Kimberly Jensen's Blog

Early March 1912: Cooperation and Conflict in Portland Suffrage Circles

2012-03-02T07:45:00.001-08:00

The month of March 1912 brought important developments to the suffrage campaign in Portland. Esther Pohl and members of the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee were determined to break the cycle of defeat by forming a new organization apart from Abigail Scott Duniway's Oregon State Equal Suffrage League because of discontent and conflict with Duniway and the need to move forward. Other groups, such as the College Equal Suffrage League and the Portland Equal Suffrage League were forming and active. But Duniway and her supporters, particularly Viola Coe and Marie Equi, were angry and saw this as an attempt to take power away from the OSESA.

At the beginning of March the Woman's Club Campaign Committee held a meeting to organize an advisory committee to coordinate the efforts of suffrage groups. Many members of the new organizations wanted to work together; Duniway and her allies were angry and tried to control, then block the new advisory committee.

On March 13, 1912 the Oregonian published a long article titled "Suffrage Branch Gets Aid in East." As we've seen in earlier postings, Pohl and the Woman's Club Committee were working with Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, whom Duniway despised. They announced, as the Oregonian reported, that "an Eastern woman" was contributing to the Oregon campaign, "with the express stipulation that these funds shall be received and expended by this committee exclusively." They did not disclose that it was Shaw. Shaw, Pohl and other allies were convinced that conflict created by Duniway after the 1906 campaign and her poor handling of the 1908 and 1910 ballot measures with little support, had to be turned around. Shaw would not provide the money unless through the Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee.

The Woman's Club Committee, the Oregonian noted, "realizes that harmony is the all-important essential to success in the coming campaign, and is anxious to co-operate in every possible way with all other organizations in the various lines of work each is following. Duniway responded that any and all funds had to come to her organization alone; and each local organization, she said, had to pay dues to hers.

"Suffrage Branch Gets Aid in East," Oregonian, March 13, 1912, 15.

February 29, 1912: Anna Howard Shaw to Esther Pohl-- "I feel Oregon to be the Surest Proposition Before Us To-day"

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Esther Pohl must have been cheered to receive a letter from National American Woman Suffrage Association chair Anna Howard Shaw, written on February 29, 1912, stating that she felt the Oregon woman suffrage campaign was the "surest proposition before us to-day."


Anna Howard Shaw to Esther Pohl, February 29, 1912, Amy Khedouri Materials.

Shaw's letter is also a window into how professional women combined their work and their activism. Shaw had originally asked Pohl if she could chair the Suffrage Campaign Committee for the Portland Woman's Club but Pohl's work as a physician made it impossible for her to accept. Shaw and the NAWSA board then turned to Sarah Evans, who was the Market Inspector for Portland, a position funded through the board of health and unable to take on the chair. So they reached a solution. They would "secure Headquarters and a competent secretary" and then Evans, Pohl and "other interested women would give it general oversight."

Pohl and Evans had done just that, opening headquarters at the Rothchild Building in Portland and hiring Nan Strandborg as secretary.

Shaw and the NAWSA board committed $200 dollars for the work, a sign that they did indeed see Oregon as the "surest proposition" for victory.

February 24, 1912: Suffrage Headquarters to be a Clearinghouse as Suffrage Coalitions Expand

2012-02-24T09:45:00.000-08:00

Readers of the Oregonian on February 24, 1912 learned of the expansion of suffrage activities in Portland with which Esther Pohl was involved.

"Women Urge Suffrage," Oregonian, February 24, 1912, 4.

In "Women Urge Suffrage" the paper reported the opening of the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee Headquarters at the Rothchild Building at Fourth and Washington. The PWCCC hired journalist Nan (Mrs. W. P.) Strandborg as the secretary of the committee, which gave her charge of the day-to-day business of the group, led by Esther Pohl, Sarah Evans, Grace Watt Ross and Elizabeth Eggert. Strandborg also supervised the ordering and distribution of suffrage literature and materials. Her work would be vital to the success of the suffrage ballot measure that fall.

The Oregonian noted the committee's intention to build suffrage work across organizations: "The committee intends to make this new headquarters a sort of clearing-house for the local suffrage movement," it reported, "and to affiliate with all other suffrage groups and clubs throughout the state."

The Oregonian also published a notice of the fourth suffrage forum featuring Emma Wold and Millie Trumbull. Esther Pohl had established the forums that January as another way to build support for suffrage across organizations and to be "open to all."

February 21, 1912: Esther Pohl and Sara Bard Field Ehrgott Speak at the Oregon Irrigation Conference in Favor of Woman Suffrage

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Esther Pohl and her suffrage colleagues in Oregon knew they needed to reach as many male voters as possible with their message about the importance of votes for women in the 1912 campaign. By February 1912, in addition to her work with the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee, organizing speaker forums, and helping to promote the cause with votes for women literature, Pohl also began speaking to various business associations and other male groups.

On February 12, 1912 Pohl and suffragist Sara Bard Field Ehrgott spoke to members of the newly-organized Oregon Irrigation Congress assembled in Portland from around the state. The Portland Evening Telegram reported: "Yesterday two of the prominent suffragettes, Mrs. Sara Bard Field Ehrgott and Dr. Esther Pohl, were given a hearing before the Irrigation Congress. The women spoke briefly but to the point and were cordially received by the men, many of whom come from districts considered doubtful by the suffragists who are anxious to seize every opportunity to reach voters of remote sections of the state." ("Hanley Out Strong for Woman Suffrage," Portland Evening Telegram, February 22, 1912, 1.) Eastern Oregon developer William Hanley, the Telegram noted, also spoke in favor of the votes for women cause.

The Telegram's report points to several of the tactics Pohl and her colleagues were developing to bring the suffrage message to as many Oregon men as possible. Pohl and other suffragists, the paper noted, were "anxious to seize every opportunity to reach voters of remote districts of the state." Speaking at a statewide convention in Portland that brought men from many regions was one way to do this; Pohl later traveled to towns for direct organizing.

Pohl and Field Ehrgott "spoke briefly and to the point and were cordially received by the men." As we have seen, Pohl believed that it was politically advantageous to gain men's support rather than confronting them and causing conflict; it would hurt the cause to "attack public men." And it always helped to have a leading male figure support the cause, in this case William Hanley.

February 16, 1912: Esther Pohl and Colleagues Refine New Style Campaigning in the "Yellowest of Yellow" Suffrage Color

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Oregon suffragists, including Esther Pohl, helped to transform the early twentieth century woman suffrage movement around the nation by adopting techniques of mass campaigning and using popular culture to their advantage. Pohl had used leaflets, signs, and parades to spread the suffrage message in her work for the 1906 ballot measure.

Those new strategies had helped Washington (1910) and California (1911) to secure votes for women victories. Now, in February 1912, Oregon suffragists like Pohl, working with the Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee and members of other newly-forming organizations like the Oregon chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League, would adapt materials from these successful campaigns.


"Suffragists to Copy Campaigns of Others," Portland Evening Telegram, February 16, 1912, 10.

The Portland Evening Telegram reported on February 16, 1912 that the Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee on which Pohl served had received pledges "which will care for an estimated expense of $300 a month done under club auspices." We know that $200 of that came from contributions funneled through Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

The club campaign committee was making arrangements for headquarters and then would be able to send out suffrage literature. "The Oregon literature will be modeled after that which brought success in Washington and California, copies of all their bulletins, leaflets and circulars having been secured," the Evening Telegram noted. "These will be remodeled and adapted to the needs of Oregon and issued on the yellowest of yellow stock," the primary suffrage color.

Votes for Women Forum February 10, 1912: Esther Pohl on Teddy Roosevelt's Suffrage Turnaround

2012-02-13T07:19:00.000-08:00

At the second of the twice-monthly suffrage forums in Portland, Esther Pohl opened the discussion about Theodore Roosevelt's announcement that after a lifetime opposed to votes for women he was now in support. TR would be the Progressive Party candidate for the presidency in 1912 and was apparently angling for all the votes he could.

Visiting suffragists Helen Hoy Greeley of New York and Charlotte Anita Whitney of California had attacked TR as an opportunist. May Arkwright Hutton of Spokane called him a "hot-air artist."

Pohl and her colleagues saw things differently.


"Critics of T.R. Hit," Oregonian, February 11, 1912, 14.

In "Critics of T.R. Hit," the Oregonian reported some of Pohl's remarks: "'I think it is injurious to the interests of our cause to attack public men,' said Dr. Pohl yesterday. 'Where one of us who criticizes a public man may have one follower, that man criticized may have a thousand. Suppose all of us became public speakers and started out to criticize men in public life; why, in a short time we wouldn't have a friend left and our cause would be hopeless, unless the men were big enough to overlook our foolishness.'"

Esther Pohl believed that suffragists were on the political razor's edge and that the votes for women cause needed all the friends it could get. Pohl was a Progressive Democrat, had served in Democratic Portland Mayor Harry Lane's administration as city health officer from 1907-1909, and hoped to run for elected office someday herself. But she was willing to welcome latecomer and Republican Progressive Teddy Roosevelt into the suffrage camp.

February 10, 1912: "Dr. Esther Pohl Hostess at Dinner to Nineteen Workers for the 'Cause'"

2012-02-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

A strong feature of the 1912 Oregon woman suffrage victory was the successful work of many groups in coalitions across Portland and the state. A report from the Oregon Journal notes that Esther Pohl hosted a suffrage dinner for nineteen at the Arcadia Garden at the Multnomah Hotel on February 10, 1912. This dinner suggests that what we today would call "informal networking" was also a factor for success of the movement.


"Suffragists Hold Initial Banquet," Oregon Journal, February 11, 1912, 4.

Pohl told the reporter: "It was my purpose in making out the list of guests to get as many new faces as possible. The assemblage you see here tonight is only a very small part of the army of young women who have joined our cause in this state." Here she emphasized the importance of a new generation of suffrage workers.

The Oregon Journal reported the following in attendance at Dr. Esther Pohl's suffrage dinner: Mary Cachot (Mrs. L.W.) Therkelsen, Mrs. B.F. Irvine, Avis Lobdell, Sarah A. Evans, Mrs. Fred L. Olson, Mrs. H. O. Reynolds, Louise Bryant Trullinger, Dora Espy (Mrs. A. King) Wilson, Elizabeth Avery (Mrs. F.) Eggert, Miss C. Barnes, Mrs. Hilda M. Jones, Mrs. Alice Metzier, Mrs. Glenn Wheeler, Dr. Katharine C. Manion, Mary F. Gaffney, Sarah Blanche Wrenn, Mrs. E.E. Covert, Mrs. John F. Logan.

February 7, 1912 Anna Howard Shaw to Esther Pohl -- "Depend Upon Me for Two Hundred Dollars a Month . . . "

2012-02-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

Esther Pohl and her colleagues in the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee organized in January 1912 and began their suffrage work by sending resolutions to clubwomen across the state. Esther Pohl sent the news and a draft copy of the resolutions to her friend and suffrage colleague Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

On February 7, 1912, Anna Shaw responded to Pohl, delighted with the "good news of the organization of the club women and the promise that you are Mrs. Evans would take a personal oversight of the work of the committee." She confirmed that the group "might depend upon me for the two hundred dollars a month for campaign work through your committee" These were welcome funds and support indeed. Shaw, an experienced organizer, continued: "I hope you started your headquarters at once and began to reach out to the distant communities with literature."


Anna Howard Shaw to Esther Pohl, February 7, 1912, 1. Amy Khedouri Materials.

Following more specific instructions about suffrage literature, Shaw wrote of concerns about conflicts with Abigail Scott Duniway since the failed 1906 campaign. Then, she concluded: "Please remember me to Mrs. Evans and tell her how glad I am that she is willing to give time to the work and how I hope you will all be able to rejoice with an exclusively free Pacific Coast" (where all women would be enfranchised).

Pohl was a physician with an active medical practice and Evans was the Market Inspector for the city of Portland. Both would combine their suffrage activism with full-time employment in 1912.

February 3, 1912: Esther Pohl Speaks to University of Oregon Alumnae -- a "Notable Suffrage Affair" in Portland

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

On February 3, 1912 members of the University of Oregon Alumnae Association in Portland met at their regular monthly meeting. Votes for women was the topic and Esther Pohl was one of the speakers. The Oregon Journal reported that it was a "notable suffrage affair," and "in accord with the signs of the times."


"Notable Meeting," Oregon Journal, February 5, 1912, 2.

Pohl and other women who had attended the University of Oregon (and this included the University of Oregon Medical Department, now Oregon Health & Science University, where Pohl received her medical degree in 1894) were eligible for membership. Their guest was Charlotte Anita Whitney, president of the California branch of the College Equal Suffrage Association.

Esther Pohl was in Vienna in 1910 for graduate clinical medical studies when women in Washington State achieved the right to vote. She told her audience of college women, according to the Oregon Journal, about "being abroad at the time Washington women were given the enfranchisement, how the news reached her at once, and was generally known. She laid great stress on how much a single state gaining suffrage meant all over the world."

Pohl Lovejoy's later transnational career in public health and feminist activism had roots in her Portland suffrage and city health work. It was also nurtured by her early transnational experiences like this one in Vienna, where she learned "how much a single state gaining suffrage meant all over the world." Born in Washington Territory, she claimed that heritage when Washington State women achieved suffrage. Her subsequent home in Oregon and Portland claimed her suffrage attention in 1912.

January 28, 1912 Esther Pohl Meets with Business and Professional Women to Organize Fortnightly Suffrage Forums at Olds, Wortman and King

2012-01-28T10:52:00.000-08:00

On January 28, 1912 Esther Clayson Pohl joined other professional and business women to organize suffrage forums to be held twice a month at the auditorium of the Olds, Wortman and King department store in Portland.

From 1890 to 1894 Esther Clayson worked her way through the University of Oregon Medical Department as a sales clerk, part of that time at Olds and King, predecessor to the Olds, Wortman and King store of 1912. Certainly the auditorium was a good venue in terms of its size. But given her support of wage-earning women, it's quite possible that Esther Pohl helped to choose the location so that these twice-monthly meetings would be close and accessible for many working women in the city, certainly for the sales clerks at Olds, Wortman and King.

Dr. Pohl joined other professional women in planning these forums. Professional women and wage-earning women had much to gain from the power of the ballot. And the meeting also indicates that Pohl and other suffragists did not want to work from within just one suffrage organization -- she took steps to be involved in many suffrage groups across different communities to build coalitions. Pohl was a leader of the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee and worked through club networks for the vote; but she also saw the importance of working with other groups -- here with professional and business women -- to emphasize additional reasons why wage-earning and professional women needed the vote. As we'll see, Pohl worked with many organizations and formed a new suffrage group in the fall of 1912.

The Portland Evening Telegram reported about the meeting this way on January 29, 1912, 7:

"Fortnightly Suffrage Meeting

Business and professional women met Saturday afternoon and decided to hold an open forum in the auditorium of Olds, Wortman & King's store, twice a month, in the interest of the equal suffrage cause. Among the speakers were: Dr. Esther Pohl, Miss Frances Gottshall, Mrs. Grace Watt Ross, Miss Blanche Wren, Mrs. H.R. Reynolds, Dr. Mary Thompson, Mrs. Carrie Johnson, Miss Emma Wold, Mrs. Sarah Evans."

Pohl and Thompson were physicians, Gottchall a publisher and printer, Blanche Wren a stenographer, Emma Wold a science teacher at Portland's Lincoln High School. Sarah Evans was Portland Market Inspector, Carrie Johnson a milliner, Mary K. (Mrs. H.R.) Reynolds an author. Records to date don't provide information about Grace Watt Ross's involvement in business. She was a widow and active clubwoman, and worked with Esther Pohl on the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee.

And here is the Oregonian's note:

"Suffragists Arrange Meetings," Oregonian, January 29, 1912, 7.

Networking and Mass Campaigning for Suffrage January 1912

2012-01-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Esther Pohl and her colleagues Elizabeth Eggert, Grace Watt Ross, and Sarah Evans served as the leaders of a suffrage campaign committee for the Portland Woman's Club, as postings here across the month have shown, to "consider ways and means of best promoting the cause of suffrage through the club organization" for the 1912 ballot measure.

They decided that a "first step" would be to send copies of the club's resolutions to every woman's club in the state. Esther Pohl sent a copy to NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw. And the committee had Sarah Evans publish the resolutions in her widely read "Woman's Clubs" column in the Sunday Oregon Journal on January 28.


Oregon Journal, January 28, 1912, 5:5.

Mass campaigning and networking would be key to the success of the 1912 campaign and Esther Pohl and her colleagues were using these tactics from the beginning of their organization.

The resolutions reflect many of the arguments that suffragists around the state would use that year. Oregon was surrounded by suffrage states in the West -- "Oregon is the only remaining state on the Pacific coast where women have not yet been enfranchised," they wrote. (Washington state women achieved suffrage in 1910 and California women in 1911). They termed votes for women an "advanced step in the progress of civilization" and "the highest and best citizenship."

In addition, Pohl and the campaign committee argued that the tide of public opinion was turning in favor of votes for women -- those who had been indifferent were now "enthusiastically laboring" for the success of woman suffrage and the national press was becoming supportive, taking "the stand that any good reasons against it which ever existed, have largely disappeared and need no longer be given serious consideration."

They urged clubwomen around the state to support the campaign by passing resolutions, appointing local committees to work with the Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee, "and by instituting such active measures as shall in your judgment seem best adapted to secure the desired results." The PWCCC hoped to facilitated a large, federated system of campaign committees in which local women would make decisions about what kinds of active campaign strategies and events would be most effective in their communities.

Esther Pohl Sends Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee Resolutions and Abigail Scott Duniway Letter to Anna Howard Shaw

2012-01-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

In 1912 Esther Pohl had a strong working relationship and friendship with Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Shaw and Pohl had worked together in the 1906 Oregon campaign and Pohl had visited and stayed with Shaw at her home in Pennsylvania on her way home from clinical medical studies in Vienna in 1910. Both women believed that new tactics and organizations were necessary for Oregon women to win the vote in 1912.

The minutes of the regular meeting of the Portland Woman's Club of January 26 (part of the Portland Woman's Club Records at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library) tell us about the first actions of the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee, of which Pohl was a member. Committee members knew that they needed to organize a sophisticated and relentless campaign with vast amounts of publicity and advertising across the state.

"The Campaign Com reported that at a meeting held a few evenings ago the com had decided to send a copy of the resolutions passed by the club, to every women's organization in the State with a letter asking their endorsement.

Mrs. Evans moved that several number of copies of the letter be made in type, and sent out. Carried."

Esther Pohl sent a rough draft of the resolutions to Anna Howard Shaw in Pennsylvania. The copy here (from the materials held by Amy Khedouri) has cross-outs and Pohl has added the names of the committee members in her own hand. It appears that she wanted to get the first available draft to Shaw as soon as possible. Woman's Club endorsement of suffrage was new in 1912, and the draft resolutions show that clubwomen in Portland hoped that all clubwomen in the state would work as groups for the vote. They were beginning a very active campaign and Pohl wanted Shaw to know it.

Pohl also included typescript copies of correspondence between Abigail Scott Duniway and Sarah Evans in which Duniway reacted to the "surprise" coup by the club to begin a campaign committee outside Duniway's Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association.

Shaw and Pohl knew that the 1912 campaign was crucial -- the sixth time the question of votes for women would be on the ballot in Oregon. Washington State and California voters had passed suffrage amendments. But conflict with Abigail Scott Duniway could derail everything. So they would have to plan with care. Pohl's letter to Shaw is not available in the Khedouri materials, but Shaw's response is -- and we'll review it in February, 100 years after Shaw penned it and Pohl received it.

Next up -- the resolutions redux . . .

Esther Pohl and the Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee Surprise Many Oregonians

2012-01-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

In the last blog I noted that the Portland Woman's Club as an organization resolved to support woman suffrage in Oregon for the first time in January 1912. Esther Pohl, her friend and colleague Sarah Evans, and other members had been suffrage supporters for years and now other club members were catching up. In her Women's Club column Evans noted that "it has been a matter of some surprise, particularly to clubwomen outside of the city, that the Portland Woman's Club should have endorsed the suffrage amendment."

