December 10: Wyoming and Women’s Suffrage

December 10: Wyoming Leads the World in Women’s Suffrage

Wyoming transformed a dream into reality in 1869. That year, the twenty-member Territorial Legislature approved a revolutionary measure stating: “That every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this Territory, may at every election to be holden under the law thereof, cast her vote.” William Bright, the bill’s sponsor, had come to share his wife, Julia’s, belief that suffrage was a basic right of American citizenship. The other major backer, Edward M. Lee, the territorial secretary who had championed the cause for years, argued that it was unfair for his mother to be denied a privilege granted to African-American males.

Though some men recognized the important role women played in frontier settlement, others voted for women’s suffrage only to bolster the strength of conservative voting blocks. In Wyoming, some men were also motivated by sheer loneliness–they thought it would win the territory free national publicity and might attract more single marriageable women to the region.

It was not until 1919 that the entire nation joined what Wyoming started.  Regardless of their intentions, Wyoming paved the way for women’s rights in America.  Read below some propaganda from either side of the heated, decades-long debate.

Heritage Slater Auction #619 had several pieces from the movement in a catalog you can browse here.

In 2009, Antiques Roadshow, appraised what they called, the “holy grail” of American women’s suffrage movement posters, valued at $10,000-$15,000.

Also, interestingly, an entire town was put up for auction in 1901, after the novelty of wore off from the boom from being “advertised by having women have equal voting and office holding rights with men.”