Spotlight on History
Portage County suffragists organized and fought. Their legacy shines in our local leadership.
By Roger Di Paolo
One hundred years ago, on Aug. 18, 1920, women won the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
Note: They weren’t “given” the vote; they fought long and hard for it, went to jail for it, starved themselves for it, were beaten for it, and endured decades of frustration and humiliation for it. And, contrary to the claim that women were granted “universal suffrage,” it would be nearly another 50 years before African-American women (and men) in the South were free to vote.
The story of the women’s suffrage movement includes luminaries such as Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others who have made it into the history books.
It also includes Portage County pioneers, such as Harriet Taylor Upton, a Ravenna native who was active in suffrage organizations at the state and national level; sisters-in-law Ada and Dolly Longcoy of Kent; and local trailblazers who ran for office even before the 19th Amendment was on the books.
Women’s suffrage meetings were held in Ravenna and Kent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often overlapping with temperance meetings, drawing national leaders in the struggle to win the vote.
A meeting at First Congregational Church of Ravenna on April 28, 1870, featured Susan B. Anthony, whose lecture topic was “Work, Wages and the Ballot.” Her appearance got a cold shoulder from the Portage County Democrat-Republican, a Ravenna weekly, which published a scant four-paragraph story on page 3. It was anything but an objective report.
Most likely written by the Democrat-Republican’s editor, Lyman Hall, it noted that Anthony had drawn “a fair audience in point of numbers,” but failed to quote any of her remarks, opting instead for a somewhat sarcastic synopsis.
“She seems to regard the ballot as the panacea for all ills that womankind is heir to,” the writer observed, “She seems inclined to force from the selfishness of man what she seems hopeless of accomplishing by an appeal to his sense of right.”
Anthony, the newspaper reported, urged women to “work and labor and agitate,” to seek equality not only at the ballot box but in their everyday lives.
It’s likely that she returned to Portage County in 1895, when the American Woman Suffrage Association, which she headed, held its national convention at Lake Brady, drawing more than 400 women to the four-day event.
Carrie Chapman Catt spoke at Lake Brady, and she returned to Portage County five years later when women’s suffrage advocates gathered at the Universalist Church of Kent and First Methodist Episcopal Church of Kent on April 12-13, 1900.
Harriet Taylor Upton also was among the speakers — the pair spoke in Ravenna a day later. Local speakers included Ada Longcoy; the Rev. Abbie Danforth, minister of the Universalist congregation and the first woman to occupy a pulpit in Portage County; and a male ally — Mayor W.W. Patton of Kent.
Thirty years after Susan B. Anthony’s appearance in Ravenna was ridiculed, women there made history in the April 1900 school board elections. While denied the vote in local, state and federal elections, women were permitted by Ohio law to vote in school races, which were decided on a partisan basis. (Dolly Longcoy had lost a race for school board in Kent in 1895).
A bi-partisan slate of women decided to challenge the powers-that-be In Ravenna’s 1900 race. Nina Stanford, a Republican, won, making her perhaps the first woman to win elected office in Portage County. Emily Riddle, running as a Democrat, fell short by 30 votes.
“There appeared to be quite a disposition on the part of a large number of women as well as other voters to cast their ballots for the women candidates,” the Ravenna Republican observed.
The 1900 suffrage gatherings in Kent and Ravenna led to the formation of local organizations to promote votes for women. The Kent Equal Rights Association, 25 members strong, was organized under the leadership of Ada Longcoy. Her sister-in-law, Dolly, was named to head a countywide organization.
One hundred years later, in 2000, Ada Longcoy’s granddaughter, Mabelle Longcoy Apley, shared memories of her grandmother, who lived until 1927. “She promoted women taking the lead to alleviate drunkenness, bad language and other problems,” she said. “She thought women would have to be the leaders.”
The ratification of the 19th Amendment opened the door — slightly — to women seeking elected office in Portage County. One immediate change was in the structure of the local Democratic and Republican parties; both named women to serve with men as precinct leaders.
In 1922, when Kent organized its first City Council, Nancy Brown and Edith Olson were among its members. Olive France became the first woman to win a Kent school board seat in 1923. Later in the 1920s, Maude Marsh and Elizabeth Haymaker became the first women to hold countywide office; both were elected in succession to the treasurer’s post.
Olson, who also became the first woman elected as City Council president in Kent, lost a race for mayor in 1937 by only a dozen votes (an outcome questioned by latter-day historians). It wasn’t until 1981 that Kent would elect a woman as mayor when Nancy Hansford won the job her father, Redmond Greer, held a generation earlier.
Gertrude Cunningham became mayor of Ravenna a decade before Hansford, winning office in 1971. Aurora, Streetsboro, Hiram, Mantua and Windham all have had women in the mayor’s office.
Today, women hold four Portage County judgeships, all three commissioners’ posts, the offices of clerk of courts and recorder, as well as both of its seats in the Ohio House. Women also serve a council members, school board members, township trustees and fiscal officers throughout the county.
And, 100 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, this week U.S. Senator Kamala Harris will become the first woman of color to be nominated for vice president, following on the heels of Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin.
One can only imagine what Ada and Dolly Longcoy, Harriet Taylor Upton, Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt and other suffrage pioneers would have to say about that.
Roger Di Paolo is a Portage County historian, former editor of the Record-Courier and a member of The Portager board of advisers.
Click here to receive The Portager in your inbox
We’re the only locally owned news source covering Portage County, Ohio. Our mission is to help our community thrive. You can help us grow.