Other sources tell us more about the surprise. The Portland Evening Telegram reported that the suffrage resolutions "were sprung as a surprise at the close of the business session" of the club. Grace Watt Ross read the resolutions and "hardly had Mrs. Ross finished reading when Mrs. Sarah Evans moved the adoption of the resolutions, a second was quickly made in another part of the house the question put and passed with not more than three or four faint voices opposing."

"Before the close of the session" club president Dora Espy Wilson named members for a special campaign committee. They were Esther Pohl, Grace Watt Ross, Elizabeth Eggert and Sarah Evans as chair. The wonderful Historical Collections & Archives at Oregon Health & Science University has digitized a splendid image of Pohl, Eggert and Ross canvassing for suffrage at a later date in the campaign.

"Woman's Club Votes for Equal Suffrage," Portland Equal Telegram, January 13, 1912, 8.

Esther Pohl and Sarah Evans apparently headed an "inside coup" that led to the surprise. Since the 1906 campaign many suffragists had been in conflict with first generation leader Abigail Scott Duniway. Pohl, Evans and their colleagues in the women's club had planned this series of events to create a separate woman's club campaign committee outside of Duniway's Oregon Equal Suffrage League and away from her leadership.

Duniway was not pleased. In a January 29, 1912 letter to Evans (in the private collection of Amy Khedouri), Duniway wrote "Sorry you thought it necessary to side-track the wheel-horse and leader of the cause. But all is well that ends well . . . You couldn't have planned the Club movement better if you had told me yourself. But I cannot yet see what you expected to gain by secrecy. I quite agree with you that it is well to withhold that matter of History till after election."

Next -- why did Esther Pohl send a copy of Duniway's letter to Anna Howard Shaw president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association?

Esther Pohl and Suffragists Bring the Portland Woman's Club to the Campaign

2012-01-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

Esther Pohl was an active worker for votes for women in Oregon before the final 1912 campaign. As noted in the last post, she and the club members voted unanimously at their January 12, 1912 meeting to work for suffrage and to form a special campaign committee. Pohl declined the candidacy for Portland school board, saying it might put off male voters in the campaign.

We might suppose that it was natural for the Woman's Club to support votes for women. But Sarah Evans, colleague and close friend of Esther Pohl, shed light on just what a new development this was for Portland and that Pohl, Evans and other suffrage supporters had finally won the day within their club.

Oregon Journal, January 21, 1912, 5:5

In her weekly column "Women's Clubs" for the Oregon Journal, Evans noted:

"It has been a matter of some surprise, particularly to clubwomen outside of the city, that the Portland Woman's Club should have endorsed the suffrage amendment. Time was when this would, perhaps, have rent the club asunder and brought disaster." So what had changed? "These, however, were in the self-improvement days," Evans noted, "and before the club began to come into touch with the larger things in life."

The clubwomen had been divided, but at the last January 12 meeting "the hour had struck. It simply felt the impulse of the times and it fell with many organizations that had come to recognize suffrage, not as a political issue, not as a fad, nor as a militant movement, but as an advanced step in the progress of civilization."

Evans hoped that the action of the Portland Woman's Club would encourage other clubs to similar conclusions, that "club women of the state will give the matter of suffrage serious thought and dispassionate discussion, and where expedient as a club, indorse it." But in those clubs where "strong convictions or prejudice exists, better do individual work until such time as the club is ready for it."

Esther Pohl had worked for suffrage as an individual; in 1912 she would have the support of many groups, including the Portland Woman's Club behind her.

Next -- Pohl and the Portland Woman's Club Suffrage Campaign Committee, Anna Howard Shaw, and an angry Abigail Scott Duniway.

Esther Pohl Declines School Director Candidacy at the Beginning of the 1912 Suffrage Campaign

2012-01-01T14:14:00.000-08:00

As a member of the Portland Woman's Club Esther Pohl was at the center of the group's strategies for success in the 1912 votes for women campaign from the very beginning of the year. Thanks to the Portland Woman's Club Records held at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library we can learn all about her activities.

The women looked ahead not only to the November 5, 1912 statewide ballot but for opportunities to build women's civic credentials along the way, including women as candidates for office. Voters in June 1912 would choose a new director of the Portland school board and the club members resolved, unanimously, that Esther Pohl was their choice for the position. Pohl had served as Portland City Health Officer from 1907 to 1909 and had important experience and preparation for the post.

At the January 12, 1912 meeting of the Portland Woman's Club Grace Watt Ross "offered the following resolution:

Whereas, our neighboring states, Washington, California, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah have adopted a republican form of Gov. where all people vote; and Oregon is the only remaining state, bordering the Pacific where women have not been enfranchised Be it resolved that the P.W.C. petition the men of Oregon, to grant 'Votes for Women' at the next election and ---Be it resolved that the P.W.C. direct its work during the remaining months before the election, toward this end, that all Oregon women may gain the power of the ballot."

The group adopted the resolution and another one to appoint a committee to begin the work.

Then "Dr. Esther Pohl recommended the withdrawal of the candidate for school director from the field. In view of Mrs. Ross's resolution she fears it will create enemies and cause us to lose in our campaign for 'Votes for women.'" Sarah A. Evans moved to accept Pohl's recommendation and the motion carried.

Pohl, it appears, worried that another campaign would distract male voters from the votes for women movement in the state and even "create enemies and cause us to lose." In this sixth attempt at placing the question before male voters in Oregon she urged her colleagues to remain focused on one goal at a time.

Marian Perry Cruikshank and Service with the American Women's Hospitals in Serbia

2011-11-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

More in this blog post on Portland surgical nurse Marian Perry Cruikshank, who worked with Esther Pohl Lovejoy at the Coffey Clinic group in Portland prior to the First World War and with the American Women's Hospitals from 1921-1924. One of the main primary sources we have about Cruikshank's service was her report to the American Women's Hospitals and the Medical Women's National Association (which sponsored the AWH) at the conclusion of four years of service in 1921, published as "American Women's Hospitals," Medical Woman's Journal 32, no. 2 (February 1925): 47-

Cruikshank went first to Serbia in 1921, serving with the feminist medical humanitarian relief organization the American Women's Hospitals, directed by Esther Lovejoy. "During my first year overseas," she wrote in her report, "I was in Serbia and worked under Dr. Eta Gray as her first assistant, and had charge of the surgical wards of her hospital. Three weeks after my arrival Dr. Gray sent me to Salonika to obtain supplies which had been given to us by the Red Cross people in Washington. The local Red Cross at Salonika not only gave me the supplies that had been ordered from Washington, which amounted to about one carload, but an additional two carloads, and I came home to Veles with three carloads of supplies, which pleased Dr. Gray very much." Cruikshank evidently had a strong knack with bureaucracies of all kinds, as an upcoming post will suggest.

The American Women's Hospitals Records are located at the wonderful Archives and Special Collections on the History of Women at the Legacy Center, Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. An incredible image of Cruikshank and Dr. Etta Gray in their surgical scrubs in Veles, Serbia, is part of their online digital collections.

In her report of her work Cruikshank wrote with great feeling about the importance of the American Women's Hospitals and the meaning of her work with the organization to her own sense of identity, purpose and membership in a transnational group of women activists.

"The feeling of loyalty is a very strange thing. It is like being an American citizen. Here in the United States (she wrote, now home from 4 years of service) I thought nothing of it at all, but when Uncle Sam gave me a passport and said that he would back me up through thick and thin in any part of the world and I went forth, it suddenly became one of the greatest things in life to be an American citizen."

"I have had exactly the same experience with being a member of the American Women's Hospitals," she continued. "I went overseas fairly proud of the organization, but all through my first year, when there was no particular opposition and no danger to our organization, I still felt in a lukewarm way that it was a fine thing, but as soon as I got into the place where I realized that it was a matter of life and death to the organization that had given me my passport and had backed me up, I became 100 percent American Women's Hospitals."

Marian Perry Cruikshank -- Portland Origins for Transnational Medical Activism with the American Women's Hospitals

2011-11-12T15:52:00.000-08:00

Portland's Esther Lovejoy, M.D. is a vital example of an activist nurtured in the Portland, Oregon Progressive Era matrix in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who built upon her local public health work in her subsequent career as a transnational activist. Her work with the feminist medical humanitarian relief organization the American Women's Hospitals spanned almost fifty years from 1919 to 1967.

But Lovejoy was not alone. Portland nurse and administrator Marian Perry Cruikshank joined Lovejoy's American Women's Hospitals and spent four years in Serbia and Greece from 1921-1925.

In this post, some information about Cruikshank's Portland years.

Passport and death records indicate that she was born in 1882 in South Dakota and she came to Portland to pursue training in nursing. She attended the nursing school at St. Vincent's Hospital and graduated in 1914, twenty years after the school of nursing had been established there.

Cruikshank's nursing education came at the time that Oregon nurses were professionalizing. Oregon passed legislation in 1911 to establish a process for examination and registration of nurses and created the Oregon State Board of Nurse Examiners. Cruikshank's cohort of graduates in 1914 was the first to take the exam for registration. The board tested them on "elementary anatomy, physiology, medicine, obstetrics, gynecology, surgery . . . dietetics, and home sanitation." ("An Act to Provide for and Regulate the Examination and Registration of Graduate Nurses," Oregon Laws 32 [1911] 48-52.) For more on nursing professionalism in Oregon for this period and after see Patricia Schechter, "The Labor of Caring: A History of the Oregon Nurses Association," Oregon Historical Quarterly 8 no. 1 (Spring 2007): 6-33.

The Pacific Coast Journal of Nursing 10, no. 9 (September 1914), 393 noted Cruikshank's graduation and registration with fifty other successful colleagues in Oregon:

Cruikshank went to work at the R. C. Coffey clinic and medical group practice in Portland as a surgical nurse. Esther Lovejoy was gynecological specialist there after 1913 and practiced with Coffey, T.M. Joyce, and C.E. Sears. Cruikshank was the "first assistant" nurse for Coffey for six years after her graduation. Portland was a leader in the public health movement in the years leading to the First World War with a visiting nurse association and a strong city health department (with Esther Pohl as health officer from 1907-1909).

Esther Lovejoy took the chair of the American Women's Hospitals in 1919 and expanded the scope of this wartime all-female medical unit. Marian Cruikshank joined the group in 1921, in part, no doubt, because of her Portland work with Lovejoy.

Her 1921 passport photograph from the National Archives shows a determined and thoughtful woman about to embark on a life-changing journey.

Two published sources chronicle Marian Cruikshank's work for the American Women's Hospitals in Serbia and Greece. The first is her four year report of service published in the Medical Woman's Journal in February 1925; the second is Esther Lovejoy's Certain Samaritans (1927, 1933). Over the next several posts I'll provide information about Cruikshank from these two sources, both of which emphasize the power of transnational work for women's empowerment.

Thanks to Susan Denning and Literary Arts in Portland for Session with Stacy Schiff

2011-11-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday Susan Denning and the staff of Literary Arts in Portland hosted a conversation with biographer Stacy Schiff. It was a pleasure to be a part of this writers' forum event.

Schiff discussed her recent biography of Cleopatra and her Pulitzer Prize winning Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage, the biographer's craft, and the intersections of biography and women's history. I gained new insights from the questions posed by colleagues and appreciated the hour we shared in conversation about researching and writing biography.

Susan Denning has a post about the event on the blog Paper Fort.

Thanks Literary Arts, writing colleagues, and Stacy Schiff.

Callie Brown Charlton, M.D. in Hine's History of Oregon 1893

2011-10-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

H.K. Hines published An Illustrated History of the State of Oregon (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1893) when Esther Clayson was a student at the University of Oregon Medical Department in Portland. Like the Oregonian Souvenir, published the year before, this book provides some context for Portland and Oregon life and culture in this same period.

Hines, a Methodist minister and trustee of Willamette University published few biographical entries of women. But he did include Callie Brown Charlton, M.D., Esther Clayson's mentor in medicine.

She attended St. Mary's Academy in Portland and in 1872, widowed with a small daughter, Lorena, decided to study medicine. Charlton taught school in Portland's Holladay Addition and studied with Dr. C. H. Rafferty (Willamette University Medical Department graduate of 1869) before being admitted to the Willamette University Medical Department, receiving her diploma in 1879.

Hine places Charlton at the center of female student activism at Willamette without, alas, giving us much detail. He notes that "it was only the second year that the sex had been admitted to the college [this was not accurate -- Hine was omitting Mary Sawtelle] while many discriminating restrictions were placed upon them, and the course of study to which they were admitted was much circumscribed, essential features being eliminated." These "essential features" likely included dissection.

"Against much opposition," Hine continued, "Mrs. Charlton led the contest for the rights of women, which proved successful, and by which she won the lasting esteem of the faculty and management, among whom are yet numbered some of her warmest friends; her genuine earnestness in the search of knowledge in the line of her chosen profession had much to do with this feeling, as well as with her success."

Willamette admitted women with restrictions after Mary Sawtelle's controversial time there. Materials at the Willamette University Archives suggest that many male faculty opposed women as students and for a time in the 1880s women were officially banned. We need to know more about this story and Charlton's role in challenging restrictions to women's medical education in Oregon.

Charlton embraced homeopathy, a popular therapeutics at the time[see AnneTaylor Kirschmann, A Vital Force: Womenin American Homeopathy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004)]. She studied for a second degree at Hahnemann Medical College in Chicago and graduated in 1886 (Hine's 1866 is a typo). She returned to practice in Portland and delivered Esther Clayson's sister Charlotte in 1884. Esther's mother Annie Clayson invited Charlton to dinner and Charlton became a role model for Esther and her medical ambitions.

Here is Charlton's entry in H.K. Hines An Illustrated History of the State of Oregon (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1893). The text appears on pages 973 and 974 and her image faces page 973.

Oregon Woman Suffrage at the Western History Association Meeting at Oakland, October 16, 2011

2011-10-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

I was honored to be a part of a session exploring Oregon woman suffrage history at the Western History Association meeting in Oakland October 16, 2011.

Historian of Pacific Northwest women, women's clubs and women teachers Karen Blair, chair of history at Central Washington University chaired the session. Panelists included Sheri Bartlett Browne, who teaches history at Tennessee State University and gave a paper on Frances Fuller Victor's suffrage philosophy and Jean M. Ward, professor emerita at Lewis and Clark College, who presented on Bethenia Owens-Adair and her suffrage ideas and activism. I gave a paper on Esther Pohl Lovejoy and her idea of civic health, forged during her Portland suffrage and public health days, something she expanded to a transnational view of international health with the Medical Women's International Association and the American Women's Hospitals.

We appreciated Karen's comments and the questions and ideas from the audience. Thanks, too, to supporter Eliza Canty-Jones, editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and president of the board of the Coalition for Oregon Women's History.

The papers explored the particular Oregon threads of these women's suffrage ideas and activism and their ties and contributions to broader national and transnational suffrage and social justice movements.

Eliza Canty-Jones, Karen Blair, Jean Ward and Sheri Bartlett Browne, Oregon Woman Suffrage session, Western History Association, Oakland, California, October 16, 2011.

Kim Jensen, Karen Blair, Jean Ward and Sheri Bartlett Browne, Oregon Woman Suffrage session, Western History Association, Oakland, California, October 16, 2011.

More Portland Medicine in the Oregonian Souvenir 1892: The University of Oregon Medical Department

2011-10-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

The Oregonian Souvenir 1850-1892: October 1, 1892 (Portland: Lewis & Dryden, 1892), published by the Oregonian newspaper to boost Portland and the state, provides one view of Oregon medicine as Esther Clayson (later Pohl Lovejoy) attended medical school. The last post featured the Oregonian Souvenir's take on St. Vincent's and Good Samaritan. Today a look at the representation of the University of Oregon Medical Department, newly-installed in its grand new building at 23rd and Lovejoy.

This copy of the McCaw, Martin and White architectural drawing of the new 1892 UOMD building appears on p. 77 of the Oregonian Souvenir. (Compare it with this image in the Historical Collections & Archives, Oregon Health & Science University.)

The editors provided a brief history of the founding of the UOMD in 1887. "After great effort, and the consequent annoyance in arranging the details of an enterprise of this magnitude and importance, it was decided by the board to erect a small temporary building on ground owned by the Good Samaritan Hospital" where the first sessions were held.

The new building, they said, had it all. "The beautiful and commodious building occupied by the Medical College at the present time, was erected with a view of its adaptability to the very best and most advanced instruction in medicine, more especially in laboratory and other practical work in the science." It was "fitted with all of the best appliances of a modern medical school."

Clinical facilities at St. Vincent's and Good Samaritan hospitals "are unexcelled by any colleges located in cities the size of Portland, in the United States." And the faculty "has kept pace with the advances in medical education and the curriculum of the school now covers four years' study, and three winter courses entitle the student to the degree of M.D." The faculty wanted "to make and keep the school prominent among the standard colleges of the United States."

In a final flourish the editors noted: "The members of the faculty are strong, vigorous and enterprising, highly successful in the practice of their chosen profession, and thus far having succeeded in maintaining the high excellence of their school, they will not allow it to fall behind in the race for supremacy among medical colleges on the coast." (Oregonian Souvenir, 77-78)

Portland Medicine in the Oregonian Souvenir 1892

2011-10-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

In the middle of Esther Clayson's (later Pohl Lovejoy) medical school years from 1890 to 1894 at the University of Oregon Medical Department in Portland the Oregonian newspaper published a large folio volume to boost Portland and Oregon towns and also to boost the Oregonian. Portland medicine in Esther Clayson's years got a favorable report in The Oregonian Souvenir 1850-1892: October 1, 1892 (Portland, Lewis & Dryden, 1892).

Esther Clayson and other students at the UOMD received practical instruction and experience at clinics and dispensaries at nearby St. Vincent's and Good Samaritan Hospitals.

This image of St. Vincent's Hospital, the Children's Home and Good Samaritan Hospital appears on p. 28 of the Oregonian Souvenir in a photo by McAlpin and Lamb. St. Vincent's, located on 12th and Marshall, had been in operation since 1875 and would move to its new building in 1895. Good Samaritan had also opened in 1875 on Hoyt Street. [See Olof Larsell, The Doctor in Oregon: A Medical History (Portland: Binfords & Mort for the Oregon Historical Society, 1947), 514-27.]

Esther Clayson pursued her medical education at the same time that Portland nursing was professionalizing. Bellevue-trained nurse Emily Loveridge established the first Pacific Northwest training school for nurses at Good Samaritan in 1890. St. Vincent's followed in 1894, the year that Clayson received her M.D.

The editors of the Oregonian Souvenir wrote with enthusiasm about hospitals and charitable institutions in Portland as they hoped to boost the city and state. "Benevolent societies, public charities and hospitals are here in large representation," they wrote. "Poverty is almost unknown and want is very uncommon, but those who by sickness or misfortune are rendered helpless are well cared for." St. Vincent's, they reported, "has admitted about 15,000 patients" since its establishment in 1875. Good Samaritan "is one of the most thoroughly equipped institutions of its kind on the coast." (Oregonian Souvenir, 74.)

Lives of Women Citizens Presentation Monday, August 29

2011-08-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

Join us for the Lives of Women Citizens at History Pub: McMenamin's Bagdad Theater Monday, August 29 at 7:00

Oregon Attorney General's Decision December 10, 1912: Women Can't Serve on Juries -- Historical Connections and a Few Loopholes

2011-08-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

We've been discussing Portland's experimental all-female jury, whose members participated in a trial concerning a woman accused of keeping a house of prostitution on December 4, 1912. There was spectacle, speculation, and some important claims for women's fuller citizenship through this service.

The experimental jury may also have influenced the next policy decision about women and jury service in the state. As we've seen, the Oregonian reported on November 3, 1912, two days before the successful ballot measure for woman suffrage, "considerable opposition has developed to the suffrage amendment among voters who express themselves as being highly favorable to giving the women the ballot, but who are opposed to their being harassed with the onerous duties of the juror." Attorney General Andrew Crawford did not make a ruling at the time but he told the Oregonian that he had no doubt "but a law could be passed by the legislative assembly exempting women from jury duty and that such a law would be constitutional and not deny to all the equal protection of the laws."

