into it.
With all the distressing and horrifying reports that come to us nowadays it’s a special relief to remember your wisdom and courage and your lifelong devotion to the needs of the weak and oppressed.
In a letter dated August 25, 1937, Park updates Blackwell on revisions to her play, which her editor has just renamed “Lucy Stone,” and on communications with the publisher. Park’s play, adapted from Blackwell’s biography of her mother, was published by the Walter H. Baker Co. in 1938.
ALS to Ellis Meredith, October 28, 1948, thanking her for statements and verses which Park and Stantial will add to the Radcliffe Collection of papers related to the women’s movement, and requesting a biographical sketch for the same. Park also makes clear her position on a piece of pending legislation which had been controversial among women’s rights activists since its original introduction in 1923: “I’m hoping that you will do everything possible to bring defeat of the shocking ‘Equal Rights’ Amendment despite its inclusion in the Democratic and the Republican Party Platform.” Park was far from alone in her sentiments on the proposed amendment— many prominent women’s rights advocates, the League of Women Voters, and even Eleanor Roosevelt were vocal in their opposition to the ERA, fearing it would result in the undoing of hard won labor protections for women. Meredith was a suffragist and journalist who wrote about women’s rights.
24 ALS to Stantial, May 12, 1935 to January 22, 1944, illustrating the women’s close working relationship, with the veteran Park providing encouragement and praise to the younger Stantial, assigning her tasks related to the gathering of material documenting the history of the movement, and discussing Park’s work on various committees— among them the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies— in the decades following her activism in the N.A.W.S.A. and the League of Women Voters. Several of the letters are signed “Constance,” a name Park frequently used in correspondence with Stantial, as well as a nom-de-plume she occasionally used in the 1920’s.
Maud M. Wood and Robert F. Hunter
In 1908, four years after the death of her first husband, Maud Wood Park married Robert F. Hunter, an actor and theatrical agent whom she’d known since her teens. The marriage was never publicly acknowledged and was known only to a few close friends. Both Park and Hunter traveled extensively for their work, and the two spent time together when their paths crossed on the road, and later, when Hunter made extended visits to Park in Maine; however the two never lived together. The typescript, bill of receipt, and archive of letters below add considerably to our knowledge of the couple’s relationship and to Park’s feelings about it, and document the beginning of their relationship, years before Park’s first marriage.
45 ALS to Robert Hunter, January 5, 1887 – November 15, 1893; folding creases; all with envelopes.
Written several years before Park’s first marriage (also undertaken secretly) to Boston architect Charles Edward Park, the letters reveal a friendship of long standing between Park (then Maud M. Wood) and Hunter, and perhaps even a stunted courtship, long before their eventual marriage. Starting when Park was 16, but composed for the most part while she was teaching in Bedford and Chelsea, Massachusetts, many of these letters are thank you’s, brief notes of invitation, and arrangements of plans, addressed to Hunter in the accounting department of the New York and New England Railroad, and at the offices of the Daily Globe and the Daily Post in Boston. Park’s frequent changes and cancellation of plans on account of her busy schedule anticipate the period when the two were married and Park’s intense involvement in the suffrage movement made any conventional relationship impossible.
The developing activist in Park asserts herself in several of the letters. In a letter from March 3, 1889, for example, the 18 year-old takes Hunter to task for his views on women:
It seems to me that from a person who prides himself on his “liberality” a condemnation of womankind in general is rather out of keeping. “Can you defend the sex?” Yes, I both can and do, as you know, but I would never again attempt it with you...You are willing to admit, I believe, that the man who says of religion, “I know and you don’t,” “I am right and you are wrong,” is most bigoted...Will you not also see that the character or capacity of woman is a question which has many arguments on both sides, and on which no one has a right to decide arbitrarily?
Park’s political consciousness surfaces again in a letter postmarked October 15, 1889, when she comments, apropos of the ongoing labor struggle, “every reform has been opposed and fought over but with time the right is always successful.” It was a lesson that Park would learn first hand in the following decades on the front lines of the suffragist movement.
Another letter registers Park’s dismay over women’s then limited suffrage rights in Massachusetts. Post-marked January 27, 1892, two days after her twenty-first birthday, she writes, “if I were a boy the coming of age would have been a matter of great importance, but as it is, alas, it only entitles me to vote on the School Committee question. . .”
Elsewhere Park reports that she’s reading voraciously (George Eliot, Rosa Campbell Praed, Mary Augusta Ward, and Justin McCarthy, among others), comments further on the labor movement, writes about plays she’s attended, and acknowledges the demands of being a teacher. In all, the letters capture a period of great intellectual growth in the young activist, just a few years before she would begin to make significant contributions to the suffragist movement. At the same time, they provide insight into a relationship of great importance in Park’s life, about which little is known.
Typescript, on Maud Wood Park and Robert Hunter, April 4, 1952, 1 leaf, 2 pp, in which Edna Stantial recounts the circumstances of Park’s secret marriage to Hunter.
Typescript Signed, “Special confidential directions for the disposition of my ashes by my Executrix,” undated; one leaf, folding creases, pinholes at head. Signed, “Maud M.W. Park” and, below, “Maud Wood Hunter;” additionally signed, “Edna L. Stantial,” as witness.
The document confers on Stantial the responsibility for the placement of Park’s ashes following her death, and also bears a deeply personal revelation. Park states,
It grieves me that I did not give public recognition of my second marriage to Robert Hunter and that I continued to use the name of Park instead of Hunter.
Because I have been known to the public and my friends as Maud Wood Park I have requested that my memorial service be held in that name but it is my desire to be interred as Mrs. Maud Wood Hunter (Mrs. Robert Hunter.) My ashes are to be placed by Edna Lamprey Stantial in the urn with those of my husband . . .
