The Long Battle to Vote: Women’s Suffrage in America

At a time when America is beginning to realize that it lags far behind many other countries in electing women to positions of political leadership, it is appropriate to consider the long, dark history of women’s suffrage in our nation.

Charles McSorley, historian, collector, and engaging speaker, visited Durand-Hedden during Women's History Month in 2008 to present a sometimes humorous and always insightful lecture on the battle for women’s right to vote. He illustrated his talk with postcards and other memorabilia.

The word suffrage comes from the Latin suffragium, meaning "voting tablet," and figuratively, "right to vote."

In 1776 women had the right to vote in each colony, but Abigail Adams was concerned enough about the future to ask her husband, John Adams, to "remember the ladies" in drafting the new country’s laws. Mr. Adams replied, “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh,” and noted such a move would completely subject the country to the "despotism of the petticoat."

The Provincial Congress of New Jersey, on July 2, 1776, passed a law giving the right to vote to “all inhabitants of this colony of full age” who had fifty pounds, property, and a year’s residence in the colony. They could vote for representation in the Council and Assembly and “also for all other public officers that shall be elected by the people of the country at large.”

New Jersey stuck to its guns for a while even though by 1784, women had lost the right to vote in New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 gave the states the right to determine voting qualifications, and women in all states except New Jersey lost the right to vote.

“Maids or Widows, Black or White”

A news article published in Newark in 1800 noted that a motion was made in the New Jersey Assembly to amend a bill by adding that the inspectors of elections “shall not refuse the vote to any widow or unmarried woman of full age…”

The article goes on to note, “Our constitution gives this right to maids or widows, black or white.” Married women could not vote because they did not own property in their own names.

In 1807, however, allegedly to combat electoral fraud by simplifying the conditions for eligibility, New Jersey passed a law prohibiting voting by anyone but “a free white male citizen of this state.”

Half a century later, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, defined citizens as “male” – the first time the word male appears in the Constitution. A year earlier, there had been a failed campaign in Kansas to give the vote to women and Black people.

Black Men Get the Vote

The Fifteenth Amendment was passed in Congress in 1868, giving the vote to Black men. According to the Women's History Project of Lexington Area National Organization for Women, that year 172 women attempted to vote in New Jersey. Their ballots were ignored.

In 1869, New Jersey resident Elizabeth Cady Stanton was named president of the new National Woman Suffrage Association. Later that year, the American Woman Suffrage Association formed, naming Henry Ward Beecher as president. That year, Wyoming territory became the first American jurisdiction to grant women the vote since 1807.

The rest of the 19th century saw one failed federal or state battle after another with a few notable exceptions, such as Colorado and Idaho. Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872. In 1874, in Myner v. Happerstett, the US Supreme Court ruled that being a citizen does not guarantee suffrage.

Stanton voted in Tenafly in 1880, and “the whole town is agape with my act.” By 1907, women such as Stanton’s daughter Harriet Stanton Blatch, began to adopt the English suffragists' tactics of parades, street speakers, and pickets.

Momentum started to build — Washington State granted women the vote in 1910, California in 1911, and Oregon, Arizona and Kansas in 1912. Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Party included women’s suffrage on its platform in 1912.

Alice Paul, of Moorestown, NJ, and others broke away from the National Women’s Suffrage Association to form the National Women’s Party in 1916. Beginning in January 1917, the Party posted silent “Sentinels of Liberty” at the White House gates. Nearly 500 women were arrested over the next year, and 168 served time in jail, where some were brutalized by their jailers.

In 1918, an appellate court ruled that the arrests were illegal, and President Woodrow Wilson declared his support for suffrage. Battles in the House and Senate finally resulted in the passage of Suffrage Amendment in 1919, and — again after state-level struggles — the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified by a sufficient number of states and became law on August 26, 1920.

Old Windows: Preserving and restoring the soul of the house

Are you thinking of buying new windows in order to be energy efficient and save money? Think again! Your home’s original windows can be made to be as energy efficient as modern replacement windows -- with the added advantage of retaining the architectural integrity of your home.

In Maplewood, as in many older towns, beautiful historic windows are being replaced with newer, less attractive ones that are likely to be less energy efficient and less environmentally friendly. And that doesn’t take into consideration the aesthetic impact.

On October 21st, 2007 almost 100 people came to Durand-Hedden for a workshop to learn how to repair and improve the functioning of their older original windows. As Rick Wessler of Preservation Maplewood noted, just getting their windows to move up or down a few inches would be a victory for many of those attending.

The workshop was co-sponsored by Durand-Hedden and Preservation Maplewood, a volunteer association of concerned homeowners dedicated to the conservation of Maplewood's unique historic architecture, and supported by the Maplewood Historic Preservation Commission.

Paul Lewis, of the handyman company "Two Guys from Newstead," praised the virtues of older windows, while explaining, step-by-step, how to repair and rejuvenate them. Mr. Lewis dissected and then reassembled a 90-year-old double-hung window that had been removed from a local house but now, in Rick Wessler’s words, is “finding a new life in preventing others from suffering the same fate.”