In Attorney General Andrew M. Crawford's correspondence files (archival materials that the ever knowledgeable Austin Schulz helped me to locate this summer at the Oregon State Archives -- thank you, Austin!) backed with newspaper coverage we find additional information about the connections between the experimental jury and the subsequent decision. The AG decided that women were NOT eligible for jury service because of the successful woman suffrage ballot measure, yet provided two loopholes.

From the correspondence files we learn that on December 4, 1912, the very day of the experimental all-woman jury in Portland, J. D. Venator, the Deputy District Attorney for Lakeview, Oregon, in Lake County in the central part of the state, wrote to ask for the Attorney General's formal opinion "as to whether a woman is, under the new law, qualified to serve upon Juries, providing she has all other qualifications as required by law."

Crawford responded on December 10, referring to Section 990 of Lord's Oregon Laws that contained gendered language: "he" and "a male inhabitant" when referring to jury qualifications. Crawford concluded: "The recent amendment to the constitution [woman suffrage] did not change the status of women as far as citizenship is concerned. It only made them qualified electors, and did not in any way change their condition as far as jury service is concerned." Women, he said, could not serve on juries "until further legislation."

Newspaper coverage adds to the intrigue.

The Oregon Journal, which as we've seen was the most supportive of the Portland newspapers of jury service, reported that the opinion was "unexpected" and reprinted the decision.


"Women of State Not Eligible for Juries--Crawford," Oregon Journal, December 11, 1912, 1.

The Oregon Statesman of Salem indicated that the decision was by "common consent of counsel" for the AG's office. Both Attorney General Crawford and Assistant Attorney General DeLong were there for the briefing, it appears.


"Can't Serve On A Jury," Oregon Statesman, December 12, 1912, 1.

The Statesman's report also featured Attorney General Crawford holding open a few loopholes for women's jury service in spite of the ruling. "The opinion will have the effect of excluding all women from juries where a felony charge is involved," he said while "commenting on the opinion to newspapermen." But he said that he did not think "it will interfere with them serving as juries in civil cases" or misdemeanor cases. In these latter two cases jurisdiction could be waived by participants "and I see no reason why women should not serve on them, if is agreeable to the litigating parties."

In other state constitutions voting qualified persons for jury service (Nevada, 1914, Michigan 1918, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1920 with the federal woman suffrage amendment -- Burnita Shelton Matthews, "The Woman Juror," Woman Lawyer's Journal, 15 no 2. (April 1927): 15-16.) In other states, like in Oregon, the process was more complicated.

Did the hoopla over the experimental all-woman jury influence any of the advice counsel gave to the AG? Did they take a negative view as a result?

Could Crawford have overruled? And was he influenced by the all-female jury? In November he responded to those who were worried about women having "onerous" jury duty and said that he had no doubt that a law exempting women from jury service would be constitutional. But in explaining the decision on December 10 by "common consent of counsel" denying women full jury service he opened the door for women to serve in civil and misdemeanor cases. Did the all-female jury nudge him toward support? Was this as far as he could go given the constitution?

What followed was over thirty years of wrangling: a 1921 law for a "mixed jury" that was quickly amended. Until legislation in 1943, women could "opt out" of jury service because they were women. Some few women did serve on civil and misdemeanor cases in the years after 1912. But like most other states the concept of women's jury service in Oregon was highly contested.

I'm researching more about the rest of the story but will turn to some other topics for the next blog posts. Thanks for your attention to these accounts of Portland's first "experimental" all-woman jury.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury -- Editorial Reviews: The Oregon Journal -- "They Have Done No Worse"

2011-07-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

In the last of the three Portland newspaper editorial reactions to the December 4, 1912 all-female "experimental" jury, the Oregon Journal weighs in with a bit of equity about the process and the verdict.

"We have had a jury of Oregon women," the editors noted in an editorial titled "The First." Those who read about it will be chiefly impressed that it failed to agree." But it took an hour and forty minutes, "to convince the members that agreement was hopeless. Was it because it was a woman?" they asked? Or (and they could not resist taking a jab) "because of the blandishments of 'Pike' Davis in his tearful appeal with its sprinkling of modest references to his efforts as a pillar of suffrage?"

But then the editors ask some important questions. Was it because the defendant was clearly not alone and was being set up to take the blame. "Perhaps the jurors for acquittal reasoned that the woman was an instrument in the hands of underworld men, and that she was brought to bay while the men escaped."

Perhaps the evidence was not there to prove guilt. And there was, perhaps, an equal argument for both points of view. Lawyers thrive on such things, they said.

"It might have looked better to a waiting world for this first jury of Oregon women if there could have been an agreement. The news has gone to the country, and the disagreement will bring out a chorus of 'I told you so.'"

But, the editors insisted, "juries of men do the same thing. Groups of judges" including those serving on the United States Supreme Court "similarly perform."

"The women of the first Oregon jury have the satisfaction," they wrote, "of knowing that they have done no worse."


"The First," Oregon Journal, December 5, 1912, 8.

And so? The next blog post will explore how the fallout about this "experimental" all-female jury may have influenced the Oregon Attorney General's decision about women and jury service . . .

Portland's Experimental Woman Jury -- Editorial Reviews: The Evening Telegram -- "Why Drag Women Into the Filth of It?"

2011-07-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

We've seen the Oregonian's editorial about the experimental all-woman jury in Portland. Now here is the reaction of the other Republican-leaning daily, the Evening Telegram.

In "The Woman Jury" the Telegram editors decried the "stage effect" of the trial, but emphasized that "like men jurors they could not agree" on a verdict. Therefore, the editors concluded, there was "not the slightest evidence that women are better fitted than men" for the trial of cases of other women, "and if that's the fact why drag women into the filth of it simply because it is possible to do so?"

Women may eventually "constitute the best tribunal for the trial of cases of this sort" but "at all events id does not appear that there is anything to be gained by breaking down the barriers of womanly delicacy, which must be done every time that women who are worthy are called upon to sit in a case like that of yesterday." (The case involved accusations of prostitution).

It appears that the Telegram editors feared most that women on juries would be harmed, would lose their "womanly delicacy."

In the final paragraph of the editorial the editors reiterated their concern about the theatrical, staged aspects of the experimental woman jury, noting that "thoughtful people" would not conclude that it was "edifying." But they also signaled ambivalence about women's jury service as a right of citizenship. "If women vote with good judgement they may also render good jury service. But the selection of women for such service should be made with discretion."

"The Woman Jury," Evening Telegram, December 5, 1912, 6.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury -- Editorial Reviews: The Oregonian -- "Don't Depend Too Much On Their Being Fools"

2011-07-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

All three of Portland's major daily newspapers provided extensive coverage of the first all-female jury on December 4, 1912 just weeks after the achievement of woman suffrage. And all three weighed in with editorial commentary after the fact.

Today -- the Oregonian. This Republican-supporting morning paper had been editorially opposed to woman suffrage until the death of editor Harvey Scott (brother of Abigail Scott Duniway) in 1910. The paper's editorial views about lessons learned in "The First Woman Jury" might best be characterized as damning with faint praise and halfhearted

The first lesson for the Oregonian editors was that women would not automatically support a lawyer because he had supported the votes for women campaign. As we've seen, W.M. Pike Davis was one of the defense attorneys at the trial and he used his suffrage credentials in his argument. The Oregonian got back at him in the editorial.

"The account of the various antics performed to beguile and bemuddle the first woman jury makes at least one thing perfectly clear," they wrote. Women jurors cannot be depended on to give their verdict to a lawyer because he worked for suffrage. They may give it to him for his good looks or his elegant manners or his dulcet voice. That remains to be seen. But lawyers who have hoped to win all of their cases for the next year or two by pleading that they made stump speeches for suffrage are clearly doomed to woeful disappointment."

The second lesson -- some women might eventually make good jurors but they are easily distracted. The women jurors "gave some attention to the evidence and the judge's instructions though perhaps did their job as jurors. "We are persuaded that the women gave some attention to the evidence and the judge's instructions, though perhaps not very much." The editors acknowledged that this was a very public trial with a media following and this "must naturally have diverted their minds" from the task at hand.

"It is only by experience," they continued, "that some women can be taught that an oath is a little more serious than a new ribbon and that to be chosen foreman of a jury is not quite the same sort of distinction as to take a prize at bridge whist." The editors acknowledged "these lessons will be learned in time. Some men need them quite as much as any women."

And the third argument was that "it is unsafe to treat women like simpletons" (though to this reader's eyes the Oregonian had done just that) "even in the most novel situations." The editors warned "politicians seeking women's vote not to depend too much on their being fools. The sex has belated specimens, no doubt, whose vanity is more conspicuous than their common sense, but their very prominence proves their rarity." In the final analysis, to the Oregonian editors, "with women as with men, the appeal that wins in the long run must not be too superficial or utterly silly."

"The First Woman Jury," Oregonian, December 6, 1912, 12.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part XI: Oregonian Claims Facing a Woman Jury is Deterrent to Crime

2011-07-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

As part of its coverage of the December 4, 1912 all-female jury I've been blogging here, the Oregonian printed this accompanying article suggesting that a "woman jury in Municipal Court" was a deterrent to lawbreaking. Whether the story was true or not it contributed to the debate going on in the city about the impact of this "experimental jury."

Captain Brown of the U.S. Steamer Leelenau had docked at the Irving dock at the foot of Dupont Street in Portland with improper lighting and unsafe gangplanks. The patrolman on duty told him he would have to comply with regulations or face arrest and fines.

"From his berth, whither he had retired early, Captain Brown commended the parolman to a 'warm climate.'"

"'They have a woman jury in Municipal Court,'" the patrolman told him, "'and you will have to face that.' Instantly," the Oregonian reported, "the captain raised his hand to his whistle and the watchman came running." He ordered repairs to be made. "'I won't face a woman jury in any court,'" the captain said, '''and me 60 years old.'"

"Woman Jury Has Effect," Oregonian, December 5, 1912, 12.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part X: Oregonian Coverage Continued: "Mrs. Duniway Absent" and "Gloved Hands Take Oath"

2011-07-09T13:37:00.000-07:00

We're reviewing the extensive Portland newspaper coverage of an all-female "experimental jury" in Municipal Court on December 4, 1912. In addition to featuring Leone Cass Baer's account of serving on the jury, the Oregonian provided a long article about the trial, part of which I excerpt here.

This excerpt provides some additional information about the trial. We learn that the first order of business was the clerk calling "the name of Abigail Scott Duniway, under a pre-arranged agreement to give her the honorary position of being the first woman in Oregon to be called into a jury box." As we've seen, Duniway was not the first -- Hattie Corkett of Bend, Oregon served as foreperson on a jury the week of November 25, 1912. Duniway was not present for her honorary position.

The Oregonian used a dramatic and class-related image to describe the first all-female jury. "Ten gloved hands were raised" as the jurors swore to tell the truth in voir dire and as they were empaneled. And the drama continued: "It was just the same old sordid story, so threadbare to male jurors, but throbbing with novelty and interest to the new arbiters."

Excerpt from "Unable to Agree, Woman Jury Quits," Oregonian, December 5, 1912, 12.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part IX: Leone Cass Baer Reports on Her Experience with Jury Duty for the Oregonian

2011-07-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

The Oregonian provided extensive coverage of the December 4, 1912 Portland trial with the "experimental" all-female jury. One of its features was an account of jury service written by columnist and drama critic Leone Cass Baer, who was one of the ten women on the jury.

Cass Baer used humor to create a lively picture of the day. The court "sent the biggest policeman on the force to serve me," she said, and "one half as large would have been as legal." She learned a new vocabulary ("pinched" meant being arrested) and joked about what she felt was defense attorney Pike Davis's grandstanding. "It seems everybody in Portland but that jury of women and Mr. Piker Davis and oh, maybe Mr. Farrell, are grafters."

She also challenged the way the media had inflated the case. "While the crowd was trying to tack the individual juroresses onto the libelous, fac-simile, after-taking pictures the papers have published, we went through the necessary form of telling each other who each other was." And one, "whose picture in the paper had seemingly been made from a cut of Lydia Pinkham" (whose very maternal picture acccompanied advertisements for her nineteenth century vegetable compound and contraceptive) "looks really more like Edna May" (a glamorous actress known for her beauty) "after you see her."

All of the newspapers had hyped the large crowds and worried that the floor would collapse. But Cass Baer wrote of the "sea of faces about us. (N.B. It wasn't exactly a sea--but at least a small ocean.)"

Is seems quite possible that in her account of "Going-a-Courtin'" Cass Baer demystified the courtroom and the process of the trial for other women readers, women who would themselves be possible future jurors. "Judge Tazwell talked to us and gave us our instructions," she wrote. "D'ye know, I think I'd like my next divorce case tried before him. He's so gentle, and so sensible, and he doesn't waste words." She ended her story as the jurors set off to deliberate. "Just what went on in that room I promised nine perfectly nice women I would not tell. But, gee -- I wish I dared."

"Jury 'Woe' is Told: Leone Cass Baer Writes of 'Going a-Courtin','" Oregonian, December 5, 1912, 12

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part VIII: The Oregon Journal Coverage of the December 4, 1912 Trial--"The Courtroom Was Unsafe"

2011-06-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

The Oregon Journal, the Democratic evening paper in Portland, included many of the same details as the Portland Evening Telegram's report and also demonstrated ambivalence about women jurors and repeated negative stereotypes about women. The Journal report, however, gives voice to some of the complexities of the jury deliberations and, significantly, a "demonstration" by women spectators claiming their own view of justice. All of this served to make the "unsafe" just as much as the reported structural weakness and quivering floor of the temporary municipal court.

"That old wolf cry of the anti-suffrage fold that giving the ballot to women would masculinize the sex and that no more would woman be womanly, received its death blow here yesterday," the Journal reported. "For Oregon's first woman jury, put for the first time in the setting of a police court and hearing for the first time the sordid and brutally frank testimony of a police court, did the typically feminine thing of being unable to agree." The defense argued that Marcelle Bortell was an "inmate" and not the operator of a house of prostitution as she had been charged. Eight of the ten women jurors, the Journal said, acted on "moral certainly of guilt," while two "held out unswervingly for a legal certainty according to the evidence." At the end of the process the jury was divided five to five.

By 7:00 in the evening, when they could not come to agreement, Judge Tazwell "sent them home to dinner. . . the decision proved vastly popular with a handful of husbands waiting hungrily for their wives to get through balloting and set the table."


"Woman Jury Splits on Rock of Moral Guilt: Eve, to Eve Erring, Is Still True to Tradition," Oregon Journal, December 5, 1912, 1 (article continued on p. 2 not reproduced here)

When interviewed, the jurors revealed a more complex situation. "The five women who insisted on conviction throughout proposed to soften it a bit by asking Judge Tazwell to remit the fine against the woman, and to commend her otherwise to the mercy of the court." Viola Coe, "the forewoman, thought it would be a good idea to let the woman herself go, but bring into court some of the men mentioned by the police officers who testified, and convict and fine them instead." Mary Cachot Therkelsen noted that they all wanted leniency. ""We didn't place much credence in the testimony of those five policemen,'" she insisted.

The Journal recounted the back and forth between prosecutor Sullivan and defense attorney W M "Pike" Davis, who "'with Patrolman Sherwood on the stand, smilingly chided him for being 'the only member of the police force who didn't vote for woman suffrage.'"

"'Your honor,' cried Mr. Sullivan, 'I don't think this should be permitted, even in fun.'

'''You didn't vote for suffrage yourself,' shot back Attorney Davis.

"'No, I didn't vote for suffrage, and I make no bones about it,' retorted Sullivan warmly. And later in his argument, he said, 'I don't know whether lady jurors are going to be a success. Judging from remarks in the courtroom and soft applause to the sentimental pleas of the attorneys for the defense, I fear for where it is a question of convicting women by women, but you must lay aside your sympathy and find according to the law and your oath.'"

The lawyers had other "hot exchanges." "Once, after the arguments were finished, one of the jurors complained of being cold. Attorney Davis hastened to the jury box and closed a window. Sullivan objected to "'these little attentions' and told the judge 'I would rather have this done by some anti-suffragist.'

"'Huh, you'd let them freeze to death yourself,' snorted back Mr. Davis."

Women spectators at the trial "who had taken every chair and standing place in the municipal courtroom" weighed in on a case before the judge that preceded the one with the woman jury. They "showed their contempt for a man who had turned informer against a woman of the underworld." Judge Tazwell "dismissed the charge against Pauline Bernard, the woman, on the plea of her attorney, A. W. Parshley, on the ground that the man was equally guilty with her, but had not been prosecuted" and "the audience of women broke into a demonstration" of support for the verdict.

This demonstration, the women who participated in it while in the spectator seats waiting for the next trial, and the ten women on the subsequent jury posed a threat to the established gendered order of things. "Judge Tazwell had to call sternly for order, and only quieted the applause when he said that the courtroom was unsafe."

The fears of the collapsing floor, as we've seen reported in this series, served as a metaphor for fears of women out of bounds and a change in the gendered order. "The courtroom was unsafe" -- but for whom?

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part VII: Portland Evening Telegram Coverage of the December 4, 1912 Trial and Mattie McArthur

2011-06-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Portland's three daily newspapers all covered the December 4, 1912 trial that featured an all-female "experimental" jury. The Portland Evening Telegram, a Republican daily, presented the police court as a dramatic stage on which gender relations and ideology played out.


"Defendant Flees From Woman Jury," Portland Evening Telegram, December 5, 1912, 1.

The Evening Telegram began its extensive coverage on the front page. "One glance at the courtroom, packed to suffocation with women who wanted to see and hear her, and Marcelle Bortell, of the underworld, exclaimed 'Not for me!' and fled. And then, in her absence, she was tried on a charge of keeping a disorderly house by the first woman jury in Oregon."

The "scene" was one of a kind, the paper noted. "So great was the crowd of women who wedged their way into the dingy, smelly courtroom of Municipal Judge Tazwell that the building threatened to collapse." The police "weeded out" men in the chairs but women stayed. "The lobby was thronged, the office downstairs was filled and a crowd assembled outside. Several times during the afternoon yesterday the floor quivered under the strain, but there was no accident."

Photo from "Woman Prisoner Flees Jury of Her Own Sex," Portland Evening Telegram, December 5, 1912, 12.

The Telegram reported on the dress and deportment of the mostly "middle-aged, matronly women" who remained in their seats after Judge Tazwell admonished that there would be frank language and information during the trial. "In court, a spade is called a spade," he said, "and things are called by their right names." The women on the jury (the Telegram referred to them as "juroresses") were sworn in and the trial began.

Defense attorney W. E. Farrell presented the defendant, Marcelle Bortell, as a woman with whom all the other women in the courtroom could relate. She was so disturbed by the assembled crowd that she could not appear. "Remember, she is a woman -- weak-kneed, perhaps -- but a woman and she faltered when she came to the door of the courtroom. She had the chagrin and fright any lady would have."

Deputy city attorney Ray Sullivan used gender differently and emphasized the differences between the defendant and the women in the jury and audience. "A woman of the underworld . . . it one of the boldest creatures in the world and would not be afraid of facing a jury. A woman can size up one of this character instinctively--that's why the defendant did not appear. The question now involved is whether a jury of women will convict a woman of the underground and you will have to put your sentiments aside and remember the facts."

Bortell was charged with keeping a house of prostitution. "It was one of those cases so common in the Municipal Court," the Telegram reported, "distinctly nasty in details, but the audience was game and remained. When the testimony became too-off colored for repetition in the presence of women Judge Tazwell tilted back in his swivel chair and looked out the window across the street. One juror riveted her eyes to the floor throughout the trial; another gazed unblinking out a window; another flushed to her brow, several gripped their nether lip with their teeth and the rest stared, without displaying the least trace of emotion, at the witness."

Attorney W M "Pike" Davis joined Farrell for the defense. Davis had been a strong suffragist and chair of the Men's Equal Suffrage League of Multnomah County in the recent 1912 campaign. The Telegram noted that Davis placed the women jurors "in the same class with the defendant" when he told them that "this woman is your sister," something the Telegram felt was insulting. The report was critical of Davis in other ways: "Davis inserted a bouquet for himself for his campaign for suffrage, and, seeing a window open near the jury, he gallantly climbed through the crowd and shut it with ostentation." Davis, the Telegram noted, spent his time "interjecting his suffrage record and panning the police." The Telegram concluded "women resent being called sisters of the denizens of the underworld and . . . have great confidence in the police."