The document testifies to the considerable sacrifices made by the women at the center of the suffrage movement in giving precedence to the collective cause over their personal lives.
Typescript, “Directions,” 1 page, folding creases, envelope. Park’s note gives instructions as to her cremation and the interment of her ashes next to Hunter’s, and is housed in an envelope with a note in the hand of Mabel Caldwell Willard, instructing that the envelope be sent unopened to Park should Willard’s death precede Park’s. A pencil annotation on the envelope by Stantial reads “as arranged with Mabel Willard- years ago.”
Bill of receipt, June 7, 1929, Frank Le Cobb from “Mrs. Maude W. Hunter.” Noting the receipt of $145, this is a rare example of a document in which Park uses her married name, years before the composition of the document above.
(#13614)
Incoming correspondence:
Several dozen items of incoming correspondence, December 19th, 1894 – October 9, 1952, regarding efforts of the M.W.S.A. and the N.A.W.S.A. leading up to the passage of the suffrage amendment; the League of Women Voters; the N.A.W.S.A. archives; the Alice Stone Blackwell Fund; Carrie Chapman Memorial Fund; Park’s dramatic work Lucy Stone; the “Women’s Rights Collection” at Radcliffe; notes of appreciation and congratulations; and general personal updates. Correspondents include: Inez Haynes Irwin, Mary Grey Peck, Florence E. Allen, Carrie Chapman Catt, Molly Dewson, Blanche Ames Ames, Ann Webster, Roberta B. Forgie, Anna H. Shaw, Margaret S. Grierson, Amy G. Maher, Rena B. Smith, Mabeth Hurd Paige, Anna Lord Strauss, Agnes Ryan, Dorothy Kenyon, Dorothy Straus, Hilda A. Hedstrom, Pauline A. Shaw, Helen H. Gardener, Mildred P. Sherman, Helen Bisco, Ethel Osgood, Lydia T. Wills, Mary B. Anthony, Ethel M. Johnson, Louise Laidlaw Backus, Lucile W. Heming, Florence Luscomb, Mrs. Henry H. Russell, Helen Ring Robinson, J. Beatrice Bowman, Harriet Taylor Upton, Mary Agnes Mahan, John L. Cable, Meyer Bloomfield, Edward Filene, Harold Freedman, C. Levon Eksergian, Cyrus H. McCormick, Fred J. Kelly, Sidney S. Kingsley, Anne Laurie Williams, Edward Keating, Philip Woolf, Ralph A. Gamble, Steven Barabas, George Edward Fitz. Also present are a few items of correspondence to Robert Hunter, from Frank J. Wilstach and Helen M. Bisco.
Highlights:
TLS signed, Carrie Chapman Catt, August 11th 1943, 1 leaf of personal letterhead, folding creases. Catt provides two statements of tribute to Park, appropriate for an awards or honorary ceremony for her suffrage colleague and possibly drafted as such. The second tribute reads in full:
The first contribution made my Maud Wood Park to the woman movement was in presenting the suffrage cause to the women in the colleges and universities while founding the College Equal Suffrage League. But her greatest contribution was one which could not have been rendered, to the same degree, by any other woman in our group of leaders. This was her wise and skillful work in piloting the Nineteenth Amendment through the Congress and bringing it to submission in face of a determined opposition in both Houses. For this unique service American women owe her eternal gratitude. [signed] Carrie Chapman Catt.
ALS, Mary Agnes Mahan, May 28, 1919, 1 leaf of personal letterhead, folding creases, in which the MWSA member informs Park, as ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment becomes a real possibility, that “all the local politicians tell me the State Legislature will ratify, but has you have always advised nothing should be taken for granted ... it seems we should have a ratification committee.” She asks Park, then heading the Congressional Committee for N.W.A.S.A., to come to Massachusetts to persuade state headquarters for the need of it, appealing to the possibility to make suffrage history: “You have earned a rest, but you cannot stop, when the wondrous opportunity is before you to help make Massachusetts the first ratifying state.”
Several ALS and TLS from Maud Grey Park about gathering material related to the N.A.W.S.A. to donate to the collection at the Library of Congress, and about her work on a biography of Carrie Chapman Catt.
TLS, Anna Lord Straus, March 18, 1946, 1 leaf of National League of Women Voters letterhead, folding creases. The President of the League of Women Voters offers her gratitude to Park, who was the first to hold the office, for her role in organizing the League. “It has given us an opportunity to work in an organization with high ideals and a record of past achievement...”
TLS, Fred J. Kelly, December 17, 1931, 1 leaf of United Stated Department of the Interior letterhead, inviting Park, “who has given so generously of herself to the advancement of the social life of America,” to sit on the Committee on Social-Economic Goals of America of the National Education Association. (Park, however, declined the offer.)
TLS, John L. Cable, June 21, 1922, 1 leaf of House of Representatives letterhead, folding creases; thanking Park for the support of the L.W.V. on the “independent citizenship bill.” “You have my sincere appreciation and also my respect for you ability in undertaking and carrying out the work you are now doing as President of the National League of Women Voters, as well as in securing the passage of the bill yesterday.”
3 TLS, Edward A. Filene to Mr. J. Armstrong, Chartered Bank of India, Austria & China,” “Mr. James F. Smith, Governor General Phillipine Islands,” and “Mr. Escamilla,” November 25, 1908, 3 leaves, folding creases, 1 envelope. Filene, an influential friend of Park’s first husband, wrote these letters of introduction for Park, “who is planning to spend some time in China [and the Phillipine Islands] as part of a two years’ tour of the world.” The purpose of Park’s tour was to see first-hand the situation of women in other countries, and it provided the material for a series of lectures across America upon her return.