Through some simple steps, Mr. Lewis showed how easy it is to repair old windows and stem heat loss.

Do New Windows Save You Money?

Many companies aggressively market “replacement windows,” claiming that new windows will “cost nothing” by slashing energy bills and requiring “no maintenance.”

A study referenced in Old House Journal (Sept.-Oct. 2007), done by a professional engineer, found that adding a single-pane storm window over a single-pane original window pays for itself in 4.5 years, compared with replacing a single-pane window with a double-pane thermal replacement window, which pays for itself in 40.5 years.

A low-e glass double-pane thermal replacement of a single-pane window with a storm window saves far less energy, and the estimated $550 cost of the thermal window pays for itself in – 240 years! Add to that the environmental burden of old windows as landfill.

Local historic preservation societies in New Jersey have begun to be more vocal in addressing the myths put forth by replacement window companies, such as this information from the Plainfield Historical Society:

• Myth 1: No maintenance. This claim was made of aluminum siding once, and it has been replaced by vinyl because it did not last. Vinyl has a life expectancy of 20 years, and it is very expensive to paint either aluminum or vinyl. Furthermore, the seals around double-glazed windows can fail in 10-15 years, resulting in condensation between the panes – requiring replacement. Wood, on the other hand, can last for 200 years when it is continually painted.

• Myth 2: Less expensive. The City of Bridgeton, NJ Community Development Agency found that to repair existing window sashes for one house cost $700. To replace the same windows would have cost $3,000. As Mr. Lewis demonstrated, old windows are made to be repaired. They can be taken apart to insert new rails or muntins, broken parts can be replaced or fixed. When windows stop functioning or begin to deteriorate, it is due to lack of maintenance, not the need for replacement.

• Myth 3: Less heat loss. Thermal studies of houses have shown that in most cases only 20% of the heat loss is through windows. The remaining 80% is through roofs, walls, floors, and chimneys. Under-insulated roofs or joints where roofs meet walls are where the most heat is lost. Thus, reducing heat loss through windows by 50% will result in only a 10% decrease in overall heat loss in the building.

The Visual Impact of Windows

If eyes are the windows of the soul, windows are the soul of the house. Once you attune your eye to the rhythm and beauty of old windows in old houses (and 80% of Maplewood’s houses were built before 1930), the jarring flatness of new windows, with flat, low-profile or snap-in muntins (the wood strips between panes) becomes apparent.

Unlike the McMansions of other towns, where every house seems to have a faux-Palladian window, each house style in our town — Colonial Revival, Italianate, Tudor Revival or Arts and Crafts — was built with windows appropriate to that style. Retaining that character and beauty is important – and possible with the help of many old house and old window resources in the area.

Her Story – Quilts and the Women Who Made Them

Quilts are among the few traditional household objects that bridge utility, communal activity and art, but they have always been made with consideration to their aesthetic value.

For many years, a hand-sewn quilt was one of few tangible ways a woman could leave her mark on history.

Sixth-generation quilter and Maplewood resident Sarah Izzo coordinated a beautiful display at the Durand-Hedden House in 2007 that featured a variety of traditional, vintage and art quilts from her family and her own hand, the collection of the Durand-Hedden House and that of other local quilters and collectors.

A centerpiece of the exhibit was The Maplewood Historical Quilt, sewn by the members of the Maplewood Service League and presented to the township in 1976. Each block in the quilt represented an important site or event in Maplewood history. The project was a year-long labor of love for the Service League, many of whom had never quilted before. Susan Newberry tracked down some of them to gather their memories and learned that many recalled this as a highlight of their life in Maplewood.

Other pieces on display were by Theresa Barkley, an award-winning Maplewood quilter, and Imogene Hicks of Edison. Beautiful heirloom quilts were loaned to the exhibit by Mary Auth, Gretchen Braunwarth, Thelma Hadley, Sarah Izzo, Marilyn Schnaars, Samuel Whinery and Marilyn White.

Pieces of History

Despite the traditional image of colonial quilt-makers, the practice was uncommon in America in the late eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth. Most women spent their daylight hours spinning, weaving and sewing in order to clothe their families. Coarsely woven blankets or coverlets were more usual bed-coverings. Most people had few clothes, and the idea of using leftover scraps of fabric to make pieced quilts was more myth than fact.

The industrial revolution of the 1830s and '40s was the real force in the development of quilt-making as an attractive pastime. The availability of reasonably priced commercial textiles freed women from the need to create their own fabrics.

A wide variety of cotton prints could be purchased to make clothing, and even specifically quilts. According to the website womenfolk.com, the first quilt patterns were published in about 1835, and the introduction of the Singer sewing machine in 1856 – affordable on the installment plan – allowed women to make family clothing more quickly, and left them time for artistic expression through quilt-making.

The exhibit at Durand-Hedden vibrantly illustrated the vast variety of patterns and colors, and the spirit of the women who made them, and many young visitors tried their hand at sewing simple quilt patterns with the guidance of Ms. Hicks.