The jury was out for an hour and 40 minutes. The jurors selected were Mrs. W.T. Pangle, Mary Cachot Therkelsen, Leone Cass Baer, May (Mrs. A.C.) Newill, Viola Coe, Mrs. Paul C. Bates, Mrs. O.C. Bortzmeyer, Mrs. A.E. Clark, Laura Vinson and Ida M. Kayser. The group elected Viola Coe as foreperson. As the Telegram told it, "the jury agreed that Marcelle was a woman of loose character, and there they stuck." The final vote was divided five to five "and the court discharged the first jury to women in Oregon because they could not agree." (Much more on this in subsequent reports . . .)

The Telegram reported a straw poll among women in the spectator seats "at 6:30 among the women who had not gone home to prepare supper" and it revealed 25 for aquital and 22 for conviction. The paper printed what it represented as a discussion among the remaining women that ranged from sympathy to a discussion of the "white slave trade" to criticism of the defendant.

The Telegram review of the day of the trial concludes with this sentence: "There was one colored suffragette in the courtroom, Mrs. Mattie McArthur, Tenth and Stark Streets." McArthur does not appear in the 1912 Portland City Directory but the 1920 Census lists her as 31 years of age living with her husband Joseph, a drill press operator. (thanks Ancestry.com!).

Stay tuned for the other newspaper reports, editorials, Leone Cass Baer's "eyewitness" narrative, and how this might have influenced the Oregon attorney general's decision about women and jury service a week later . .

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part VI: Mary Cachot Therkelsen on Full Citizenship

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The first all-female "experimental" jury in Portland convened for trial on Wednesday, December 4, 1912 in the municipal court. The trial began in the late afternoon and so the morning newspaper, the Oregonian, and the two evening papers, the Oregon Journal and the Portland Evening Telegram, had one more day to print anticipatory information before having actual trial events. This coverage perpetuated the contradictory images and assessments of women jurors that we've seen in prior posts.

That morning the Oregonian reported that in anticipation of large crowds some suggested to Judge Tazwell that "the trial should be adjourned to some more roomy chamber, but this idea was abandoned, on the ground that the first woman jury in Oregon should have a stage-setting under ordinary working conditions such as the husbands and brothers of the new electors have had hitherto." So the proceedings would be held in the "second story room in the dingy old City Jail building" with room for only 100 people. These news accounts, we may suppose, also contributed to the swell of the crowds.

The paper also noted that "fearing that some embarrassment might be caused Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway through the serving upon her yesterday of an honorary summons to the jury" the court reassured her that her appearance was voluntary "but if her health permitted her to attend she would be the first to be called into the box." Husbands, the Oregonian noted, would attend. And the article quoted "a suffragist" as saying that women were not prepared for jury duty but rather "fitted for afternoon teas."


"First Woman Jury Tries Case Today," Oregonian, December 4, 1912, 17.

The evening Oregon Journal went to press as the courtroom was filling. The paper reported in detail the efforts some Portlanders made to get in -- "Judge Tazwell and Court Clerk Beutgen have been besieged for reserved seats the last 24 hours" -- and repeated the fears of a collapsing floor.

The Journal continued its supportive stance regarding the women jurors." The "women who have been subpoenaed on the jury panel are not curious," the Journal reported. "They are entering the case with too much seriousness for that, for they regard it as a sort of test for all women of their ability to exercise the requirements of citizenship." It noted also that the subpoena for Duniway was "made honorary" because of her health.

Mary Cachot Therkelsen, one of the jurors, noted that she was "glad to serve . . . I'm anxious to acquaint myself with all the duties of citizenship." And, she continued, "the sooner we begin the better, too, for it's necessary for us to know all the duties that go with citizenship before we can exercise it intelligently. Before very long, I expect the various women's clubs to resolve themselves into civic organizations, and we must know all about such things as jury duty in order that we may teach other women who do not."

Cachot Therkelsen's comments, captured by the Journal in the midst of the building spectacle of the trial, are vital clues to the way many Oregon women may have approached the question of jury service. Cachot Therkelsen, trained as a physician and active in the suffrage campaign, believed that full citizenship required understanding and experiencing all of the civic obligations it entailed.

"Ten women have been subpenaed [sic]," the Journal noted, "but the subpenas [sic] really are not necessary to insure their attendance, they made it clear today, because, like Mrs. Therkelsen, they desire to serve."

"Woman Jury is Biggest Attraction the Municipal Court Ever Has Had," Oregon Journal, December 4, 1912, 1.

The Portland Evening Telegram repeated some of this information and provided additional details. Officials had discovered a "large crack in the front wall" of the temporary building for the municipal court and jail and Police Chief Slover was limiting the spectators to 200 in number.

"Stylishly dressed women mingled with poorly dressed men in the scramble for seats" and some brought their lunches "and to pass the time poured over novels and magazines." This reinforced the idea that "society women" were interested and participating.

The Telegram also reported continuing interest on the part of Portland women to participate as jurors. "Telephone calls have kept Municipal Clerk Beutgen and Assistant Neil Crounse busy all morning informing women that the jury panel had been filled. Many applicants have expressed their desire to serve, one enthusiastic woman routing Judge Tazwell out of bed a 6 o'clock this morning with a request to be subpenaed [sic]."

"Crowd to Trial by Woman Jury," Portland Evening Telegram, December 4, 1912, 1

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury Part V: 10 to 8 Odds for Conviction and Fears of Women in the Jury Box

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Many thanks to Sara Piasecki for commenting on the last blog post -- men were not flocking to the court for jury duty either! A "scarcity" of male jurors was one of the factors prompting the call for this all-female experimental jury. One of the complicating and interesting issues concerning this aspect of civic participation and equality is that jury service was not, and as Sara points out still is not, one of the most favored ways to express citizenship. Many people in December of 1912, male and female, appeared to see it as an "obligation" that was onerous and unpleasant. And this would figure into the continuing debate about women's jury service in the state.

The newspaper coverage of the experimental jury continued to be full of ambiguity, too, with some praise for the women who served but also with sensational claims that placed the women in a negative light and hostility and jokes about such service and the status of women as citizens. This ambivalence had been part of the suffrage campaign and newspapers were now applying it to this next phase of the campaign for women's civic rights.

As we've seen, the Oregonian published the "results" of the telephone summons of a number of Portland women and as the trial approached newspapers named various women as potential jurors. The articles suggested that most women did not want to serve. Even the Oregon Journal, more supportive of the just-completed successful woman suffrage campaign in Oregon, headlined "Women Anxious to Dodge Jury Duty" even though the text of the article recognized that men were not lining up for service. "That women are as anxious to escape jury service as men is shown by the efforts of the municipal court clerk to secure a list for the women jury," the paper noted, but the headline focused on women only.

"Women Anxious to Dodge Jury Duty," Oregon Journal, December 3, 1912, 17.

Meanwhile, as the municipal court prepared for the trial, the Portland Evening Telegram reported "a lively movement in the betting line and probably a score of wagers have been put up on the result" with 10 to 8 odds that the women would return a guilty verdict. "If the defendant was a man the betting might be different," the Telegram noted, "but the prisoner at the bar is a woman." And "to make the affair as interesting as possible, extra chairs will be provided in the courtroom to accommodate women spectators who may attend with the desire of learning some of the duties of citizenship"(to say nothing of other interested parties).


*"It's 10 to 8 That Woman Jury Convicts," Portland Evening Telegram, December 3, 1912, 1.*

The Telegram's editorial cartoonist prepared this front page commentary on women jurors the day the trial began, Wednesday, December 4, 1912:

"Trial by Jury," Portland Evening Telegram, December 4, 1912, 1.

"Trial by Jury" portrays a jury box filled with fashionable young women in front of a young and nattily dressed male defendant arrested ("pinched") and on trial for burglary. Their thoughts are not on justice nor their obligations as citizens; rather they coo "Isn't he handsome" as the exasperated judge strikes his gavel to restore order. Women jurors, the cartoon suggests, would disrupt the order of a courtroom and its civic proceedings and the community cannot expect justice from women who only consider the appearance of a criminal and can be easily fooled. (Throughout the subsequent campaign for women's jury service supporters would work to counter this image with that of serious female citizens on the one hand and male jurors dazzled by a well-dressed, beautiful female defendant on the other).

Come back to find out if the floorboards of the Portland Municipal Courtroom could withstand the stress of the crowds . . . and more on the construction of the image of the woman juror for Oregonians in this "experimental" all-female jury.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury, Part IV: The Oregonian Prints the Results of the "Telephone Summons"

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On December 1, 1912 in a very long article (part of which is reproduced here) the Oregonian presented the specific reactions of the women telephoned about service on the "experimental" all female jury in police court. The list was different from the one reported by the Oregon Journal, with some of the same names but many others.

Judge Tazwell "appointed a citizen to draw the special venire, and he spent most of the afternoon at the telephone with a list of addresses before him and a very puzzled woman at the other end of the wire," the Oregonian reported. "Just for curiosity he jotted down the substance of the answers he received, and here they are. . ." Just for curiosity?

The paper did not identify this "citizen" but the Oregonian made much of the list, and of course mined the "substance" of the answers for press value. We can't know how accurate these "responses" were, but the report seems designed to highlight the idea that most women did not want to participate. The "experimental" all female jury came about, in part, because of a scarcity of men who would serve. But the humor that slid into ridicule at times in this report was loaded with negative views about the women who would not serve and shadowed even some of the women who agreed to serve with sarcasm.

"First Women Jury Has Woman's Case," Oregonian, December 1, 1912, 1, 13.

Mrs. A.E. Clark would "serve if needed, but I would not be tried by a jury of women myself." She also told the caller she would like to consult her husband (a lawyer). The caller noted that with emancipation women "don't have to consult the mister," to which Clark replied that women were not yet "accustomed to our new liberty."

Mrs. J.A. Dougherty thought it was a joke and "refused."

Esther Goodman, an opponent of woman suffrage, said she was not ready for jury service and declined.

Mrs. H. L. Chapin asked "who will the other women be?" and would serve "if my husband doesn't object."

Mrs. A.J. Capron said it "would be a great trial to me to go" and declined.

Mrs. Peter Borgan was at a loss for words and didn't think she could do it. She also wanted to consult with her husband and was dismissed.

Mrs. O.C Bortzmeyer accepted, as did teacher and suffragist May Newill (though she first said she "always understood that teachers were exempt.") Oregonian columnist Leone Cass Baer also agreed. "I always want to go where I can learn something new," she said, "even if it is to Police Court." (She would write about her experience as we'll soon see.)

Mrs. Jessie G. Bennett said no, and Mrs. George E. Bingham expressed only "frank personal distaste." Mrs. H. H. Herdman did not feel competent to serve.

Mrs. E. N. Blythe said that she had to care for her children, and Mrs. Harrison Allen also claimed "home cares." Mrs. William Beck declined due to illness in the family. Mrs. Byron Miller said she was no politician and would have to ask her husband.

Mrs. Lansing Stout declined, but noted that "I should think that you could get any number of the women who advocated suffrage." Mrs. T.L. Perkins said she needed more time to study and prepare.

Paul Bates had joked with his wife that she was now liable for jury service after reading about the experimental jury in the paper and she thought that the call was his joke. After finding it was real she agreed to serve. Mrs. O.K. Jeffrey also thought it was a prank, but she agreed when she found the call was legitimate. Mrs. W.T. Pangle agreed, stating that "if they are all women, I have no objection." She wanted, the Oregonian reported, to know who else was serving.

Suffragist Mary Cachot Therkelsen agreed, noting "I have the privilege of voting, and I will take all the responsibilities. And the Oregonian gave a paragraph to Viola Coe's response with different details that the Oregon Journal's version.

"'Yes, certainly, I shall be very pleased,' was the hearty response of Mrs. Henry Waldo Coe . . . Later the new 'juroress' burst in upon the assemblage at a room in her house where Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, Governor West, and a delegation of prominent suffragists had assembled to proclaim the adoption of the suffrage amendment, with the news of her selection. She and her announcement were received with hearty applause by those present, Governor West joining the acclaim."

The report concluded: "Wherefore, tomorrow morning, the blue-coated policeman on the beat will ring the bell at the doors of mansions, apartment houses and cottages, and will hand to ten delighted women their credentials as members of the first body of its kind to be brought together in the state. And two days later, the grimy Municipal Court will witness what it never saw before, six well-dressed and reputable women sitting upon the question of the guilt or innocence of one of their less fortunate sisters. It is predicted that there will be standing room only, and little of that, when the case is called."

Under the editorial watch of Harvey Scott, brother of suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway, the Oregonian had opposed woman suffrage until his death in 1910 and had given lukewarm attention to the 1912 campaign. The paper's coverage of the all-female jury contributed to the spectacle, and this particular report questioned most women's commitment to jury service as a civic duty and opportunity to exercise citizenship.

More on the build-up to the "standing room only" trial in the next post.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury, Part III: Abigail Scott Duniway Subpoenaed . . . for Jury Duty . . . and it's Optional . . . and Dangerous?

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On December 2, 1912 the Portland Evening Telegram reported a new development in the building drama about the all-female "experimental" jury being formed: Judge George Tazwell decided to subpoena aging and controversial suffrage activist Abigail Scott Duniway for the jury panel.


"Mrs. Duniway Called to Serve Upon Jury," Portland Evening Telegram, December 2, 1912, 1

The Telegram reported Tazwell announced "that it would be no more than fitting to have her a member of the first woman jury." But the ill and aging activist was in "feeble health" and "if Mrs. Duniway feels equal to the occasion she will have to attend but if her health is such as to prohibit her appearance reply to the subpoena will not be insisted upon." As we'll see, this would later become an "honorary subpoena."

Given Duniway's contentious role in the suffrage campaign just completed in November 1912 and her desire for the limelight, it's interesting to note that Viola Coe, not Duniway, was the first woman to be called for this experiment. Duniway is not mentioned in the first list of women drawn. It would appear that Duniway or her supporters contacted the court or made a request that she be included to honor her work in suffrage and to signal the links between suffrage and jury service.

The Telegram article is also interesting because it reflects the growing interest in the trial among women who volunteered to serve. "Numerous applications have been received by Clerk Beutgen from women in all parts of the city who have volunteered their services, and several were quite insistent that they should be selected." Perhaps Duniway was among them?

"Much interest is being displayed in the case," the Telegram reported, "and a packed courtroom is expected. Special precautions will be taken by the police to check any demonstration, and several patrolmen will be assigned to special baliff duty." It's not clear whether the reporter believed that the women were going to demonstrate and be a dangerous threat or whether the danger came from others who felt threatened by women jurors.

More on the continuing developments in this "experiment" that was creating such a stir -- and causing anxious officials to take "special precautions."

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury, Part II, Oregon Journal December 1 and 2, 1912

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On Sunday, December 1, the Oregon Journal linked suffrage and jury service for women solidly in readers' minds by reporting on Viola Coe's response to the call to jury duty in Portland's "experimental" all-female jury.


"Suffrage Leader on Jury," Oregon Journal, December 1, 1912, 4.

Coe was acting president of the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association, one of the groups that had worked to achieve the votes for women victory several weeks before. "Mrs. Coe was hostess at the gathering in her home . . . at which Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway signed Governor West's suffrage proclamation" when she received the telephone call asking her to serve on this jury. "'I accepted,' Mrs. Coe went on, 'because I think it is a woman's duty to perform jury duty when she is called now that she has all the rights of a citizen. I'd like to set a good example for future women jurors. I don't want to see women shirk jury duty as some of the men do. I don't believe they will.'"

The Journal also noted that the case would be "a little experiment by Municipal Judge Tazwell in the psychology of woman jurors." And further, that "Mrs. Coe and her five fellow juroresses" would try a case involving "a woman of the underworld, who is charged with maintaining a disorderly house."

The next day, Monday, December 2, the Oregon Journal provided the names of sixteen women who would receive a summons. The assistant city attorney Raymond Sullivan "called for a list as representative as possible, suggesting that the 16 names be drawn, thus giving each side a chance to object to any one considered prejudiced or not a fair juror for the respective sides."

"Panel of Sixteen Women is Called to do Jury Duty," Oregon Journal, December 2, 1912, 2.

The Journal listed those on the list with their addresses. With help from the 1912 Portland City Directory and other resources we can see who comprised this group and if they were indeed representative.

"Mrs. Levy Young, of Meier & Frank's department store"
(listed in the Directory as Levi and as a department manager at Meier and Frank)

"Mrs. Gee, employed with Neustadter Bros."
(Lizzie Gee was the president of United Garment Workers Local 228 in Portland ["Garment Workers' Officers, Portland Labor Press, January 11, 1912, 8] and listed in the Directory as the widow of David H Gee. Gee would be a candidate for Oregon State representative, 18th district, with the progressive party and was part of the Esther Pohl Lovejoy for Congress Committee in 1920 -- you'll have to wait for the Lovejoy biography to learn more!)

"Miss Mamie Gaffney, 93 East Fifteenth Street"
(listed in the Directory as Mary F Gaffney, a bookkeeper at C R Winslow Company, press agents. Gaffney worked on the 1912 suffrage campaign with Esther Lovejoy and others. See "Suffragists Hold Initial Banquet," Oregon Journal, February 11, 1912, 4.)

"Mrs. Julia Kirk Sayer, Yeon Building"
(listed in the Directory as Julia Sayre-Kirker, Public Stenographer, with her office at 1404 Yeon Building -- she took out the following ad in the business section under "Stenographers" suggesting a good measure of success in her field. Many stenographers were members of the Stenographers Equal Suffrage League -- see Karin Traweek's article on the Century of Action website.)

"Mrs. Julia Kirker Sayre, Stenographer," Portland City Directory, (Portland, Polks, 1912), 1926.

"Mrs. Fowler, with the Pacific Telephone Company"
(not identifiable in Directory listings)

"Mrs. John F. Logan, wife of attorney Logan"
(Mrs. Logan worked on the 1912 suffrage campaign with Esther Lovejoy and others. See "Suffragists Hold Initial Banquet," Oregon Journal, February 11, 1912, 4.)

"Mrs. O. C. Bortzmeyer, 704 East Ankeny street"
(The Directory lists O.C. Bortzmeyer as a cashier for Merchants Savings and Trust with no listing for her.)

"Mrs. I. M. Bohansen, 405 Jefferson street"
(not listed in Directory)

"Mrs. J. H. Ray, East Thirty-second and Flanders streets)
(Joseph H Ray at this residence listed in the Directory a part of the real estate firm of Wyatt, Estabrook & Ray)

"Laura Vinson, 1024 Holgate Street"
(Laura Vinson is not listed in the Directory but Burr Vinson, a carpenter, Iliff J. Vinson, a clerk at the U.S. News Company, and Truman Vinson, a blacksmith, are listed at 1024 Holgate Street. The 1910 Census lists Laura as Burr's wife and the mother of Truman and Iliff. Thanks Ancestry.com!)

"Mrs. W. T. Pangle, Oregon hotel"
(W.T. Pangle, according to the Directory, was the manager of the Helig Theater)

"Mrs. L.W. Therkelsen, 329 Eleventh Street"
Mary Cachot Therkelsen had trained as a physician in San Francisco and was a strong suffragist in the 1912 campaign and a member of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage through 1920. She was the widow of Portland business leader and former manager of the Portland Pacific Lumber Company Lauritz Therkelsen. You'll be able to find more information about her in my upcoming biography of Esther Lovejoy.)

"Mrs. A.C. Newell, 744 Hoyt Street"
(May E. Newill (sometimes spelled Newell in the press reports) was a teacher and an active suffragist with the Portland Woman's Club Campaign Committee and other organizations. See, for example, "Suffragists Name Central Committee," Oregon Journal, March 9, 1912, 2)

"Mrs. Henry Waldo Coe, 841 Lovejoy street"
(As we've seen, Viola Coe was acting president of the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association. Trained as a physician she was apparently not practicing; she was the wife of prominent Portland doctor Henry Waldo Coe. See Jennifer Newby's essay on Coe on the Century of Action website for more information.)