Manuscript signed, Untitled, College Suffrage Association, 1 leaf. A tribute to Park from the College Suffrage Association, signed by 8 members from chapters across the country: “Resolved:-- that the College Suffrage association sends greetings and admiring wishes to Mrs. Maud Wood Park, asking her to accept gratitude pride and constant thoughts from the organization which owes to her its existence and its hopes.”
Writings and Speeches by Park
Typescript, “What Four Million Women Are Doing,” 2 pp, light creasing, consisting of an excerpt from an article in Harper’s Magazine, December 1923, written by Park in her capacity of chair of the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, and describing the activities of the League of Women Voters since the passage of the Suffrage Amendment.
Typescript carbon, “Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government: Report from Annual National convention to July 15, 1916,” 2 pp, recto only, corrected in holograph, age toned with a few small tears.
Typescript carbon, “The Non-Partisan Committee,” 13 line poem, signed Maud Wood Park, December 1918.
Typescript letter carbon, February 26, 1912, “To the Editor of the Christian Science Monitor” from Maud Wood Park, 2 pp recto only, age toned and chipped at edges, defending her use of statistics on infant mortality rates in countries with woman suffrage as opposed to those without it, asserting, in part, “it is reasonable to conclude that the votes of women have helped to bring about adequate legislation for the conservation of children’s lives.” (Also present is a typed copy made from the carbon.)
Typescript carbon, “Brief Outline for Women and Politics,” [ca. 1923], 3 pp recto only, wrinkled and creased, chips to bottom edge of pp 2-3 with some loss to text,” a detailed outline for a speech or talk about “The Significance of the Entrance of Twenty-seven Million Women into the Electorate at a Critical Period in our History.”
Typescript draft, “Women’s Important Opportunity to Vote,” 4 pp plus inserts, recto only, pencil annotations in holograph, of a speech or editorial beginning “A recent Census report shows that...more women than men are eligible to vote this year. Therefore women have a better chance than men to improve conditions in our country and to help the maintenance of international peace,” and offering a brief history of the hard won battles of the suffrage movement, likely composed by Park in her capacity as President of the League of Women Voters.
Autograph manuscript signed, “Sheppard-Towner Act, Supplementary Notes,” 3 pages recto only, regarding the passage in 1921 of the first federal social benefits program created explicitly for women and children, and one of the most substantial reforms to come out of the Progressive Era. Park, who was serving as President of the League of Women Voters at the time, recalls that “during the debate...one Senator remarked that the Congress had no reason to bother about mothers and babies,” and she details how the LWV countered opposition in lobbying for the bill’s passage.
Autograph manuscript, on woman suffrage in New Zealand, [ca. 1912], 20 pp recto only, edgewear to one leaf. A case study by Parks of the positive effects of woman suffrage in New Zealand (achieved in 1893), as an argument against opponents who claimed that giving women the vote would result in political and social disaster.
Typescript draft, “Victory in Congress,” 7 (of 8) pp recto only, with numerous cancellations and holograph amendments, detailing the last years of the battle for the Suffrage Amendment in Congress. Page 6 is lacking.
Typescript, “Notes about Helen Gardener,” 7 pp recto only, incomplete and with holograph corrections, with 5 additional pages of notes about Gardner for her file in the archives at Radcliffe. Park recounts Gardener’s work in creating the House Suffrage Committee and her close work with President Wilson in the final years of the suffrage battle. In one of the notes, Park sums up Gardener’s importance in five points:
1. her novels and short stories in support of a single standard in sex morals and of a higher age of consent for girls;
2. her essay, Sex in Brain, which punctured the pseudo-scientific theory that women’s brains are inferior to men’s . . .
3. ...advocating the removal of economic and legal inequalities from which women were then suffering;
4. her incalculable help in the closing years of the struggle for women suffrage;
5. the...public service which she gave as the first woman on the United States Civil Service Commission.
(For more on Gardner, see NAW II pp 11-13.)
Typescript carbon, “Comments on Boston Production of Lucy Stone, by Mrs. Maud Wood Park,” 1 p, folding crease, consisting of press reviews of Park’s play.
Typed letter signed, April 9, 1923, Rebecca Lowrie to Minnie Fisher Cunningham, 1 bifolium, 2 pp on Harper & Brothers letterhead, folding crease and toning to folds, saying Harper & Bros. are “delighted to have the outline of Mrs. Park’s book” and that they “feel sure that the book will have a real significance and a very wide appeal to women all over the country.” It is unknown what book this refers to, as Harper never ultimately published any work by Park.
Typescript, “Maud Wood Park (From Who’s Who, 1942),” 1 p, short tear to edge.
Typed copy, “Maud Wood Park,” 2 pp, headed with a note in pencil, “copy of article in at least one edition of National Cyclopedia of American Biography.”
Maud Wood Park and the MWSA
Typescripts, typescript carbons, autograph manuscripts and transcripts, together ca. 140 pp, some with holograph corrections and annotations, related to the organization and history of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, the College Equal Suffrage League, and the National League of Woman Voters, primarily by Maud Wood Park but also by Alice Stone Blackwell, Katharine Page Hersey, and with notes by Stantial, undertaken “for [the] organization [i.e. MWSA] folder at Radcliff,” as stated in a pencil annotation on one of the documents. Papers include Park’s notes on “How I Came to Start My Work for Woman Suffrage;” mimeographs of speeches and addresses Park made while she was active with the MWSA; transcripts of early hearings on Woman Suffrage at the Massachusetts State House; a carbon of the Articles of Incorporation of the MWSA; a seven page biographical sketch of Mary Hutcheson Page by Katharine Page Hersey; an eight page biographical sketch of Rose Dabney Forbes; a three page biographical sketch of Pauline Agassiz Shaw; and 18 pp of autograph notes by Park related to the first several years of the National League of Women Voters.
