By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
On Saturday, March 7, the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro will launch a commemoration of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial at 1 p.m. at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road, Peterboro.
The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing and protecting women’s constitutional right to vote.
Initially introduced to Congress in 1878, the women’s suffrage amendment passed in the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919, and in the Senate on June 4, 1919.
On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the last of the required 36 states to ratify the amendment.
The amendment was officially adopted Aug. 26, 1920. In 1973, Congress designated Aug. 26 as Women’s Equality Day.
On March 7, 2020, Peterboro will host a series of special programs in celebration of Women’s History Month and the Women’s Suffrage Centennial.
“Peterboro and Madison County [are] important to the Women’s Suffrage Movement because the reform passion of Elizabeth Cady Stanton — the driving force and recognized leader of the women’s movement — was ignited in Peterboro,” said Dot Willsey, president of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark board of directors. “In other words, Madison County is important to the suffrage movement more than the suffrage movement is important to Madison County.”
Keynote speaker Norman K. Dann, Ph.D., author of “Cousins of Reform: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Gerrit Smith,” will open the afternoon with a program on the Smithfield Women Reformers.
The presentation will include an introduction to Dann’s new publication “God, Gerrit & Guidance: The Life of Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith.”
“The two most important social movements for human rights in U.S. history are the abolition of slavery and women’s rights,” Dann said. “Two of the most powerful leaders of those movements were Gerrit Smith in abolition and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in women’s rights. Their passion for these issues was ignited in Peterboro. As Gerrit Smith’s first cousin, the young Elizabeth Cady lived in Peterboro during the summers with the Smiths who were committed to equal rights for African-Americans. In Peterboro, Cady not only absorbed that passion, but also met Oneida Native Americans who invested their women with political and economic power. Because Cady perceived intense discrimination against both women and African Americans, she equated the two. Cady married Henry Stanton, whom she met in Peterboro, [and went on to] organize the First Women’s Right Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, and spend the rest of her life pursuing rights for women.”
Following Dann’s presentation, Madison County Historian Matthew Urtz will discuss women’s suffrage in Madison County.
Urtz will explore how the pro-suffrage movement started in Madison County with the pro-suffrage convention in Oneida in 1894. The event led to the formation of both pro- and anti-suffrage societies and some of the movements’ most prominent individuals in the years leading up to women winning the right to vote in New York State in 1917.
“We are very lucky in Madison County to have the meeting minutes from one of the pro-suffrage societies — the Oneida Civic and Political Equality Club — at the Madison County Historical Society, as well as an anti-suffrage club — the Organization of Women of Cazenovia Opposed to the Extension of Woman Suffrage — at the Cazenovia Public Library. [These resources] allow us to understand on a local level why women were on both sides . . . When mixed with newspaper clippings covering [important] events, you start to see how the movements expanded, how the arguments adapted to the times, and how world events, like WWI, impacted the movements. We also get a little information after New York passes [women’s] suffrage in 1917 [about] how women selected their parties and how the movements changed.”
Next, Laura Costello and Laura Martino of the Madison County Board of Elections will explain the recent New York State legislation on voter pre-registration for sixteen and seventeen year olds. The pair will describe the process of registering, encourage pre-registration, and provide forms for onsite registration.
David Holmes, a voter statistics researcher, will then present statistics and trends of women voters in Madison County, highlighting the number of teens eligible to register to vote in each town in the county.
March 7 will also mark the launch of a campaign to recruit at least 100 female teen voters in Madison County.
Young women who are registered to vote and attend a women’s history program in Madison County by June 20 will be awarded a purple, gold and white sash to wear in a Fourth of July parade suffrage float.
Teens present at the March 7 commemoration launch event will have the opportunity to register to vote and to count the event towards their women’s history program attendance requirement.
“We hope that young women . . . in Madison County will be motivated to exercise their voting rights to pay respect to the people who fought so hard for that suffrage,” said Willsey.
Cultural and heritage sites throughout Madison County will be announcing teen-friendly events in the near future.
Further information on upcoming women’s history programs will be available by March 9 at peterborony.org, [email protected], and at 315-280-8828.
The launch event will continue with a presentation by Jody Luce, the “Tailor of Peterboro,” who will demonstrate “How to Dress Like a Suffragist” inexpensively.
The afternoon will close with a guided women’s rights walk, led by Dann, at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark.
Upcoming 2020 suffrage centennial events in Peterboro
The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will open May 23, with Saturday and Sunday hours from 1 to 5 p.m. through Aug. 30. The hall of fame will highlight women abolitionists who were also involved in the women’s rights movement.
On Saturday, June 13, the Peterboro Freedom Festival will be held on the grounds of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark from 1 to 7 p.m. The event will feature food, museums exhibits and musicians celebrating freedoms, including women’s rights.
Susan Goodier, Ph.D. will present her research and upcoming publication, “Black Suffragists,” at the 11th Annual Peterboro Emancipation Day on Saturday, Aug. 1, at 1:30 p.m.
For Women’s Equality Day (Wednesday, Aug. 26), Peterboro heritage sites invite bell towers in Madison County to ring nineteen times at 6:19 p.m. in commemoration of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Jody Luce and the “Bloomer Brigade” will transform the Smithfield Community Center into a teahouse for the Bloomer Tea at noon on Saturday, Sept. 26. The event will honor Elizabeth Smith Miller, designer of the bloomer costume that became a symbol of the 19th century women’s movement. Miller’s cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, portrayed by Melinda Grube, will be the guest of honor. Leigh Fought, Ph.D. will share her research and award-winning book “Women in the World of Frederick Douglass.” Registration for the tea is required.
The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum Antislavery Dinner will be held at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24. The event will recognize the women inducted into the Abolition Hall of Fame who were also involved in the women’s rights movement.
The 2020 women’s suffrage centennial programs are sponsored in part by a Humanities New York Action Grant.
For more information and updates, call 315-280-8828 or visit peterborony.org or nationalabolitionhalloffameandmuseum.org.