"Mrs. Paul Bates, 493 Hassalo"
(Directory lists Paul Bates as an agent with McCargar, Bates & Lively, Insurance Agents)

"Mrs. A. E. Clark , 319 Johnson street"
(Mrs. Clark was a prominent and active suffragist with many local organizations including the Portland Equal Suffrage League, the College Equal Suffrage League, and the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association. See, for example, "Cartoon Theories on Suffrage are Generally Supplanted Now, Oregonian, September 22, 1912, 2:18. Her husband A. E. Clark was a prominent attorney.)

Representative? Well, this initial list included stenographers, a labor leader, working and professional women and wives of prominent businessmen. Many had been suffrage supporters.

The Journal reported that two women had called "volunteering their services as jurors." We will see more women doing this in the next several days of reporting about this story -- they wanted a chance to show their support and to participate.

At this point the two women who volunteered were:

"Mrs. Ida B. Kayser, 491 East Thirty-third street"
(Listed in the Directory as the widow of Clement E Kayser)

"Mrs. L. G. Carpenter, 972 East Stark Street"
(As you'll see from the entry in the Directory below, her husband L.G. Carpenter was the Superintendent of the Coast Detective Bureau.)

"L.G. Carpenter, Superintendent, Coast Detective Bureau, Portland City Directory (Portland: R.K. Polk, 1912), 1784.

Next -- the Oregonian weighs in -- and gives transcriptions of the telephone conversations with prospective women jurors -- both those who wanted to serve and those who declined.

Portland's "Experimental" Woman Jury, Part I, November 30, 1912

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Jury service embodies many aspects of the rights and obligations of equal citizenship. Citizens who serve on juries participate in the exercise of the laws and the democratic process beyond the act of voting. Many women and their supporters in Oregon in 1912, as elsewhere, saw this as both a right (the ability to serve had been limited to men and they wanted to exercise this right) and an obligation (taking the time to serve) of citizenship. They also believed that having a "jury of one's peers" was an important right for female defendants.

Chapters in two thoughtful monographs explore the general U.S. story of jury service for women: Linda Kerber's No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) and Gretchen Ritter's The Constitution as Social Design: Gender and Civic Membership in the American Constitutional Order (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). Kerber (p. 131) notes that in the U.S. the "founding generations understood juries as the place where the people continued their participation in lawmaking." But questions about whether women and men were "peers" and if women should participate as full citizens continued to the twentieth century and remain today. Ritter (p. 103) notes that "the concept of jurors as peers suggests very different ways of thinking about . . . the ways that women bring their lived experiences to the exercise of their civic duties. Further, jury service is a more substantial commitment, in terms of time and effort, to civic participation -- a commitment that brings people more fully into the workings of the state and more intimately into contact with other citizens."

These questions came front and center in the Oregon jury service debate, a story that has not been studied deeply by other scholars.

As we've seen, Oregon attorneys were divided over whether the achievement of woman suffrage meant that women could serve on juries and that November Attorney General Andrew Crawford had not yet announced a definite opinion on the matter. And Bend suffragist Hattie Corkett had served as "forewoman" of a jury there during the week of November 25, 1912, likely the first in Oregon to do so.

On Saturday, November 30, judges and attorneys in a Portland police court decided to have an "experimental" all-female jury. Oregonians were debating the question of women's jury service, Bend had been first to seat a woman juror and just that day, November 30, Governor Oswald West signed the suffrage proclamation written by the aging icon Abigail Scott Duniway at the Portland home of Viola Coe.

Portland's two evening papers reported the news of the all-female jury on their front pages and introduced a variety of themes that would continue to be part of the story. The Evening Telegram situated the case in the middle of the debate about women and jury service. Municipal Court Judge George Tazwell, Deputy City Attorney John Cahalin and defense attorney Will Farrell met and agreed to "waive any legal bar to the use of women as jurors" in the case of Marcelle Bortelle "charged with vagrancy." It would be the first all-female jury, a point not lost on the participants. The question was a disputed one "among attorneys," the Telegram story noted, "as some assert that the enfranchisement of women at the recent general election modifies the state constitution, and consequently the code which is based on the constitution, while others assert that an amendment to the code must be made before women can be eligible to serve." This report also indicated that the court suffered from a "scarcity of male jurors in recent trials" (a theme that will continue in this story as well).


*"First Oregon Jury of Women to Try Woman," Portland Evening Telegram, November 30, 1912, 1.*

The Oregon Journal report echoed the news that the case would feature the first "complete jury" of women in the state but added important new details. Marcelle Bartell (or, as the Journal noted, "a woman giving the name of Marcelle Bartell") was charged with "conducting a house of ill repute at Fourth and Burnside streets." Police had her "place under surveillance for several days" and then raided it, arresting the "Bartell woman" that Thursday evening.

These new details suggested that "good" women of Portland, performing their civic duty, would be called to judge a "bad" woman who ran a house of prostitution. Were all of these women "peers" because of their gender? Could women better judge other women? Might they be more harsh than male jurors in judging a madame? Would "good" women be sullied by the details of illicit sex that would come up in the trial-- something that opponents of women's civic equality charged would be the downfall of womanhood, morality, and civilization? Participants and reporters would magnify these themes in the coming days.

The Journal story also noted that "speculation around the municipal court circles as to the outcome is now made; even men are offering to bet on the outcome."

"Woman Jury Will be Used in Trying Case in Municipal Court," Oregon Journal, November 30, 1912, 1.

Who would be subpoenaed? How would the trial evolve? Come back for the next installment.

Hattie Corkett First Woman Juror November 1912

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In her chapter on women and jury service in No Constitutional Right to be Ladies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) Linda Kerber reminds us that many women considered the call for jury service to be a second suffrage campaign. This was true for many Oregon women, including Hattie Corkett of Bend.


Hattie Corkett, Oregonian, November 30, 1912, 6.

As we've seen, the question of whether woman suffrage meant that Oregon women could also serve as jurors was not, apparently, officially settled. In some communities court staff called women to service soon after the election.

In Bend during the week of November 25, 1912 Hattie Corkett became the first woman in central Oregon and indeed perhaps the first woman in the state to serve as a juror after the November 5, 1912 election. According to the Bend Bulletin two other women, Mary E. Coleman and Mrs. C.D. Brown, were called but not selected. Corkett's five male "co-jurors made her foreman, or rather, forewoman." On November 26 "about half of Bend quit work" to attend the trial to see Corkett.

The Oregonian noted: "That she happens to be an ardent suffragette, and worked for the suffrage amendment during the recent election, adds further to the interest of her unique position."

The coverage of the trial (regarding who owned a calf and who was liable for its expenses) in both the Bend and Portland papers reflects the interest in women jurors but also questions about their entrance into the male domain of the jury box. The Bend Bulletin reported that "the new order of things was introduced at the outset by Justice [Ward H.] Coble, whose first case it was, by a graceful announcement that inasmuch as the fair sex was to participate, smoking would be tabooed in the court room. He also warned against careless use of language, a warning that had to be repeated on several occasions as the trial progressed, eliminating or at least expurgating some of the proffered testimony."


"Choose Woman Jury Foreman," Bend Bulletin, November 27, 1912, 1.

"Bend Woman First," Oregonian, November 30, 1912, 6.

A week later Portland began its own dramatic experience with women and jury service that would also highlight the complex and strong feelings in support of and in opposition to women's expanded civic roles. Stay tuned for the story of this "experimental jury" that includes an "honorary subpoena" for Abigail Scott Duniway, reporting by juror and Oregonian columnist Leone Cass Baer, and a controversial role for suffrage stalwart William M. "Pike" Davis.

Women and Jury Service in Oregon: Raising the Question in November 1912

2011-05-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

Following the successful campaign for woman suffrage in Oregon in November 1912 supporters turned their attention to the many ways that women could exercise the rights of citizenship and fulfill their civic obligations. I have and will continue to blog about women and office holding, with emphasis on Esther Lovejoy's run for U.S. Congress in 1920, the Oregon Women's Legislative Council and other civic claims by women in the state in this period. And I'm also interested in unique and informative story of jury service for women in Oregon.

As the following newspaper reports from November 1912 reveal, jury service for women became a question even before the results of the election were tabulated.

On November 3, two days before the election, the Oregonian reported that "considerable opposition has developed to the suffrage amendment among voters who express themselves as being highly favorable to giving the women the ballot, but who are opposed to their being harassed with the onerous duties of the juror."

Oregon law defined jurors as "male" but the question was whether an amendment to the state constitution removing the word "male" from voting statues would also imply that women could be jurors. But some attorneys in Salem contended that a ballot victory for woman suffrage "would not automatically operate" to make women "subject to jury duty."

Attorney General Andrew Crawford could not make a definitive statement about the matter at the time. But he did tell the Oregonian that he had no doubt "but a law could be passed by the legislative assembly exempting women from jury duty and that such a law would be constitutional and not deny to all the equal protection of the laws."

The Attorney General was not sure, and the matter was "undecided," but the Oregonian ran the headline "Women Not to be Jurors."

"Women Not to be Jurors," Oregonian, November 3, 1912, 4:11.

On November 9, the Oregon Journal reported that "Woman May Vote But She Cannot Sit Upon a Jury," but gave no official statement by the Attorney General or anyone else about this assertion. The Journal used the authority of the existing statute that defined jurors as men.

"Woman May Vote But She Cannot Sit Upon a Jury," Oregon Journal, November 9, 1912, 1.

Medford, Oregon women were having none of it. Members of the Medford Equal Suffrage Association protested immediately. At a banquet celebrating the victory of the woman suffrage amendment members resolved: "'We protest against any curtailment of our rights . . . and maintain that if suffrage is granted this is an implied amendment to the constitution and wherever the word man is used woman is included.'"

"Jury Rights Demanded," Oregonian, November 10, 1912, 4.

This was just the beginning. Come back to read about the continuing story, including fears that the floor of the courtroom would collapse in Portland in early December because of the crowds attending a trial with an "experimental" all-woman jury.

Portland Political Study League, Women Citizens, and Jury Service 1916

2011-04-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

Many Oregon women and their supporters joined women in the U.S. and other nations and looked to women's political and civic participation beyond the vote as a key to progress. As we've seen with the case of Astoria, Oregon, women participated in civic organizations to take action to better their communities.
In Portland many women activists joined the Political Study League to prepare themselves for informed voting and other civic action. Many believed that jury service was a next step in political participation and worked to pass state legislation removing restrictions on women's jury service.
This article from the Oregonian in November 1916 reports on a meeting of the Political Study League with featured speaker lawyer and activist C.E.S. Wood. Wood echoed the view that women would bring a particular perspective to political action that was different from men. And he made this argument specifically for women's jury service.
"Woman, with her sympathy and intuition, can do more than the man," he noted. "In the jury a woman is in her own right. The judges and lawyers exalt law above justice, while the jury comes in as a fresh breeze and cares for the human side of the case."

"Woman Rated Higher," Oregonian, November 19, 1916, 5.

Astoria, Oregon Women and Political Activism 1914: The Civic Club

2011-04-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

More news from Astoria's microfilmed newspapers on women's political participation.

In October, 1914 Mary (Mrs. Gabriel) Wingate wrote an article outlining the goals of the Civic Club of Astoria. She emphasized the importance of women using their newly-won civic power of the vote.

Wingate told her readers that the members of the Civic Club were interested in all forms of community betterment and the group was "wishful to have every woman who is a resident of our city and interested in its welfare to join with us and it should be a heartfelt duty with every woman to help along these lines." Like many other recently-enfranchised women in the state, Wingate emphasized that women had a civic obligation to put their votes to good use. Members saw the Civic Club as an institution to harness that duty for collective action.

Like Portland activist Sarah Evans, Wingate contrasted women's limited "influence" before they held the right to vote with the power they now wielded with the ballot. "A few years ago we had a prosperous women's club in this city," she wrote, "with a large and enthusiastic membership who were zealous to aid in all matters that would better social and business conditions." But the women learned, she said, that "any suggestions for improvement of our city, made to the powers that be, were never seriously considered by them."

The right to vote changed that, Wingate insisted. "Now that women have the vote, and a voice in affairs, conditions in that regard are radically different, and any suggestions or recommendations we may make will, no doubt, be given careful and serious consideration." Optimistic about this new power, Wingate noted that the Civic Club was an "outgrowth" of the women's club and urged Astoria's women to register to vote and to exercise their right to have a voice in community affairs.

"The Civic Club," Astoria Daily Budget, October 12, 1914, 7.

Mary Wingate and other Astoria women were part of a larger pattern when they formed civic clubs to study legislation and civic education. "It is natural for women to be interested in the governing of their city, county, and state," she wrote, "and they should all cultivate civic pride and patriotism." Wingate was not alone in her view that women could make a significant difference in their new civic roles. Oregon women achieved the vote earlier than most women in the nation but the transformation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association to the National League of Women Voters in 1920 mirrors the activities and organizations of women in Astoria and across Oregon in their local organizations after achieving suffrage in 1912.

Astoria women also worked to become office holders, to become part of and transform what Wingate called the "powers that be." The Astoria Civic Club supported the candidacy of Mary Strong Kinney for the Oregon legislature in 1921 and helped her remain there through 1927.

Mary Strong Kinney Successful Candidate for Oregon House of Representatives 1920

2011-04-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

On a recent visit to Astoria, Oregon (a vibrant community celebrating its bicentennial) I spent time at the Astoria Public Library (thank you Jane Tucker and staff!) with the Morning Astorian on microfilm. I gathered some great information about Astorian Mary Strong Kinney, who ran for the Oregon House of Representatives in 1920, the same year Esther Lovejoy ran for U.S. Congress from Oregon's third district.
Kinney ran as a Republican in the May primary and won the field in this first election after the First World War. Oregon women had been voting since the 1912 achievement of suffrage and the Nineteenth Amendment would pass in August 1920.
Her campaign advertising emphasized a variety of qualities to appeal to her constituency: she was a successful businesswoman and mother, would work to support Astoria, Clatsop County, and Oregon, and was free of "political obligations" so she could represent "all the people." And, in the postwar climate of fears about radicalism that Lovejoy and other candidates also had to face, Kinney was "not only an American, but a GOOD American."
As with other Oregon women candidates, Kinney gained support (and advertising dollars) from organized women. In Astoria the Women's Civic Club had formed after women achieved the vote with the particular purpose of studying legislation and working to make their new civic power a reality. The Civic Club members who paid for Kinney's campaign ad for the May primary also chose a frame of trees, fountains and flowers.

"Vote for Mrs. Kinney," Morning Astorian, May 21, 1920, 4.

Kinney won election that year and was a sponsor of legislation for women's jury service (more on this topic in future posts). She won election to the Oregon Senate in 1923 and 1925.

Oregon Heritage Commission Proclamation: Statewide Celebration of Woman Suffrage for 2012

2011-03-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday night at the kickoff for the upcoming centennial of woman suffrage in Oregon for 2012 Kyle Jansson, Coordinator of the Oregon Heritage Commission, read the official document proclaiming 2012 a year of statewide celebration to commemorate the centennial.
With thanks to Kyle Jansson, the Commission members and staff and Commission chair, George Kramer, here is a copy of the proclamation:

Century of Action and New Documents Projects

2011-03-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

Last night at the official kickoff of the Oregon woman suffrage centennial commemoration at the state capitol Secretary of State Kate Brown hosted an event that did us all proud. Former Governor Barbara Roberts inspired everyone as she spoke, and Oregon Heritage Commission Coordinator Kyle Jansson read the official proclamation declaring the 2012 woman suffrage centennial a statewide event. Many thanks to everyone who attended to show their support and to the best co-conspirators possible, Jan Dilg, Project Director of Century of Action, and Eliza Canty-Jones, President of the Oregon Women's History Consortium and editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly.

The Heritage Commission grant for the Century of Action website has helped us create a dynamic resource. Last night I was proud to introduce the work of Western Oregon University history and honors students on documents projects for the website. They started with articles from local newspapers from 1912 and with additional research created contextual essays introducing these newspaper articles on themes, people, organizations and events from the 1912 campaign. They also transcribed the articles, some 130 in all, and all are hyperlinked and posted to the website.

Two history students, Sarah Hardy and Jenn Newby, facilitated class discussion on using newspapers as primary sources and their essay is included in the documents project on the site. Visit the site and return often as we add new resources.

Suffragists and the Initiative Process as the 1911 Oregon Legislature Meets

2011-02-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

As they approached the election of 1912 Oregon suffragists believed that the system of initiative petition, part of progressive reform legislation known as the Oregon System, held great promise for empowering the people to enact legislation of importance to them. Oregon voters passed the initiative in 1902. With enough signatures of registered voters equaling a percentage of votes from the last election, citizens could place a measure on the next statewide ballot.
Suffragists used the initiative process to place a votes for women measure on the ballot in 1906, 1908, and 1910. In December 1910 they had enough signatures for the next campaign, well in advance of the deadline for the November 5, 1912 election.
I've been blogging about the Oregon 1911 legislature and state legislators' vote of support for the votes for women measure already in place for the 1912 ballot. This editorial cartoon from the Oregonian in January 1911 reflects the view of progressive Oregonians that the initiative process empowered the people to enact legislation (like votes for women) in spite of a recalcitrant legislature.

"Reckon You Won't Find Much Left To Do In There, My Friend," Oregonian, January 10, 1911, 1.

Sarah Evans on Women, Lobbying and Voting and the Oregon Legislative Session of 1911

2011-02-20T09:23:00.000-08:00

Clubwoman and Portland Market Inspector Sarah A. Evans wrote about Oregon women and the 1911 legislative session in her weekly Women's Clubs column for the Oregon Journal (February 26, 1911, 5:7). She assessed the political action of women and contrasted lobbying and attempts to influence the political process with the greater power of the vote. Washington women had achieved the vote in 1910 and were using it; Oregon women and their supporters had gathered enough signatures to put the measure on the 1912 ballot and the Oregon legislature had just endorsed it.
These developments gave her the context to emphasize the importance of the vote for women to achieve reform. "Women," Evans wrote, "have much to be thankful to the twenty-sixth legislative assembly, and a little to be resentful for, and a great deal to study over."
Evans counted several gains. One was legislation establishing the Oregon State Board of Nursing "which will put the profession on a dignified footing and insure to the state the most efficient service." Another was the end to Oregon's controversial whipping post law for men convicted of domestic violence. "Women of Oregon would sooner have seen the whipping post abolished than kept on the statute book," she wrote, "not that they object to the wife beater being whipped, but because it is a reflection on the women of the state that they would allow themselves--even a few--to be whipped for it isn't the stuff the real Oregon woman is made of, and the world should not think she had to be protected." (For more on the whipping post law, see David Peterson Del Mar, "His Face is Weak and Sensual": Portland and the Whipping Post Law," in Women in Pacific Northwest History ed. Karen J. Blair, rev. ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988): 59-89.)
The 1911 legislative session provided a strong lesson about the need for woman suffrage for Evans. The "strongest body of women lobbyists that ever went to the legislature," she wrote, failed to convince the Oregon legislature to pass a statewide pure milk law. Portland women, led by Esther Pohl, Evans and a coalition of activists, had passed several progressively stronger city ordinances for pure milk (my forthcoming biography of Esther Pohl Lovejoy explores this in detail). In 1911 they hoped to remove state Dairy and Food Commissioner J.W. Bailey and pass a statewide bill. Governor Oswald West asked the legislature to investigate and women testified before a joint house and senate committee. The failure of this bill, for Evans, proved that women without the vote, even though working actively in the political process through coalition building and lobbying, could not hope to effect political, social and economic change in a significant way.
"Influence," she wrote, "only reaches to the narrow confines of one home each, and sometimes not that far." Suffrage supporters like Esther Pohl Lovejoy joined Evans in calling for the vote to achieve what "influence" could not.
Evans also provided a perspective on what lobbying was like for women in 1911 before the achievement of woman suffrage. "No woman enjoys lobbying: she is met with cold indifference, distrust and often jeers and jokes; she feels herself out of place and she is as long as she holds an inferior place among those she is trying to influence, and it is only the brave and courageous who will dare this for a just cause." Oregon women, she wrote, were "wrestling with the legislature."
She contrasted this with the recent action by newly enfranchised Seattle women to recall Mayor Hiram Gill, whom they felt was not addressing gambling and prostitution in the city. (For more on this see Shanna Stevenson, Women's Votes, Women's Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington (Tacoma: Washington State Historical Society, 2009) and John C. Putnam, Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2008).) Seattle women, she wrote, "did not have to rush to Olympia by an early train, remain away from their families several days, face a jibing crowd of political corruptionists, and plead their case before an unbelieving committee" as Oregon women had just done in Salem. They went to the polls and voted.
For Evans "this is the greatest lesson the legislature left the women of Oregon to ponder on."