The documents also include:
Typed letter carbon, March 24, 1920, Bancroft Davis to Fanny C. Osgood, 5 pages recto only on personal letterhead, regarding the “desire of the [MWSA] to broaden its purposes and change its name.” Davis offers his legal assessment and advising dissolving the MWSA and reincorporating with an expanded charter.
Typed letters and documents, George L. Huntress to Fanny C. Osgood, 1918-1922, 14 pp on personal letterhead, pertaining to a gift made by Mrs. Robert D. Evans in her will to the MWSA. Huntress was the lawyer for the estate, and Osgood was Treasurer of the MWSA.
2 autograph manuscripts, “Why I Believe in Woman’s Suffrage,” by Edith Gutterson and M.E. Allen, both of the MWSA, 6 pp and 1 p, respectively.
Maud Wood Park Fund
16 Autograph notes signed, 16 typed letters (most signed), and 1 telegram, addressed to Stantial or to the Maud Wood Park Fund in remembrance of Park following her death and pledging contributions to the Fund. Contributors include Margaret S. Grierson, Louise S. Earle, Catherine R. Gerrish, Edward Keating, Helen Brue, Mabeth H. Paige, Ellis Meredith, Mary Dewson, Mrs. William Bruce, Anna Lord Strauss, Lucy Franklin, Richard Boyer, Mrs. William R.C. Stephenson, Percy Maxine Lee, Inez Hayes Irwin, Mary Gray Peck, and Elizabeth Borden. Also present are 2 copies of the 2 pp newsletter from the League of Women Voters, May 15, 1955, bearing the death notice of Maud Wood Park; a carbon of the song and reading list for Park’s memorial service (age toned); 8 pp of worksheets regarding Maud Wood Park’s estate, completed by Stantial in her capacity as executor; mimeograph solicitation sheet for the Maud Wood Park Memorial Fund, 1 page; mimeograph transcript of an editorial from the May 13, [1955] edition of the Christian Science Monitor, 1 page, 3 copies; typed letter mimeograph of Stantial’s notice of Park’s passing and of the Memorial Fund, 1 page; typed letter In Memoriam from the Aiken League of Women Voters, 1 page; several receipts from New England Hospital for contributions made to the Maud Wood Park Fund; and financial records and receipts, ca. 50 pp, and ruled notebook, relating to Park’s estate.
Highlights include:
Typed letter signed, May 26, 1955, Mary Gray Peck to Stantial, 1 leaf, 2 pp, regarding Park’s passing, and asking after news of her papers and other matters, to which the letter below is a reply.
Typed letter mimeograph, May 31, 1955, Stantial to Mary Gray Peck, 2 leaves, 4 pp, detailing the last days of Maud Wood Park, the memorial service which followed, Park’s estate and papers, and mentioning Park’s Front Door Lobby, as well as a doctoral dissertation Stantial had received about the speeches of Carrie Chapman Catt (aided in part by research done in Stantial’s papers), and a letter of Catt to Alice Stone Blackwell which Stantial had “burned...long ago,” explaining, “it was a sordid kind of tale about someone’s gossip to Mr. Catt of Mrs. Catt’s frienship with Mary Hay...”
Typed memorial tribute to Park, 4 pp recto only, folding crease, read at Park’s memorial service and written by either Mary Driscoll or Jennie Loitman Barron, alluded to in the letter Mary Gray Peck above.
Typed letter signed, May 13, 1955, Inez Haynes Irwin to Stantial, 2 pp recto only, corrected in holograph, saying she’d heard of the death of Park, and containing a brief tribute to Park, which was subsequently read at Park’s memorial service.
Typed tribute to Park, signed by Percy Maxim Lee, President of the League of Women Voters, 1 page, stating, in part, “The women of the United States owe an eternal debt of gratitude to the leaders in the fight for woman suffrage. Among those...Maud Wood Park has a place of great distinction.”
Maud Wood Park, Carrie Chapman Catt, and President Wilson
In the fall of 1918, with a vote on a constitutional amendment for woman suffrage due to occur in the Oklahoma state legislature in less than three weeks, Catt wrote to President Woodrow Wilson with an appeal for explicit support:
Our women believe that if a message from you to the voters of Oklahoma could be telegraphed from Washington...it would give exactly the impetus needed to bring success. You probably do not know that when our Federal Amendment was before the House of Representatives here we won two opponents in the Oklahoma delegation on the ground that the women of the western states had “voted right” in the last presidential election.... We are therefore confident that a message from you would be of the greatest value in the state which these men represent.
Wilson replied the next day, to Park (then chair of the N.A.W.S.A. Congressional Committee) rather than Catt, that he was “taking pleasure in sending the message to Oklahoma.”
A month later, Park wrote to thank the President for his support:
Miss Marjorie Shuler, who has just come from Oklahoma, tells me that your message received wide publicity there and was undoubtedly one of the chief factors in the success of the amendment.
And though Park ends the letter imploring the President not to “take the trouble to reply to this note,” President Wilson responds the next day:
I must not deny myself the pleasure of thanking you for your letter.... It is immensely cheering to get such support from Oklahoma.
This illuminating exchange from the final act of the suffrage movement illustrates the influence and power the N.A.W.S.A. had acquired over the years, ultimately resulting in the realization of a vision created by suffragists several generations earlier.