Sarah A. Evans, "Women's Clubs," Oregon Journal, February 26, 1911, 5:7.

Oregon Legislature Signs SJR12 Supporting Votes for Women February 17, 1911

2011-02-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

On February 17, Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives John Rusk and President of the Oregon Senate Ben Selling signed Senate Joint Resolution 12:

Be it resolved by the Senate, the House concurring:

That we have carefully considered the Equal Suffrage Amendment, as submitted by initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and can see no reasonable objection to its adoption, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

Members of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association had collected enough signatures through initiative petition by December 1910 to place the measure on the November 5, 1912 ballot. Now by February 17, 1911 with SJR12 the Oregon state legislature lent its support to votes for women in the state.

I'll be blogging about subsequent events in the rich history of this campaign one hundred years ago here, among other Esther Lovejoy materials and Oregon women's history.

FEBRUARY 17, 1911

Friday, February 17, 1911, Morning Session, Oregon House of Representatives

MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE

Salem, February 17, 1911

Mr. Speaker: I am directed by the President to transmit enrolled Senate Joint Resolution No. 12 for your signature.
E.H. Flagg, Chief Clerk

The Speaker [John P. Rusk] announced that he was about to sign Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, and subsequently announced that he had signed the same.

Journal of the House of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session, 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 774.

Friday, February 17, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon Senate

The President [Ben Selling] announced that he was about to sign Senate Joint Resolution No. 12…and subsequently that he had signed the same.

Journal of the Senate of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 655.

Oregon House Divided on the Suffrage Resolution February 16, 1911

2011-02-15T21:38:00.000-08:00

We’re following the course of Senate Joint Resolution 12 and House Concurrent Resolution 24 through the Oregon legislature one hundred years ago in February 1911. The Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association asked legislators to “cordially recommend” the ratification of the woman suffrage measure, already slated for the November 1912 ballot as a result of a successful initiative petition.

Representative Timothy Brownhill, who had introduced HCR 24, withdrew his resolution so that the senate’s identical resolution (SJR 12) might pass. “I believe that it should be adopted as a tribute to that splendid woman, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, who has devoted so many years of her life to the cause, and also because it paves the way toward giving the women of the state their rights,” Brownhill told the Oregon Journal (“To Vote Again on Woman Suffrage,” Oregon Journal, February 17, 1911, 4). The house, therefore, was to vote on SJR 12.

But not everyone in the house agreed with Brownhill. As you’ll see below, in addition to the majority report in support of SJR 12, Representatives Seneca Fouts and Linn E. Jones authored a minority report against the resolution. According to the Oregon Journal, Fouts’s “contention was that the voters had decided the question at the last election and that their opinion should be regarded as stable.” (“To Vote Again on Woman Suffrage,” Oregon Journal, February 17, 1911, 4). This was, in fact, the sixth time that the suffrage amendment was on the ballot. A third of the representatives joined him in opposing the resolution and six were absent.

But the majority prevailed -- leading to the signing of SJR 12 in both houses -- we'll see more about the signing on February 17 in the next post.

FEBRUARY 16, 1911

Thursday, February 16, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon House of Representatives

MAJORITY REPORT

Salem, February 15, 1911

Mr. Speaker: Your Committee on Resolutions, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report that we have had the same under consideration, and respectfully report it back with the recommendation that it do pass.

J.A. Buchanan [Medford, Douglas, Jackson, Republican], Chairman

MINORITY REPORT

Salem, February 15, 1911

Seneca Fouts [Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Linn E. Jones [Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]

Mr. Fouts moved that the minority report be substituted for the majority report.

The motion was lost.

Mr. Buchanan moved that the majority report be adopted.

The roll was called and the vote was:

YEAS—33

Abbott [James D., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Abrams [Carl, Salem, Marion, Republican]

Beals [A.G., Tillamook, Tillamook, Yamhill, Republican]

Belknap [H.P., Prineville, Crook, Grant, Klamath, Lake, Republican]

Belland [L.O., Astoria, Clatsop, Republican]

Bonebrake [P.O., Philomath, Benton, Republican]

Brownhill [Timothy, McMinnville, Yamhill, Independent]

Buchanan [J.A., Medford, Douglas, Jackson, Republican]

Buckley [C.A., Grass Valley, Gilliam, Sherman, Wheeler, Republican]

Carter [E.P., Gladstone, Clackamas, Republican]

Chapman [J.A., Middleton, Washington, Republican]

Church [William J., La Grande, Union, Republican]

Clemens [W.J., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Clyde [Ralph C., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Cottel [W.I., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Cushman [I.B., Acme, Lane, Republican]

Gill [F.M., Dufur, Hood River, Wasco, Republican]

Graves [Roy, Sheridan, Yamhill, Republican]

Hollis [W.H., Forest Grove, Washington, Republican]

Leinenweber [C.A., Astoria, Clatsop, Republican]

Libby [A.C., Jefferson, Marion, Republican]

Magone [M.A., Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]

McKinney [Henry M., Baker, Baker, Republican]

Neuner [George Jr., Roseburg, Douglas, Republican]

Peirce [S.P., Port Orford, Coos, Curry, Republican]

Peterson [S.D., Milton, Umatilla, Republican]

Rackleff [Ed, Bandon, Coos, Republican]

Reynolds [L.T., Salem, Marion, Republican]

Smith [J.C., Grants Pass, Josephine, Republican]

Sutton [W.M., Springfield, Lane, Republican]

Thompson [W. Lair, Lakeview, Crook, Grant, Klamath, Lake, Republican]

Tigard [C.F., Tigardville, Washington, Republican]

Mr. Speaker [John P. Rusk, Joseph, Union, Wallowa, Republican]

NAYS—20

Ambrose [James M., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Amme [Edwin G., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Brooke [W.H., Ontario, Harney, Malheur, Republican]

Bryant [J.C., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Chambers [F.W., Toledo, Lincoln, Polk, Republican]

Chatten [W.H., Oswego, Clackamas, Multnomah, Republican]

Cole [James, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Collins [Stephen, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Fouts [Seneca, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Johnson [George W., Salem, Marion, Republican]

Jones [Linn E., Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]

Mahoney [T.J., Heppner, Morrow, Umatilla, Republican]

Mann [L.L., Pendleton, Umatilla, Republican]

Mariner [W.J., Blalock, Gilliam, Sherman, Wheeler, Republican]

Miller, M.E. [St. Helens, Columbia, Republican]

Miller, J.W. [Albany, Linn, Republican]

Powell [Ira C., Monmouth, Polk, Republican]

Simpson [M.J., Lebanon, Linn, Republican]

Steelhammer [A.G., Silverton, Marion, Republican]

Westerlund [J.A., Medford, Jackson, Republican]

ABSENT—6

Bigelow [C.A., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Derby [A.J., Hood River, Hood River, Wasco, Democrat]

Eaton [Allen H., Eugene, Lane, Republican]

Eggleston [M.F., Ashland, Jackson, Republican]

Huntington [Ben Jr., Drain, Douglas, Republican]

Shaw [C.L., Albany, Linn, Democrat]

So the resolution was adopted.

Journal of the House of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session, 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 700.

Thursday, February 16, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon Senate

REPORTS OF COMMITTEES

Salem, February 16, 1911

Mr. President. Your Committee on Enrolled Bills, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report back the same as having been correctly enrolled.

Hal D. Patton, Chairman

Journal of the Senate of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 594, 614.

The Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association Presents an Open Letter to the Oregon Legislature February 1911

2011-02-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

I'm blogging the February 1911 Oregon legislature's actions in support of the successful initiative petition as it happened one hundred years ago with some additional sources to help us get a fuller picture of these centennial events.
As we saw for February 9, Representative Timothy Brownhill introduced House Concurrent Resolution 24 and it contained information about the Executive Committee meeting of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association in which members decided to ask the legislature for a vote of support for their initiative petition. The petition, completed in December 1910, placed the woman suffrage measure on the ballot for the 6th time.
An entry in suffragist and clubwoman Sarah Evans's "Women's Clubs" column in the Sunday Oregon Journal for February 19, 1911 gives us more information and context about the meeting. (Evans's column was an ongoing weekly feature and she reported on news of women's clubs, organizations, and activism throughout the state -- she was a blogger before her time . . . )
The first part of the entry is the same as that noted in the Journal of the Oregon House of Representatives that I reprinted for the February 9 blog here. The OSESA asks the legislators to vote their approval for the measure, a vote of confidence and support.
But here we learn more of the details -- and the article copy in full is below.
Evans writes: "The foregoing open letter was presented to every member of the legislative assembly on the 8th inst. [February 8, 1911] accompanied by a concurrent resolution cordially recommending its ratification by the legislature, and by the votes of men at the general election in November 1912."
As we've seen, the Senate voted on its Senate Joint Resolution 12 on February 10. We'll see what the House did in a future post for February 16.
At the end of this entry in Evans's column we find "The resolution passed the Senate on the eighth instant, with little doubt of its ratification by the house in due order of procedure." The Senate Journal says February 10 -- so I'm privileging that date as the more accurate one.
It's not clear who presented the open letter to the members of the Oregon legislature. The report Evans reprinted in her column, most probably authored by Abigail Scott Duniway or a close associate in the OSESA, puts things in the passive voice -- the "foregoing open letter was presented . . ." I could find no news article that indicated Duniway had presented it "in person" as the executive committee meeting request suggested. I strongly suspect that if Duniway, never one to shy away from publicity of any kind, had been there in person she would have noted it. Duniway does not include any mention of this in her 1914 autobiography Path breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States. But the OSESA put her there in the open letter as the "mother of the equal suffrage movement in Oregon."
Come back for more on the progress of the resolutions and the vote in the House. As you might guess, there was some heated debate about this 6th try for Oregon woman suffrage in November 1912.

Sarah Evans, "Women's Clubs," Oregon Journal, February 19, 1911, 5:7.

Oregon Woman Suffrage February 10, 1911: Following the Course of Senate Joint Resolution 12 and House Concurrent Resolution 24.

2011-02-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

We are following the events of 100 years ago in the Oregon state legislature and the course of Senate Joint Resolution 12 and House Concurrent Resolution 24. The Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association asked legislators to “cordially recommend” the ratification of the ballot measure for woman suffrage placed there by initiative petition.

On February 9 legislators introduced the resolutions. On February 10, as you’ll see below, the Senate voted on the resolution. By a vote of 16 to 12 with 2 absent the measure passed. I’ve added legislators’ residence and counties and political affiliation. Of 30 senators just three were Democrats and one Independent with the rest Republicans.

FEBRUARY 10

Friday, February 10, 1911, Morning Session, Oregon House of Representatives

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 12

Be it Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives Jointly Concurring:

Resolved by the Senate, the House Concurring: That we have carefully considered the equal suffrage amendment, as submitted by initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

Journal of the House of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session, 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 496.

Friday, February 10, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon Senate

REPORT

Salem, February 10, 1911

Mr. President: Your Committee on Resolutions, to whom was referred Senate Joint Resolution No. 12, beg leave to report that we have had the same under consideration, and respectfully report it back with the recommendation that it do pass.

Dan Kellaher, Chairman.

The report was adopted.

The question being, “Shall the resolution be adopted?” the roll was called and the vote was:

Yeas—16

Abraham [Albert, Roseburg, Douglas, Republican]
Albee [H.R., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]
Barrett, C.A. [Athena, Morrow, Crook, Umatilla, Republican]
Carson [John A., Salem, Marion, Republican]
Dimick [W.A., Oregon City, Clackamas, Republican]
Hoskins [J.L., Newberg, Yamhill, Republican]
Joseph [George W., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]
Kellaher [Dan, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]
Malarkey [Dan J., Portland, Columbia, Clackamas, Multnomah, Republican]
Miller [M.A. Lebanon, Linn, Democrat]
Norton [H.D., Grants Pass, Josephine, Independent]
Nottingham [C.W., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]
Oliver [Turner, LaGrande, Union, Wallowa, Democrat]
Patton [Hal D., Salem, Marion, Republican]
Wood [W.D., Hillsboro, Washington, Republican]
Mr. President [Ben Selling, Portland, Multnomah, Republican]

Nays—12

Barrett, W.N. [Hillsboro, Lincoln, Tillamook, Washington, Yamhill, Republican]
Burgess [J.N., Pendleton, Umatilla, Republican]
Calkins [W.W., Eugene, Lane, Republican]
Chase [W.C., Coquille, Coos, Curry, Republican]
Hawley [C.L., McCoy, Benton, Polk, Republican]
Lester [C.F., Warrenton, Clatsop, Republican]
Locke [J.K., Portland, Multnomah, Republican]
McCulloch [Claude C., Baker, Democrat]
Merryman [George H., Klamath Falls, Crook, Klamath, Lake, Republican]
Parrish [C.W., Izee, Grant, Harney, Malheur, Republican]
Sinnott [N.J., The Dalles, Hood River, Wasco, Republican]
Von der Hellen [H., Wellen, Jackson, Republican]

Absent—2

Bean [L.E., Eugene, Lane, Linn, Republican]
Bowerman [Jay, Condon, Gilliam, Sherman, Wheeler, Republican]

So the resolution was adopted.

Journal of the Senate of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 444-45.

The Oregon Legislature and Votes for Women: February 9, 1911

2011-02-09T09:32:00.000-08:00

Gentle reader, thank you for your patience with my brief hiatus from this blog.

The Oregon legislature is now in session. Their predecessors gathered in Salem 100 years ago this month and took action in what would be Oregon's final campaign to achieve voting rights for women. Esther Lovejoy and many other workers contributed to the success of the November 5, 1912 ballot measure. Across these next months until that centennial in November 2012 I'll continue to blog about this vital campaign in addition to more on Lovejoy's life of activism in Oregon and beyond.

Oregon passed legislation in 1902 making it possible for citizens to place a measure on the ballot through initiative petition. In December 1910 members of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association had completed this task, well in advance of the deadline for the 1912 election. And at the end of January 1911 they acted to bring this to the formal attention of the Oregon legislature with a request for a joint resolution approving the measure. This was not the same thing as referring it to the voters for action, and the legislative support was not necessary for the initiative measure to go on the ballot (that had already been accomplished). But the joint resolution would be an important way for the legislature to signal support for the cause.

Both houses took some action 100 years ago today, on February 9, 1911, as we can see from the Oregon House and Senate Journals from 1911. Suffrage supporters in the OSESA used many of the arguments that would become the core of the campaign: Oregon was behind other states, suffrage momentum was growing and Oregon men needed to act to keep the state in step, and there had been five other campaigns and work would continue until passage. The OSESA also linked its efforts with Emma Smith Devoe of Washington State and the National Council of Women Voters.

FEBRUARY 9

Thursday, February 9, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon House of Representatives:

With unanimous Consent, Mr. [Timothy] Brownhill [Independent of Yamhill County] introduced the following:

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 24

Resolved, by the House, the Senate concurring, That we have carefully considered the equal suffrage amendment, as submitted by the initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and can see no reasonable objection to its adoption, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

The executive committee of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association, at its meeting on the 31^st day of January, held under approval of Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe, president of the National Council of Women Voters, passed, by unanimous vote, the following appeal to the Legislative Assembly of Oregon, with a request that Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, the venerable president of the state association, and mother of the equal suffrage movement in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, should present, in person, as a joint memorial to that honorable body.

Mrs. Duniway, in accepting the trust, said, in a voice husky with emotion, “My years are passing, but I shall take pleasure in presenting the memorial, and sincerely hope it will be the last appeal I shall ever be compelled to make to the sons of women for equal rights before the law for the mothers and daughters of men.”

The memorial, and subjoined copy of the proposed equal suffrage amendment follows:

To the Honorable Body, the Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon:

Gentlemen: Whereas, The agitation of the equal suffrage movement, which began in Old Oregon, in 1871, and has long been an established part of the state constitutions of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, and was adopted by an overwhelming vote of men at the late general election in the State of Washington; and

Whereas, California has caught the inspiration of the movement, and has passed, by its Legislative Assembly, a resolution for a referendum vote on an equal suffrage amendment, to be taken at the election of 1912, with no reasonable doubt of its ratification by a majority of the present electorate; and

Whereas, Montana is pressing close upon California, with a similar amendment; and

Whereas, The Equal Suffrage Association of Oregon with over forty thousand (40,000) women adherents, and a recorded vote of over thirty-six thousand (36,000) of the electorate at the past general elections; and

Whereas, The Equal Suffrage Association has not on file, in the office of the Secretary of State an initiative petition, for a vote for an equal suffrage amendment at the general election of 1912, and

Whereas, This agitation can never cease until the men of Oregon have crowned our efforts with victory; therefore

Resolved, That we respectfully request your honorable body to adopt a joint resolution, approving our proposed amendment which is herewith appended.

The resolution was read and referred to the Committee on Resolutions.

Journal of the House of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session, 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 452-53.

Thursday, February 9, 1911, Afternoon Session, Oregon Senate

Senator [George W.] Joseph [Republican of Multnomah County] introduced the following:

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 12

Be it resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives, jointly concurring:

Be it resolved by the Senate, the House concurring:

That we have carefully considered the Equal Suffrage Amendment, as submitted by initiative petition to the present legal voters of the State, for their adoption or rejection, and can see no reasonable objection to its adoption, and we cordially recommend its ratification at the November election of 1912.

[The resolution was referred to the Committee on Resolutions, as noted in later entries, but that referral was not noted in the proceedings.]

Journal of the Senate of the Twenty-sixth Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon, Regular Session 1911 (Salem: Oregon State Printer, 1911), 384-85.

What happened next? Come back tomorrow for the unfolding story.

Esther Lovejoy Votes for Herself 1920

2011-01-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

Esther Lovejoy's 1920 candidacy for the Oregon Third District for the U.S. House of Representatives pitted her against Republican incumbent C.N. McArthur. McArthur and his supporters accused Lovejoy of being a "Bolshevik" and a "Radical."
Lovejoy worked to build a coalition of labor, progressive, and prohibition supporters. And the Oregon Journal, on election day, November 2, 1920, printed a page one photo of Lovejoy voting (presumably for herself). Note that the photo presents this vital civic practice of voting in the hands of women as first, an election judge, and then a woman as candidate and voter.

La Residence Sociale and Marie-Jeanne Bassot

2010-12-31T10:56:00.000-08:00

Almost one hundred years since Esther Lovejoy first began her work with Marie-Jeanne Bassot at the Residence Sociale in the Levallois-Perret district northwest of Paris their work lives on and has shaped the community. Lovejoy, U.S. donors (including members of the Portland Woman's Club) and the American Women's Hospitals (which Lovejoy directed) provided funds for post-war expansion and renovation of the center.
Today La Residence Sociale hosts a day care center for children and other children's social services.

In her House of the Good Neighbor (New York: MacMillan, 1919) facing p. 19 Esther Lovejoy published an image of the playground behind La Residence (Marie-Jeanne Bassot is to the right of the tree):

Today, with upgrades, La Residence continues to provide play space:

To honor her work, Paris named the nearby square Place Marie-Jeanne Bassot and today it is a bustling center of shops, restaurants and offices.

On the map below Place Marie-Jean Bassot is at the bottom, just above Rue Baudin. L'Avenue de l-Europe leads to Place Georges Pompidou and to the Quai Michelet on the Seine River.