Inventory:
Typed Letter duplicate, Carrie Chapman Catt to President Woodrow Wilson, October 21, 1918, one leaf, paper clip stain, darkening to edges.
Together with
Typed Letter Signed, Woodrow Wilson to Maud Wood Park, October 22, 1918, one leaf of White House letterhead, slight browning.
Typed Letter duplicate, Maud Wood Park to President Woodrow Wilson, November 26, 1918, one leaf.
Together with
Typed Letter Signed, Woodrow Wilson to Maud Wood Park, November 27, 1918, one leaf of White House letterhead, signature smeared.
Edna Lamprey Stantial
Remarkably little biographical information is known about Edna Lamprey Stantial, but her role in gathering materials related to the suffrage movement is well documented. Herself an active suffragist, who served as secretary of the MWSA as well as the Massachusetts LWV, she took an especially active role in preserving the documents of the movement, and, in 1940, she organized the Woman’s Centennial Congress, with an eye towards collecting those materials. Stantial also provided invaluable support, both financial and secretarial, to Alice Stone Blackwell, Maud Wood Park, and Carrie Chapman Catt in their old age, and was of considerable help to the latter two in assembling the women’s rights collections now housed at Radcliffe and the Library of Congress. The materials below relate to these efforts and others related to the suffragist cause.
Several dozen items of incoming correspondence, April 20, 1911 – May 24, 1976, related to Stantial’s numerous suffragist activities, including her roles as archivist of the National American Women Suffrage Association and Secretary of the Alice Stone Blackwell Fund. Correspondents include: Elinor Rice Hays, Mary Grey Peck, Florence E. Allen, Alice Park, Inez Haynes Irwin, Ida Porter-Boyer, Florence Luscomb, Carolyn Wolfe, Margaret Noyes Kleinert, Miriam H. Field, Margaret Woodward, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Charles Sumner Bird, Mrs. William C. Mason, Gertrude Halladay Leonard, La Rue Brown, Alina Lutz, Alla A. Libbey, Gertrude Wood Dean, George W. Coleman, Mary E. Driscoll, Angier L. Goodwin, Ellis Meredith, Mrs. Booker T. Washington, Alda Wilson, Mabel Russell, Henry Griffith Keasbey, Richard Porter-Boyer, H.C. Lodge, Jr., David I. Walsh, Anna Lord Strauss, Samuel Fuller, Margaret Grierson, Walter Pratt, Dickran H. Boyajian, Harry B. Wells, Thekla Bunnenberg, Agnes Baldwin, K.D. McCormick, Walter M. Pratt, Henry Hornblower, Fred Lawson, William L. Garrison, and Isabel Wilder. Enclosed with the letter from Isabel Wilder is a program for the memorial service of her brother, Thornton Wilder; enclosed with a letter from George W. Coleman is a program for the memorial of Edward A. Filene. On the verso of one letter each from Mary Driscoll and Mary Grey Peck is a reply letter from Stantial.
Highlights:
TLS, “Gertrude Halladay Leonard,” April 10, 1950, 1 leaf of personal letterhead, in which Leonard thanks Stantial for her account of the memorial service for Alice Stone Blackwell, and testifies to the importance of Stantial’s and Blackwell’s relationship: “I think it must be a great happiness to you to know that she appreciated your friendship and devotion so much, and that you were nearer than anyone to so wonderful a woman.”
ALS, Elinor Rice Hays, August 1, [ca. 1962-1966], one leaf of personal letterhead, 2 pp., in which Hays talks about her biography of Lucy Stone— The Morning Star— and discusses progress on her biography of the Blackwell family, which would be published in 1967 as Those Extraordinary Blackwells.
TLS, Margaret Washington, May 2, 1913, one leaf of Girls’ Industries, Tuskegee Institute letterhead, 2 pp., a few wrinkles, in which Mrs. Booker T. Washington thanks Miss Lamprey for donating ‘a barrel’ of items to the school (?). “I want to tell you how very grateful these young people were for the kindness of all you boys and girls and it did them so much good to realize that boys and girls of their own ages were thinking of them way off.”
ALS, Judge Florence E. Allen, December 31, 1961, 2 leaves of personal letterhead, 3 pages; offering her congratulations on her archive work: “what a wonderful achievement to get the Archives into the Library of Congress – no one could have done this but you.”
TLS, Margaret Grierson, January 11, 1962, 1 leaf of Smith College Library letterhead, browned; in which she thanks Stantial for her many contributions to the Sophia Smith Collection at the Smith College Library, specifically for sending many specimens of the “famous bluebirds of the 1915 Massachusetts campaign.” A sample of the bluebird is included in this archive.
TLS, Alice Park, September 4, 1955, 2 leaves of Susan B. Anthony Memorial Committee of California letterhead, folding creases; in which the 94-year-old feminist and suffrage activist offers to donate to Park her collection of suffrage badges.
TLS, Alice Park, May 31, 1935, one leaf, folding crease, browning, short tear to one fold; front line feminist Park encloses money for the Alice Stone Blackwell Fund, and adds her perspective on the great journal that began in Blackwell’s family: “Of all her varied activities of all the years – The Woman’s Journal stands as her monument. In every state where a suffrage campaign has been carried on – the Woman’s Journal was its background as well as its constant partner. Often and often I found subscribers who took the Journal when mildly interested, but who grew active and militant as years went on.”
Autograph manuscript, six line poem by Alice Stone Blackwell, June 8, 1918, enclosed with a small watercolor of the Blackwell home on Martha’s Vineyard by Florence Blackwell, 1885.
Stantial Journals
Journals of Edna Stantial, October 26, 1938 to August 21, 1970, ca. 130 pp, loose autograph and typewritten leaves and partially completed bound journal.
Stantial’s journal is concerned with two major threads. The first recounts her experiences in the suffrage movement and offers profiles of various suffragists she’s encountered over the years. These entries take the form of letters to her daughter, Barbara. In the entry of October 26, 1938, Stantial tells of how came by her first position in the movement, when in 1916 a friend called to ask if she knew anyone who might want to work as secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association. Stantial took the position herself and “at once became a most ardent advocate of woman suffrage,” and she adds, “I think I never saw a group of women so intent on accomplishing their goal.” In the entry of November 1, 1938, Stantial provides thumbnail sketches of Hannah S. Luscomb and Hannah Hall Paddock, two women active in the Massachusetts suffrage movement. On November 17, 1938 she tells Barbara “today we’ve been organizing a committee for the collection and housing of suffrage books and mementoes, including the fliers and other literature used in the campaign to get the vote for women.”
Stantial’s reminiscences are mixed with keen insights into the history of the movement, such as this report following a visit of a few days with Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Stone Blackwell:
Mrs. Catt had a good deal to say about the contribution Miss Blackwell’s father had made to the suffrage movement. I sensed that Mrs. Catt is not so devoted to the memory of Lucy Stone as a good many other women are. Mrs. Catt came into the movement as an active head just about the time the two national suffrage organizations were merging, and she saw at first hand the friction between Miss Anthony and Lucy Stone.
The second major thread in the journal deals with the several years towards the end of her life that Maud Wood Park lived with Edna Stantial and her husband, Guy. Stantial writes of both the joys and the challenges of living with Park, as the older woman begins to deteriorate mentally and becomes the victim of considerable memory loss. On several occasions she tells of Park getting lost on walks and being brought home by strangers, and she writes of Park’s tendency to repeat herself over and over again. On August 8, 1948, Stantial writes, “It bothers me so because I think of her as she was in the old days when she was really on of the important women of the country.”
One of the more joyous moments Stantial records is when Park celebrates the 79th anniversary of Robert Hunter’s birthday with a special outfit, ceremonial reading of letters, and birthday cake.
An entry in the diary dated January 31, [1947] makes the survival of the early letters from Park to Hunter, preserved in the present archive, all the more remarkable. Stantial reports, “she wanted to burn a good many of Bob’s early love letters before she went to the hospital, so she spent Sunday and Tuesday picking them over and we went down cellar on Wednesday morning and she had me put them into the furnace.”
The patience with which Stantial helped Park face the many trials of her final years testifies to the strength of the bond created by the women in their work in the suffrage cause.
Also present is a bound journal with ca. 30 pp of entries dating from December 2, 1966 – August 21, 1970, in which Stantial recounts at length her memories working on behalf of Blackwell and Catt, and includes as well sketches of Ethel Robinson and various Chilmark residents.
Together, Stantial’s journals represents a rare look into the thoughts and feelings of the woman charged with preserving the history of an important chapter in women’s history.
Additional Correspondence from the Files of Stantial
Ca. 25 additional items of correspondence, May 12, 1867 – September 6, 1951, from Robert Turner, Albert Smith, Mary Gray Peck, William H. Carter, Helen Gardner, Mary Driscoll, James Fielder, Alice Park, Delcevare King, Gertrude Halladay Leonard, Sarah Sargent, Lorietta Eaton, William Mitchell, Anne Rogers Minor, George A. Crawford, Helen Keller [secretarial signature], and Bing Crosby [secretarial signature]. Recipients include: Woodrow Wilson, The Equal Suffrage League of North Easton, Mrs. Miller, Mrs. William L. Garrison, Eleanor Raymond, Anna Child Bird, Sarah J. Harvey, and Blanche Ames Ames. The correspondence relates to the suffrage movement and other materials within the archive.
Highlights:
3 typed copies of letters, Helen H. Gardener to President Woodrow Wilson, January 25, 1917 to July 19, 1917, 5 pp recto only, written while she was a member of the Congressional Committee on Woman Suffrage, seeking the President’s support on a suffrage amendment, informing him of gains made in State suffrage battles, and requesting an audience on behalf of the NAWSA.
7 letters to Anna C. Bird following her election to the office of First Vice-President of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, from officers of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association and the Massachusetts Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, among others, offering congratulations and seeking alliances. Also present is a statement by Mrs. Bird, given prior to her election, stating her support for America’s entry into World War I, and claiming that “the Woman Suffrage party must be above suspicion and that the election of a First vice President who may be even suspected of lacking interest in the vigorous prosecution of the war, would be a deadly blow to the Suffrage cause in Massachusetts.”
Funding, Promoting, and Documenting the Cause
The archive contains a significant amount of ephemeral material related to the day to day operations of the suffrage movement, as well as to its material culture, including pledge cards, delegate appointment slips, and an array of promotional and educational material. The collection is rounded out by several inscribed copies of books by and about suffragists who feature prominently in the archive.
The Woman’s Journal Fund
6 pledge cards, The Woman’s Journal Fund, completed in autograph by donor. Listing Mrs. Edna Lamprey Stantial as Treasurer, these cards record donations made to the Woman’s Journal Fund. Donor’s include Mary Gray Peck, Inez Haynes Irwin, Dorothy Kenyon, Belle Sherwin, Anne Webster, and K. Cornell.
Cancelled Checks
44 cancelled checks, North National Bank, Boston, 1872 – 1892, signed “Henry B. Blackwell” and “Lucy Stone;” to Boston Herald, Daily Traveler, Alice Stone Blackwell, family, and many others.