Esther Lovejoy's Paris Settlement House, La Residence Sociale, Still Going Strong, and Esther Lovejoy's Christmas Eve 1917

2010-12-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

During her wartime service in France in 1917-1918 Esther Lovejoy lived and worked at a settlement house, La Residence Sociale, in a working-class factory district of Paris. Settlement houses were reformers' solution to early twentieth century urban problems -- an oasis of social services in the midst of inner city needs.
The best known U.S. settlement house was Chicago's Hull House, directed by Jane Addams joined by a host of reformers. Addams famously outlined two roles for social settlement houses -- the "objective value" providing services to urban residents in need, and the "subjective value" to settlement house workers themselves who were forging new careers in social service, often women who carved out new opportunities.
Esther Lovejoy worked with Marie-Jeanne Bassot, the Parisian Jane Addams, and experienced both the objective and subjective sides of its service. After her return to the States she continued to support and raise funds for the Residence Sociale and was a frequent visitor. Lovejoy and Bassot maintained a strong friendship and worked as colleagues in social reform.
In association with conference travel this month I had the incredible good fortune to visit the Residence Sociale.

La Residence Sociale is still in use today -- more in the next post about its work and the neighborhood honoring Marie Bassot.
For today, let me share part of what Esther Lovejoy wrote about her Christmas Eve of 1917 at La Residence Sociale, from her House of the Good Neighbor (MacMillan, 1919), a book about her experiences in France during the First World War.
Lovejoy had bronchitis and sciatica and came from a military camp to La Residence Sociale on Christmas Eve to recuperate. The only person there was the cook, Madam Fleuret.
"The room was lighted by a solitary candle supplemented by a reluctant fire in the grate and the feeble flames made wavering, fantastic shadows on the wall. My storm coat was hanging on the hat-rack in the corner. It was surmounted by a German helmet showing a bullet-hole, which the American boy who gave me the helmet said was made by an American bullet . . . [Madame Fleuret left] me alone with that German ghost . . . As the fire burned lower his features seemed dimly outlined. He did not look like a Hun. There was nothing about him to suggest Bismark or Von Hindenburg. I had seen so many boys in the War Zone that boys were on my mind and heart. Perhaps that is why he looked so young, so like an innocent boy protesting against a cruel fate that had marked him for this sacrifice. He was dead -- cut off in his youth when he had just tasted life and found it sweet, and somewhere, beyond the Rhine, this Noel night was bleak and blank to his mother. No he was not a Hun. He was just a boy, an average type of the uncounted millions of the boys of different nations that had died in that same zone during the succeeding ages of war. . . there in the corner stood War--not the martial figure of Mars as it is usually depicted, but a fair young boy cut off in his youth when life was very sweet." (Lovejoy, House of the Good Neighbor, 214-18).
Lovejoy worked for the next fifty years to provide medical humanitarian relief. This was a result of her belief, forged in the war, that social justice and international health -- not war, poverty and disfranchisement -- were the only possible paths to take.
May all of us take action along this same path to peace, social justice and health as we end 2010 and enter 2011.

First Absentee Ballots in 1920 Election in Oregon

2010-12-02T21:32:00.000-08:00

The 1920 campaign was the first in Oregon to provide for absentee ballots.
Certainly this was a postwar measure to provide an opportunity for service personnel to vote. The 1919 statute also provided absentee status for students, "any officer or employee of the United States or of this state" and "commercial travelers."
This article from the Oregon Journal, October 25, 1920, 2, indicates that 42 people had applied for an absentee ballot; by election day this had swelled to over 100.
Portland city ordinances provided for voting machines in 1919 but it does not seem that they were a feature of this election.

Esther Lovejoy's 1920 Congressional Campaign and the Fred Lockley Bump

2010-11-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

For her 1920 campaign for U.S. Congress from Oregon's Third District Esther Lovejoy drew on the vital lessons she and other woman suffrage activists had learned about the importance of the media and mass campaigning. That fall her campaign received an important publicity bump from journalist and author Fred Lockley.

Lockley's Oregon Journal column “Observations and Impressions of the Journal Man” was a combination of interviews with famous and not-so-famous Oregonians, book reviews, and visits to interesting Oregon places. Lockley featured Lovejoy in his column five times during the general election season. Across these columns Lockley reviewed the House of the Good Neighbor (using the review copy that a media-savvy Lovejoy had sent to him) and with the congressional campaign in mind emphasized her father’s populist politics against the lumber interests in Seabeck. Another installment recounted her struggles as a department store clerk to work her way through the University of Oregon Medical Department and to gain an education under challenging economic circumstances. Lockley also featured her public health activism in Alaska and with the Portland city health department, recounting the story of her son Freddie's death from what she considered tubercular milk and her pure milk crusade. He also wrote a final column on her recent wartime work in France. All contributed to a narrative of Lovejoy's strength, perseverance, experience and competence for office as a people's candidate who had risen from challenging circumstances and would not forget it.

Lockley was conscious of the power of his column and had good insights into Lovejoy's life and work. In the September 25, 1920 installment he wrote: "'Who's Who' doesn't ask how much money you have, but what you have done. It recognizes the aristocracy of intellect rather than of mere money. If you will look in the 1920 edition of 'Who's Who' you will find a brief record of the accomplishments of Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy of Portland. Dr. Lovejoy is anxious to have in the next edition an added paragraph to the effect that she is the first woman ever sent to Washington to represent Oregon in Congress. No one has ever accused Dr. Lovejoy of lack of ambition of or loafing on the job. . . ." Such characteristics would make her a good member of congress.

Susan Badger Doyle has a great entry on Lockley in the Oregon Encyclopedia with information on his life and publications, including posthumous collections from his column.

In our own day we are familiar with the Stephen Colbert bump for books, music, organizations and projects. Historians of Oregon medicine know and appreciate the Sara Piasecki bump. Fred Lockley's "Observations and Impressions of the Journal Man" functioned in the same way in early twentieth century Oregon.

Fred Lockley, “Observations and Impressions of the Journal Man,” Oregon Journal August 8, 1920, 2:2; September 19, 1920, 4:4; September 22, 1920, 6; September 25, 1920, 6; September 27, 1920, 6.

Oregon Women Candidates for Statewide Office 1914-1920 (Including Esther Pohl Lovejoy)

2010-11-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

Thanks to dedicated archivists and librarians at the Oregon State Library and Oregon State Archives, we can now use the lists of state office campaign expenditures to track women candidates.
This week I'm honored to be making a presentation to the Mary Leonard Law Society, the Marion County chapter of Oregon Women Lawyers on early women candidates and office holding before and after the achievement of suffrage.
So, from the campaign expenditure reports, here is the list of women candidates who ran for state offices from 1914-1920 -- from the first state election after the achievement of full voting rights in Oregon to 1920, when Esther Pohl Lovejoy made her bid for U.S. Congress from Oregon's Third District.
Two, Manche Langley and Celia Gavin, were lawyers and Marian Towne studied law for a term. Cora Talbot and Esther Lovejoy were both physicians. Socialist, Progressive Party and Prohibition candidates joined Republicans and Democrats in this Progressive Era election period.
Not many achieved victory. But locating them is an important step to understanding the full range of women's efforts to exercise the full range of citizenship rights through office holding.
This list does not include the many, many local races that will yield more important perspectives in this broad field of study.
But for now, here are the women who ran for state office in Oregon from 1914-1920:

1914

Primary Election May 15, 1914

For Representative, Eighth Representative District

Marian B. Towne, Jackson County, Democratic

For Representative, Eighteenth Representative District

Cora C. Talbott, Multnomah County, Democratic

Mrs. L. (Lizzie) Gee, Multnomah County, Progressive

Maria L. T. Hidden, Multnomah County, Progressive

Lora Cornelia Little, Multnomah County, Progressive

General Election, November 3, 1914

For Superintendent of Public Instruction

Flora I. Foreman, Columbia County, Socialist

For Representative, First Representative District

Mrs. Fannie M. Penn, Marion County, Independent

Mrs. Z. A. (Zanana) Rosebraugh, Marion County, Independent

For Representative, Eighth Representative District

Marian B. Towne, Jackson County, Democratic-Progressive -- Elected

For Representative, Eighteenth Representative District

Cora C. Talbott, Multnomah County, Democratic

Mrs. L. (Lizzie) Gee, Multnomah County, Progressive

Maria L. T. Hidden, Multnomah County, Progressive

Lora Cornelia Little, Multnomah County, Progressive

Lucia Faxton Addition, Multnomah County, Prohibition

Mrs. Mary L. Mallett, Multnomah County, Prohibition

Sadie Althouse, Multnomah County, Socialist

(Note: Kathryn Clarke, Douglas County, Republican won a special election in January 1915 for Senator, Fifth Senatorial District)

1916

Primary Election May 19, 1916

For Delegates to National Conventions – State at Large

Bertha Mason (Mrs. G.L.) Buland, Multnomah County, Republican

Helen I. Tomlinson, Multnomah County, Democratic

For Representative, First Representative District

Mrs. Alice H. Page, Marion County, Republican

Mrs. Hattie Cameron, Marion County, Democratic

Mrs. W. A. Chapman, Marion County, Democratic

For Representative, Eighth Representative District

Marian B. Towne, Jackson County, Democratic

For Representative, Eleventh Representative District

Mrs. Ella J. Metzger, Polk County, Republican

For Representative, Fifteenth Representative District

Manche Langley, Washington County, Democratic

For Representative, Eighteenth Representative District

Mrs. Maria L. T. Hidden, Democratic

Mrs. June Nissen, Multnomah County, Democratic

Mattie M. Sleeth, Multnomah County, Democratic

For Representative, Twenty-ninth Representative District

Sylvia McGuire (Mrs. Alexander) Thompson, Wasco County (party not listed here)

General Election, November 7, 1916

For Electors of President and Vice-President

M. Frances Swope, Multnomah County, Prohibition

Selma J. McCone, Multnomah County, Socialist

For Representative, First Representative District

Mrs. Hattie Cameron, Marion County, Democratic

Mrs. W. A. Chapman, Marion County, Democratic

For Representative, Eighth Representative District

Marian B. Towne, Jackson County, Democratic

For Representative, Fifteenth Representative District

Manche I. Langley, Washington County, Democratic

For Representative, Eighteenth Representative District

Mrs. Maria L. T. Hidden, Democratic

Mattie M. Sleeth, Multnomah County, Democratic-Prohibition

Mary L. Mallett, Multnomah County, Prohibition

Katherine Brandes, Multnomah County, Socialist

Ina Coleman, Multnomah County, Socialist

For Representative, Twenty-fourth Representative District

Bessie Baird, Wallowa County, Socialist

For Representative, Twenty-ninth Representative District

Mrs. Alexander Thompson, Wasco County, Democratic--Elected

1918

Primary Election, May 17, 1918

For Representative in Congress, Third District

Maria L.T. Hidden, Multnomah County, Democratic

For Representative, Eighteenth Representative District

Mrs. Alice McNaught, Multnomah County, Democratic

For Representative, Twenty-third Representative District

Ella Terpening, Umatilla County, Democratic

For Representative, Twenty-ninth Representative District

Mrs. Alexander Thompson, Wasco County, Democratic--Elected

General Election, November 5, 1918

For United States Senator in Congress, To fill vacancy in term ending March 4, 1919

Martha E. Bean, Malheur County, Socialist

For State Treasurer

Pauline Sears, Malheur County, Socialist

For Superintendent of Public Instruction

Inez Augusta Lusk, Coos County, Socialist

For Representative, Eighteenth Representative District

Alice M. McNaught, Multnomah County, Democratic

Maria L.T. Hidden, Multnomah County, Prohibition

Ada Wallace Unruh, Multnomah County, Prohibition-National

Emma Wold, Multnomah County, National

Alvina Hagen, Multnomah County, Socialist

Julia Jackson, Multnomah County, Socialist

For Representative, Twenty-third Representative District

Ella Terpening, Umatilla County, Democratic

For Representative, Twenty-ninth Representative District

Mrs. Alexander Thompson, Wasco County, Democratic -- Elected

1920

Primary Election, May 21, 1920

For Delegate to the National Convention – State at Large:

Maria L.T. Hidden, Multnomah County, Democratic -- Elected

For Delegate to the National Convention, Third Congressional District

Ethel (Mrs. F.O.) Northrup, Multnomah County, Republican -- Elected

Alice M. McNaught, Multnomah County, Democratic

Bessie M. Richards, Multnomah County, Democratic -- Elected

For Electors of President and Vice-President of the United States

Harriet C. Hendee, Multnomah County, Republican

Celia Gavin, Wasco County, Democratic

For Representative in Congress, Third District

Esther Lovejoy, Multnomah County, Democrat

Mrs. Alexander Thompson, Multnomah County, Democrat

For Commissioner of the Public Service Commission of Oregon, District Composed of the Counties Lying East of the Cascade Mountains

Rhea Luper, Morrow County, Republican

For Representative, Nineteenth Representative District

Mary Strong (Mrs. William S.) Kinney, Clatsop County, Republican

For Representative, Twenty-sixth Representative District

Kathleen W. Kivett, Baker County, Republican

General Election November 2, 1920

For Presidential Electors

Mary H. Jewitt, Lane County, Prohibition

For Representative in Congress, Third District

Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Multnomah County, Democratic-Prohibition

For State Senator, Twelfth Senatorial District

Emma Rayner, Clackamas County, Socialist

For Representative, Nineteenth Representative District

Mary Strong (Mrs. William S.) Kinney, Clatsop County, Republican -- Elected

Oregon Secretary of State, Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon to the Twenty-Eighth Legislative Assembly, Regular Session, 1915, for the Biennial Period Beginning October 1, 1912, Ending September 30, 1914 (Salem: State Printer, 1915), 89-102; Oregon Secretary of State, Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon to the Twenty-Ninth Legislative Assembly, Regular Session, 1917, for the Biennial Period Beginning October 1, 1914, Ending September 30, 1916 (Salem: State Printer, 1917), 107-126; Oregon Secretary of State, Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon to the Thirtieth Legislative Assembly, Regular Session, 1919, For the Biennial Period Beginning October 1, 1916, Ending September 30, 1918 (Salem: State Printer, 1919), 68-79; Oregon Secretary of State, Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon to the Thirty-first Legislative Assembly, Regular Session, 1921, For the Biennial Period Beginning October 1, 1918, Ending September 30, 1920 (Salem: State Printer, 1921), 82-98.

Oregon Woman Suffrage Centennial (1912-2012) Gets the Baton

2010-11-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Just back from a successful and consequential conference in Spokane, Game Changers and History Makers: Women in Pacific Northwest History, with thanks to organizer Shanna Stevenson.
Today, more history is being made. Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown will accept the "baton" (actually a banner, it seems) from the Washington Women's History Consortium as they conclude their official suffrage centennial commemoration (1910-2010) in Olympia on what they are calling the "Day of Jubilation."

I'm not able to join them today, but I'm cheering on Jan Dilg, Project Director of Century of Action: Oregon Women Vote 1912-2012, Eliza Canty-Jones, Editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Mary Beth Herkert, Oregon State Archivist, Secretary of State Brown, and Andrea Cantu-Schomus, Secretary of State Director of Communications. They represent Oregon on this historic day of action.
Follow and join Oregon's planning at the Century of Action website.

Thanks Archivists and Librarians! Candidate Expenditure Records Uncovered

2010-11-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to wonderful archivists/librarians Austin Schulz at the Oregon State Archives and Alice LaViolette and Dave Hegeman at the Oregon State Library I've been able to find campaign expenditures for Esther Lovejoy's primary and general election run for U.S. Congress in 1920.

The 1908 Oregon Corrupt Practices Act mandated that all candidates report campaign expenditures to the Secretary of State, who would then make them public, and limited the amounts they could spend (what great ideas . . . ). But where were these reports? They were not published separately until the 1960s. Some of the big ledgers remain safely in the Oregon State Archives but thanks to these dedicated history detectives we now know that all of the figures are published in the Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of Oregon for pertinent years, available at the Oregon State Library and the Oregon State Archives and at other repository libraries in the state.

In the May 21, 1920 primary Lovejoy and her supporters (including former Governor Oswald West who contributed $50) outspent her opponent Sylvia Thompson by almost three to one: $1134 to $385.
And here is the campaign expenditure list for the third district seat from the general election on November 2, 1920 (90 years ago today):

Both the 1920 primary and general election data come from the Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon 1921.

In the general election Lovejoy's Republican opponent C.N.McArthur raised $1380 to the Lovejoy coalition's $3609 and F.T. Johns's $168. More in subsequent posts about the outcome of this race.

While I was in the candy store I gathered more treasures. Some I'll share in an upcoming post. But I can't resist posting this one today from the Biennial Report of the Secretary of State of the State of Oregon, 1913 for the campaign expenses for supporters and opponents of the woman suffrage measure in 1912:

Esther Pohl was instrumental in getting the Woman's Club Campaign Committee Funds. And fans of W.M. "Pike" Davis will be interested to see his substantial contribution.

Some things to consider on this election day. Thanks Alice, Dave and Austin for preserving and retrieving the treasures.

Dancing and Voting in the Oregon Primary Election of 1920

2010-10-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Here's another gem from the Oregon primary election on May 21, 1920, when Multnomah County Democrats chose Esther Pohl Lovejoy over her opponent Sylvia McGuire Thompson for the party nomination for U.S. Congress.
Some workers received the day off, including these employees of the Northwestern National Bank. When the polls opened they fulfilled their obligation as voting citizens and cast their ballots, then took off in cars provided by the bank club for Bonneville, Oregon for "sports and dancing."

Oregonian, May 21, 1920, 4.

Before the Bonneville Dam was constructed the area in Multnomah County was popular for picnics and, evidently, sports and dancing. On its website the Salem Public Library has a beautiful digital image of Bonneville taken in 1915 from the Oregon State Archives collections.
Dancing and voting: sounds like a great tradition to perpetuate.

Esther Lovejoy Wins Democratic Primary for U.S. Congress May 21, 1920

2010-10-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

Back to our thread on the 1920 primary election for U.S. Congress, Third District.
The primary presented voters and historians with something unique in Oregon history -- two female candidates vying for the same office. On the one hand, this was not what women activists had hoped for -- two qualified women running against one another for the same office could bring division to the entire activist community. On the other hand, it was a tangible result of expanded female citizenship to be celebrated -- accomplished women wanted to put their hats in the ring.
As we've seen, Esther Lovejoy brought considerable credentials to the campaign: Portland City Health Officer 1907-1909, suffrage activist at the local and national levels, wartime service in France, president of the Medical Women's International Association and acting president of the Medical Women's National Association, and director of the American Women's Hospitals, a transnational medical relief organization. And author. She was a local, national, and transnational figure.

Sylvia McGuire Thompson, seen here from Sunset: Pacific Monthly (October 1917) served locally in the 1917 and 1919 regular legislative sessions and in the special 1920 session, where her House Bill #1 became Oregon's ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment for federal woman suffrage.
For a variety of reasons I explore more in the biography, and particularly because this was a seat for U.S. Congress, Lovejoy's national and international experience won out. She garnered 57 percent of the primary vote.
More on the general election in the next postings.

"An Ordinance to Prohibit . . . Any Marriage Brokerage Business . . ." Portland, 1909

2010-10-01T15:59:00.000-07:00

Two previous posts featured Portland press coverage of Oregon marriage agencies. In this post -- the Portland city council's 1909 reaction and more specific evidence about why many Portlanders were opposed to the agencies.

In 1909 the Portland City Council passed Ordinance 20070, "An Ordinance to Prohibit in the City of Portland, the Carrying On of Any Marriage Business, Prohibiting the Publication and Circulation of Advertisements for Matrimonial Purposes . . . " September 24, 1909 (Charter and General Ordinances of the City of Portland, Oregon in Force April 15, 1910 p. 515)

Section 1 declared that "No person shall, in the City of Portland, for hire or for any direct or indirect remuneration, conduct or carry on or cause to be conducted or carried on, any matrimonial agency, or marriage brokerage business, or introducing club, or any similar occupation or calling by whatsoever name it may be called.

Section 2 made it illegal for anyone to publish any advertisement or notice in a newspaper or magazine in the city "the substance or effect of which is that any person desires to meet or to make acquaintance of, or to correspond with, another person of the opposite sex with matrimony as the object, or that any such person desires a companion of the opposite sex."

The ordinance provided a penalty of up to $500 and ninety days in jail.