The marriage of Henry Browne Blackwell and Lucy Stone was an immense suffragist enterprise in itself. Both were tireless activists for the cause, heading suffrage campaigns and committees, delivering speeches, writing letters, testifying before legislatures, and publishing The Woman’s Journal. This collection of cancelled checks emblemizes the enormous financial undertaking inherent to any such cause. The bulk of the checks are signed by Henry B. Blackwell, while three are signed by Lucy Stone.
Delegate Appointment Slips
8 appointment of delegate slips, signed “Mary A. Livermore” and “Eva Channing,” State Woman Suffrage Association, 1902; browning to a few slips. These blank slips were used to certify the appointment of delegates by individual State Associations to the 1902 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention. The space for the delegate’s name and the name of the state of the issuing association are left blank on the slips, all of which are signed by Livermore and Channing, the President and Recording Secretary, respectively, of the N.A.W.S.A.
Ephemera
Financial pledge card, Massachusetts League of Women Voters, 193_, blank.
Pledge card, “I Intend to Vote for Equal Suffrage in November 1915,” blank.
Enrollment card, Woman Suffrage Party, blank.
3 subscription order slips, The Woman’s Journal, blank.
Bluebird promotional cutout, “Votes for Women, Nov. 2,” Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, [1915].
Ad leaf, “The Little Suffrage Theatre Presents Chronologically, Incidents—Real or Typical, 1810—1920,” yellowed at edges and chip to one corner, holograph annotations reading “Buffalo Convention” and listing “Edna Stantial” next to the role of Lucy Stone.
League of Women Voters of Massachusetts Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, No. 8 (June, 1955).
Program, Opening of the Woman’s Rights Collection at Radcliffe College, 4 pp, folding crease.
Brochure, Women’s Service Library of The Fawcett Society, 4 pp, folding creases.
Booklet, 25 Years of a Great Idea: A history of the National League of Women Voters, by Kathryn H. Stone, Washington: NLWV, 1946.
Booklet, Henry B. Blackwell, by Alice Stone Blackwell, New York: James T. White, 1927, spotting to verso of frontis.
Inscribed program, The Cleveland Patent Law Association Reception and Dinner in Honor of The Honorable Florence E. Allen, October 10, 1959, inscribed to Edna Lamprey Stantial by Florence Ellinwood Allen.
Card, “Votes for Women,” blank.
Pamplet, “Objections Answered,” [N.A.W.S.A.], n.d., 12 pp.; holograph annotation to title sheet.
Booklet, “Objections Answered,” by Alice Stone Blackwell, [N.A.W.S.A.], n.d.
Woman Suffrage Leaflet, “Why Women Should Vote” by Alice Stone Blackwell, March, 1904.
Greeting card, “Christmas and New Years Greetings from Alice Stone Blackwell,” n.d., worn.
Handbill, Suffrage Wins Victory Rally, Sunday, June 8, [1919], 3:30 p.m. Boston Equal Suffrage Association; edgeworn.
Booklet, “A Petition for Woman Suffrage by Federal Constitutional Amendment: One Thousand Signers,” N.A.W.S.A., [1918]; light wear.
Leaflet, “Constitution and By-Laws of Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Ass’n,” n.d., 8 pp.
Handbill, “New Literature,” Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, n.d., light creasing.
Handbill, “As Man to Man,” MWSA, n.d. [ca. 1913-15], browned, light chipping to edges.
Handbill, “Votes for Women a Success: The Map Proves It,” MWSA, n.d. [ca. 1913-15], browned, light chipping, brittle.
Handbill, “Twelve Reasons Why Women Should Vote,” MWSA, n.d. [ca. 1913-15], browned.
Handbill, “Plain Facts for the Working Man,” MWSA, n.d. [ca. 1913-15], folding crease, browning.
Booklet, “Magna Charta,” Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920; light dampstaining and browning, short tear to final leaf, stamped “from T.P. Gore United States Senator.
Promotional booklet, “Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography” by Mary Gray Peck, New York: H.W. Wilson, [1940], edgewear, browning.
Handbill, “Mrs. Maud Wood Park...will speak on Equal Suffrage,” MWSA, n.d.
Leaflet, “Suffrage and Temperance,” by Alice Stone Blackwell, MWSA, n.d., folding crease, browning to one edge.
Leaflet, “Votes and Athletics,” by Alice Stone Blackwell, MWSA, n.d., folding crease, browning to one edge.
Broadside, “A Campaign of Slander,” by Alice Stone Blackwell, MWSA, n.d., two folding creases.
Booklet, The Woman of It, or, Our Friends, the Anti-Suffragists, by Mary Shaw, Chicago: The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1914, mild soiling.
Booklet, A Dream of Brave Women, Philadelphia: Mrs. Wilfred Lewis, 1912, faint soiling to rear wrapper.
Booklet, “Henry Browne Blackwell,” New York: James T. White, 1927; card wrappers.
Booklet, “Temple of the True Republic, Woman Suffrage 1915,” MWSA, 1915, folding creases, browning.
Handbill, Suffrage Map, Newton [Mass.] Equal Suffrage League, 1915.
Broadside, “The Revolution in Women’s Work Makes Votes for Women a Practical Necessity,” Massachusetts Political Equality Union, [1915], browning, folding creases, light edgewear.
Handbill, “Vote Yes, Mr. Voter,” MWSA, [1915].
Leaflet, “To the Friends and Admirers of Mary E. Driscoll,” the Driscoll Fund, 1954, folding creases.
Leaflet, “The Lucy Stone Fund,” The College Equal Suffrage League of Massachusetts, n.d. [c.a. 1905-1910].
Leaflet, “To the Women of New England,” Women’s Centennial Congress, 1940, folding creases.
Ad leaf, “Thirty-seven Leading Women tell why they will vote for Herbert Hoover,” McCall’s Magazine, October 1923, folding crease, corner creased.
Windshield sticker, “Who for? Hoover!” Hoover Republican Club, n.d.
Windshield sticker, “Hoover,” Hoover Republican Club, n.d.
Pamphlet, “The New Hoover,” Republican National Committee, 1928, tiny tear.
Pamphlet, “You Can Do It! Make Hoover President,” Hoover For President Union, [1920], tiny tear.
2 Specimen Ballots, Massachusetts League of Women Voters, Boston, Ward 20, Precinct 1, Novermber 6, 1928, folding creases, tiny tear to center of one.
Photostat press release, National Woman’s Party, February 8, [1919], 1 leaf, announcing the NWP’s intention to burn President Wilson in effigy on the eve of the suffrage vote in the Senate.
Photostat resolution of appreciation, Women’s Union of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, thanking Maud Wood Park and the League of Women Voters for supporting the Sterling-Lehlbach Reclassification Law.”
Booklet, “Measuring Up Equal Suffrage”, by George Creel and Judge Ben. B. Lindsey, N.A.W.S.A., n.d., soiling.
Booklet, Katie O’Hare’s Prison Letters, Girard, Kansas: Appeal to Reason, 1919; 3rd edition.
“Vassar Female College,” The Liberator, March 1, 1961, Vol. XXI, No. 9, folding creases, a few small tear along center folds; an update on the progress of the women’s college a year after its founding.
Program, “Celebration in Honor of Susan B. Anthony’s Eighty-sixth Birthday,” February 15, 1906, N.A.W.S.A.; light wear.
Books
Aunt Mary’s New England Cook Book...by a New England Mother. Boston: Lockwood, Brooks & Co., 1881.
8vo.; brown cloth stamped in gilt; mild wear to extremities.
First edition. Lucy Stone’s copy, with her ownership signature to the front free endpaper.
Blackwell, Alice, translator. Armenian Poems. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896.
8vo.; red cloth stamped in gilt; front hinge weak; tiny tear to upper joint.
First edition.
BOX 143 - Blackwell, Alice Stone, ed. The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution: Reminiscences and Letters of Catherine Breshkovsky. Boston: Little, Brown, 1919.
8vo.; beige cloth; jacket heavily worn; front flap detached.
Sixth printing. Signed by Breshkovsky on the frontispiece, above the printed signature in the margin. In the course of her work with the Friends of Russian Freedom, Blackwell became close friends with Breshkovsky. See the undated letter described above.
BOX 143 - Eddy, Sarah J., ed. Songs of Happy Life. Providence, R.I.: Art and Nature Study Publishing Co., 1897.
8vo.; quarter cloth; boards soiled; discoloration to spine.
First edition. Inscribed, To Alice Stone Blackwell/ from Sarah J. Eddy/ May, 1897. Eddy was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from Rhode Island.
BOX 143 - Hays, Elinor Rice. Morning Star: A Biography of Lucy Stone, 1818-1893. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.
8vo.; white cloth; some spotting to cloth; faint soiling and edgewear to jacket.
First edition. Inscribed, To Edna and Guy-/ without whose patience,/ generosity and friendship,/ this book would not be./ Affectionately,/ Elinor. With few pencil annotations to jacket and in margins. Hays refers to this book in a letter to Stantial dated August 1 (above).
BOX 143 - Hays, Elinor Rice. Lucy Stone: One of America’s First and Greatest Feminists. New York: Tower Books, n.d.
8vo.; illustrated wrappers.
Inscribed, To Edna and Guy-/ with affection and/ gratitude-/ Elinor. The paperback edition of Morning Star.
National American Woman Suffrage Association. Victory: How Women Won It. A Centennial Symposium, 1840-1940. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1940.
8vo.; blue cloth; boards lightly rubbed.
First edition. Inscribed, To/ Barbara Stantial/ Carrie Chapman Catt/ Nov. 27, 1940. An account of the suffrage movement, including many events referred to within this archive. The book includes a forward by Catt, chapters by Mary Gray Peck and Maud Wood Park, as well as short biographies of Lucy Stone and Catt, among others.
Park, Maud Wood. Lucy Stone: A Chronicle Play. Boston: Walter H. Baker Company, 1938.
8vo.; printed wrappers; dampstaining to lower corner throughout; one gathering loose; tiny tear to head of spine.
First edition; with the ownership signature of suffragist Ida Porter-Boyer. Park’s play was based on Alice Stone Blackwell’s biography, Lucy Stone, Pioneer, and is made frequent reference to in letters within the archive.
BOX 143 - Peck, Mary Gray. Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography. New York, H.W. Wilson, 1944.
8vo.; black cloth stamped in gilt; light wear.
First edition. Alice Stone Blackwell’s copy, with her ownership signature to the front free endpaper.
BOX 143 - Rice, Elinor. Action in Havana. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940.
8vo.; grey cloth; edgewear to jacket; slight fading to spine titles of jacket.
First edition. Inscribed, To Edna and Guy Stantial/ in gratitude and affection/ Elinor Rice/ May 25, 1960.
BOX 143 - Wood, C. Antoinette. Condensed Parliamentary Rules. Boston: Macdonald & Evans, Printers, 1915.
12mo.; brown wrappers; light wear; annotation to front wrapper.
Inscribed, With the compliments of/ the author/ C. Antoinette Wood.
#
Print Inquire