A 1915 case in which Simon Weyrick was convicted of violating the marriage brokerage ordinance suggests that law was passed because many Portlanders viewed such agencies as fronts for prostitution and the exploitation of women. Police arrested Weyrick on June 7, 1915 for conducting a marriage bureau and confiscated his files. (S. Weyrick Held; Women Accusers," Oregonian, June 8, 1915, 4). The Oregonian ("Marriage Broker Fined," Oregonian, June 13, 1915, 2:5) reported that Weyrick would "advertise for a woman to take charge of a rooming-house, a woman companion for an elderly gentleman, or for a woman to be employed in other capacities." He asked prospective employees to come to his office and asked about marriage "to one or other gentlemen with which he was in touch" and made a "proposition" that they try "companionship for a certain period of time." Weyrick, the Oregonian concluded, might be credited with the "introduction of trial marriages in Portland."

Interstate Introducing Society 1905

2010-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

More in this set of postings on marriage agencies in early 20th century Oregon.Today the "Interstate Introducing Society: The Most Reliable Marriage Club in the World."
The Oregon Journal ("Marriage Bureau Owner His Own Best Customer," Oregon Journal, March 16, 1905, 1, 6) reported the case of Andrew Cochran of Condon, Oregon, who came to Portland in search of a wife and paid $350 to become half partner in J.H. Hamilton's Interstate Introducing Society "with offices in the Lange hotel, Sixth and Washington." When Hamilton went to Seattle Cochran "began an inventory of his property" and took the file of Sarah Emily Keyes of Milwaukee, Oregon out of circulation and went to visit her. The story ends with their marriage.

There are many messages embedded within the story. For some readers it was obviously an advertisement for the Interstate Introducing Society -- Cochran achieves his goal and as readers learned at the close of the article, his new wife Keyes was a wealthy property owner. Yet the article also pokes fun at him, has him using what might be a country bumpkin dialect, and avoiding a chivaree the night before his marriage. Keyes is a woman of considerable property but interested in marriage. One reading of the tale is that she is an objectified woman, her ad part of the "property" of the agency. Yet she is also a participant in the process, reading the Matrimonial Register and making selections among the men advertising themselves.
We also learn that the agency required membership fees and introduction fees and connected interested and paid up parties with others by publishing a Matrimonial Register.
Come back for the next posting -- the city of Portland's reaction to marriage agencies.

Matrimonial Agencies Run Amok in Oregon

2010-09-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

In the next several posts I digress from the narrative of the 1920 primary election in Portland to report about the early twentieth century version of internet dating -- matrimonial agencies, matrimonial papers and an organization called the "Interstate Introducing Society: The Most Reliable Marriage Club in the World."

It is impossible not to notice these headlines while reading microfilm from early twentieth century Portland newspapers. Next to an article on "one of the most animated meetings ever held by the state board of health" from the Oregon Journal for March 20, 1905 p. 8 is the irresistible headline "Says His Wife is a Fire Worshiper":

Oregon Railroad and Navigation section foreman Ballard Brooks and Nellie Cooper met after he subscribed to a "matrimonial paper" and read her "advertisement." Brooks lived in Weatherby, Oregon in Baker County because the OR&N required that he live near his section. He "decided that it was necessary to annex a wife" and, because there were "no women in that section" he got a subscription to a "matrimonial paper" featuring entries from women describing themselves to potential mates.

Ballard and Nellie corresponded, arranged a meeting on October 24, 1903, and married that same day.

There were "numerous trivial and incidental charges and counter-charges of infidelity and similar things" the Oregon Journal noted. But Ballard could not abide Nellie's "fire-worshiping" and filed for divorce. We yearn for Nellie's side of the story here. Perhaps Baker County historians can locate it for us.

Stay tuned for more, including the "Interstate Introducing Society" and why Portland decided to take action against them.

Esther Pohl Lovejoy Campaign 1920: Credentials, Networking, PR, and the Check is in the Mail

2010-09-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Esther Pohl Lovejoy declared her 1920 candidacy as a Democrat for U.S. Congress from Oregon's Third District (Multnomah County/Portland) on March 11, 1920 on a visit to the Pacific Northwest. Lovejoy was then the chair of the medical humanitarian relief organization the American Women's Hospitals headquartered in New York City and sponsored by the Medical Women's National Association. She was also acting chair of the MWNA. And she was also the president of the fledgling Medical Women's International Association. And she had, that February, represented Oregon along with Effie Comstock Simmons, at the National American Woman Suffrage Association's "victory" convention, which oversaw the transformation of NAWSA to the League of Women Voters. This, combined with her wartime medical work and her record as an Oregon suffragist and in municipal office as Portland City Health Officer from 1907-1909, was a strong record upon which to build a campaign.

Pohl decided to run, but had also to manage the Medical Women's National Association convention in New Orleans in May. She was also part of a NAWSA delegation to Connecticut to urge that state to ratify the Nineteenth (woman suffrage) Amendment. No one else had filed for the primary as a Democrat. She campaigned, set up an organization, and returned to New York in April, planning to return after the May 21 primary in which she stood unopposed.

Two weeks later, Sylvia Thompson, who had served in the Oregon House in the 1917 and 1919 sessions, announced her candidacy for the seat. Thompson was part of a faction in Oregon that opposed Democratic senator George E. Chamberlain, Lovejoy's ally from previous campaigns and suffrage work in the state.

Lovejoy's supporters rallied to define her candidacy as one in which her national and international experience and current commitments would make her a successful representative of Oregon. A great example is "Dr. Lovejoy is Too Busy to Return Here for Campaign Work," Oregon Journal, April 28, 1920, 3.

The article has it all -- credentials, networking, and PR. Clare Pierce, the daughter of former Democratic state senator Walter M. Pierce, reports on Lovejoy's activities -- the upcoming MWNA convention in New Orleans, her work with the national suffrage organization in the ratification of the 19th Amendment at the request of NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt, and by the way, Herbert Hoover has just written the foreword to the second edition of Lovejoy's House of the Good Neighbor, a record of her wartime medical service with the Red Cross.

Did the strategy work? Stay tuned.

Portland Doctors Invite Candidates for Grilling in 1920 Primary

2010-09-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

The Portland City and County Medical Society wanted candidates on the record in the 1920 primary season.

Society president Dr. A. E. McKay sent out invitations to all candidates for legislative and other office to sign up for a five minute time slot at the group's May 5 meeting "in which to state what he can and will do for the medical profession and for public health." Physicians pledged to vote for those candidates who had a pro-health policy record.

McKay noted that the society "has come to a realization that if proper health laws are to be passed and enforced, and if the people are to be protected against medical frauds, the physicians must take an active interest in the candidates for office."

This was music to Esther Pohl Lovejoy's ears. She was a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress from Oregon's third district (Portland and Multnomah County) with the best support of public health of anyone in the field. But she would not be in Portland on May 5, 1920. And she hoped that the reasons why would help and not hinder her campaign. Stay tuned for more . . .

Oregon Journal, April 28, 1920, 2.

L(ucetta) A(melia) Smith, M.D. Redux

2010-09-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

A wise scholar and kind friend recently told me that she hopes I never find all of the answers. I agree with her -- the quest is the thing, a continuous reward. But here is a bit more information on a woman who has been the subject of at least two separate quests involving historical detection and identification . . . . and some thoughts on the nature of historical research in the bargain.

In the summer of 2009, amid work on my biography of Esther Pohl Lovejoy, I was researching other nineteenth century women physicians in Oregon at the incredible Historical Collections & Archives at the Oregon Health & Science University. As archivist Sara Piasecki blogged at the time, we found evidence in an alumni register that the L.A. Smith, M.D. who graduated from the Willamette University Medical Department in 1868 was a woman. This would have made her the first woman to graduate from medical school in Oregon and the West. Who was she? We tried to find out more. Of course, the practice of using initials was pervasive -- women professionals often did it, but it makes the job of the historian a complicated one.

Then, in December 2009, Sara Piasecki uncovered additional materials from registrar, historian, and supporter of women students at OHSU Lucy Davis Phillips. When I was able to comb through the materials it became clear that Davis Phillips had also been on the trail of L A Smith. But because we did not have access to the records of her search we followed paths that she had also explored without knowing that they led her (and us) to dead ends. Now with these materials at hand we could find out more.

In those new materials are letters from Davis Phillips to various people trying to track down L A Smith. In 1937 she wrote to the Association of American Medical Colleges trying to clear things up. Did they have an L A Smith, a woman student, graduating from Willamette in 1868? "Somewhere I got the name Lucella Amelia for this person," she wrote, "but I am beginning to suspect that the name was confused with Lucetta Amelia Smith, a graduate of Ann Arbor, who was in Roseburg, Oregon for many years" now living in California. Additional correspondence supported the idea that the 1868 graduate L A Smith was a man and Lucella was really Lucetta Amelia Smith, who practiced for some time in Roseburg. So the case was closed and Angela L. Ford and Ella A. J. Ford have the distinction of being Oregon's first medical women graduates in 1877.

Was I disappointed? Sure, a bit. But glad to have at least some of the questions answered.

Imagine, then, my delight at finding Lucetta Amelia Smith, M.D. in the 1928 edition of Women of the West: A Series of Biographical Sketches of Living Eminent Women in the Eleven Western States of the United States of America ed. Max Binheim, (Los Angeles: Publishers Press, 1928) 164-5 on the same page with Lillian Tingle. Here is more about the twentieth century woman physician who, while not the "first" L A Smith, was a significant figure in Oregon and women's medical history:

"SMITH, Lucetta Amelia (Miss) M.D., born in Ionia, Michigan, September 8, 1880, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose G. Smith, a resident of Oregon for nineteen years. Physician. Graduated from the University of Michigan, 1906. Interneship, Woman's Hospital of Chicago, 1906-1907. Member of local Medical Ass'n, President of local Business and Professional Women's Club. Member: American Medical Woman's Assn, National Fed. of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, University Woman's Club, etc. Home: Masonic Bldg., Roseburg, Oregon."

Lucetta Amelia Smith, M.D. occupies a different place in the story of Oregon medical women than we first supposed. The quest for L A Smith undoubtedly gave me more perspective on early graduates in Oregon than I would have had otherwise. And now Lucetta Amelia Smith joins the ranks of her important cohort of colleagues -- women who came to Oregon with medical degrees who worked in their profession and for the advancement of women. Calling all Roseburg historians -- we want to know more! And never mind finding all of the answers -- the quest is its own best reward.

Finally, what more can I say about an archivist who is willing to go on this journey with a researcher. Brava and thank you, Sara. You are the very, very best.

Sarah A. Evans, Portland Market Inspector 1905-1935

2010-09-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Sarah Evans, clubwoman and activist, decided that the position of market inspector was too important for the women of Portland to lose, even at the salary of $65 per month. The position was vacant when Mayor Harry Lane reorganized the city board of health in August 1905 and appointed Esther C. Pohl, M.D. and two of her medical colleagues, A J Geisy and George F. Wilson. There were six applicants: Sarah A. Evans, Ernest H. Garton, Mrs. R. Allgood, Mrs. A.R. Linning, Mrs. W.J. Tallman and Miss Emma Chapard. At a special meeting on August 11, 1905 the board elected Sarah Evans to be the new Portland Market Inspector with the recommendation of the School of Domestic Science. (The records of the Board of Health are all located at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center under the fabulous care of City Archivist Diana Banning and her staff.)

Evans was a charter member of the Portland Woman’s Club and the Portland Young Women’s Christian Association and one of the founders of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs serving as president from 1905 to 1915. She represented clubwomen interested in “municipal housekeeping” and the domestic science movement that motivated Portland women to begin the market inspection crusade. For a decade she edited the Women’s Clubs section of the Oregon Journal beginning in 1904. And she would be a vital part of Oregon’s 1906 and 1912 suffrage campaigns.

In 1905, when Upton Sinclair was publishing a serialized version of The Jungle, his undercover discoveries of horrible conditions in Chicago meat packing, in the socialist journal the Appeal to Reason, and before the publication of the book in 1906, Evans was getting up early in the morning to inspect markets and report her findings in detail to the press and board of health.

Her reports read like Sinclair and, unfortunately, like Fast Food Nation and other contemporary investigations. But she also noted progress in the campaign. Her report for September 1905 was, in part:

… “The Excelsior Market on East Morrison and Union Avenue refused me admission. I was compelled to call a policeman. When I made the examination I found the place filthy . . .

In a market on Morrison Street I found a great quantity of chickens cooped in a small cellar where they were making sausage and had pickled meat standing open. While I was making my examination I saw a rat run over a firkin of meat that stood open on the floor, and gnaw some that stood out of the brine. I gave them twenty-four hours to get the chickens out and the place cleaned up. Upon returning I found that my orders had been carried out.

…. I visited the Commission Merchant and was hold by him ‘that frequently veal came in when the quarters, from various causes would be sour. It was then sent to the markets that the hides might be saved and such parts of the animal as had not yet soured, that there might be as little loss to the shippers as possible.’ He had been doing this for eighteen years, he said, and had never thought of it as being unhealthy. I have his promise that in his house, at least, it will not occur again. . . .

. . . “During the month I have received four written complains and numerous verbal ones, and with one exception, I found them well-founded.”

Her reports to the board of health are filled with descriptions of coal tar dyed shrimp, dyes in catsup and meat additives; she called the Humane Society about treatment of live chickens at one market. In June 1906 she noted progress in refrigerated counters at many markets and a “sentiment for better market conditions seems to prevail.”

The incident of refusal to admit Evans was not an isolated one. In September 1906, after the proprietor of the Western Market “forcibly resisted” Evans’s efforts to take away a sample of meat for analysis, she sought and Mayor Lane gave her the “authority of a special officer” with police powers.

Sarah Evans and Esther Lovejoy were close friends and colleagues. One of my favorite images is of the two of them at the health office in City Hall in 1907 at the incomparable Historical Collections & Archives at Oregon Health & Science University.

Evans retired in 1935 at the age of 80 after thirty years as market inspector. Along the way that original salary of $65 grew and she got expenses covered. At her retirement the Oregonian reported (along with the two images below “Sarah A. Evans First Inspector,” Oregonian June 23, 1935, I:2) that she received a pension of $40 per month from the city. She died in 1940.

Someone out there must know where this picture and more from her "treasured collection" are today -- won't you let us know?

Portland had led the way for other groups, including the Consumers’ League and the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, to adopt pure food and market inspection goals. You’ll be able to read more about it in the Lovejoy biography.

"It is understood that one or more members of the [health] board are in favor of appointing a man . . ."

2010-09-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

More on the Portland health board's market inspection/women in appointed office story from 1905.

By July 6, 1905 mayor Harry Lane, M.D. was organizing his new administration and there was still no woman candidate on hand for the office of market inspector. Portland women had lobbied successfully for the post before Lane's election, but the city council had underfunded it. Lillian Tingle, director of the Portland School of Domestic Science, had held the post for two months but resigned on July 1 because the salary was too small.

The Oregon Journal ("No Successor Found to Miss Tingle Yet," Oregon Journal, July 6, 1905, 6) worried that Tingle's two months of accomplishments would be lost if the office was not soon filled. And the paper reported that "It is likely that in case a woman cannot be found to take the position a man may be appointed. It is understood that one or more members of the board are in favor of appointing a man, and Dr. Biersdorf, city health officer, so expressed himself today."

Lane, on the other hand, believed that "there are many good women who could be secured to fill this position."

Would Portland women lose this important appointed office that many had fought so hard to achieve? How would they resolve the dilemma of low salary?

What a difference a month would make. Stay tuned -- Portland got a new health board (including Esther Pohl) and a new market inspector who would keep the job for twenty years.

Portland Market Inspection Crowd Cheers Woods Hutchinson, M.D., April 1905

2010-08-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

More nuggets from the Portland women’s 1905 campaign for market inspection and a female market inspector.

At an April 14 meeting of pure food activists working for market inspection in Portland Dr. Woods Hutchinson, who had recently resigned as secretary and health officer from the Oregon State Board of Health, “happened in.” He got cheers from the crowd when he confessed that he had changed his mind about women and civic power: “while I have never favored women’s suffrage,” he said, “when I see a movement of this kind I confess that I wish the women had the power of the ballot as well as the power of public opinion.” And, referring to the Portland health board’s Mae Cardwell, M.D. he said, “The best man on the board of health today is a woman.” (I think he meant this as a compliment!)

The assembly decided to “‘stick to the fight’ until it was won” and “the suggestion was here made that one of the deputies of the inspector [they still hoped for a large staff] be a woman. This was moved and carried unanimously.”

The Portland market inspection campaign apparently transformed Hutchinson’s thinking and he became a supporter of woman suffrage and women’s health activism. A woman, “may educate herself as she will, may dress as she pleases, may preach, vote, practice medicine,” he wrote in 1914. “Any sanitarian or public-health officer of experience will cheerfully testify that the strongest force in the community for the protection of the public health is the influence and work of the women” including the “at one time much scoffed at” women’s clubs. “Why on earth woman should not be given exactly the same voice as man in determining how the food, water, and other vital interests of her children should be kept pure and wholesome, and in personally seeing that they are so kept, is a question to which . . . there is no answer!” Woods Hutchinson, Civilization and Health (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1914).

British-born Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) received his medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical Department in 1884, taught anatomy at the University of Iowa from 1891-1896 and pathology at the University of Buffalo from 1896-1900 before coming to Portland, where he served as the secretary of the newly established state health board and state health officer from 1903 until 1905. He left Portland and for many years was on the faculty of the New York Polyclinic. He gained great notoriety as a lecturer and writer on public health issues and published over a dozen books before his death in 1930.

And it appears that his brief association with the market inspection campaign in Portland made him a woman suffragist.

See:

“Women in Earnest,” Oregon Journal, April 14, 1905, 1, 8 (quotes and image from 8)

Herman W. Knox, ed. Who’s Who in New York 7^th ed. (New York: Who’s Who, 1917), s.v. Hutchinson, Woods, 564.

“Dr. Woods Hutchinson,” New York Times, April 27, 1930, 29.

August 26, 2010: 90th Anniversary of the Federal Suffrage Amendment -- Esther Lovejoy and Portland Women Celebrated in 1920

2010-08-25T15:35:00.000-07:00

August 26, 2010 is the 90th anniversary of the final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Susan B. Anthony Woman Suffrage Amendment. So, a brief break from the Portland board of health in 1905 to commemorate what Esther Lovejoy and Oregon women were doing 90 years ago.

When the news came that Tennessee had ratified by a cliffhanging one-vote margin (thanks to the mother of youngest Republican legislator Harry Burn who urged him to support it) women in Oregon celebrated the federal amendment and the eight years of suffrage since Oregon women gained the vote in 1912.

Portland women planned a gala suffrage luncheon for Saturday, August 28 at the Benson Hotel in the midst of a noontime "blowing of whistles and ringing of bells," according to the Oregonian ("Women of Portland Celebrate Saturday," Oregonian, August 26, 1920, 1). Sarah Evans spoke on the Oregon suffrage movement and Esther Lovejoy, then a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress from the Third District, spoke on the work of women in the future.

Happy Anniversary -- and join us in taking action. Visit the Century of Action: Oregon Women Vote 1912-2012 site.

Lillian Tingle, Market Inspection and the Question of Salary

2010-08-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

In 1905 Portland women came together in a coalition to demand the inspection of Portland markets through the city health department and to call for the appointment of a woman to that post. The city council reluctantly agreed after a great deal of public pressure and Lillian Tingle became the first market inspector in Portland. It was a triumph for women's activism in public health and domestic science.
On July 1, progressive mayor Harry Lane, M.D.'s first day in office, Tingle resigned at the city board of health meeting. The reason? Salary. The Oregon Journal (July 1, 1905, 2) reported it this way:

Before accepting the new post of market inspector for the city on May 1 Tingle was director of the Portland School of Domestic Science at a salary of $125 per month. When less-than-enthusiastic Mayor George Williams and the business-oriented city council agreed to create the post under public pressure they had not funded it and asked the health board to foot the bill of a salary of $65 per month. Supporters raised the additional question of transportation costs, but the mayor said he could do no more.
Tingle had taken the post at almost half of her director's salary. According to the Biennial Report of the Oregon Superintendent for Public Instruction (1907) in 1905 the average monthly salary for female teachers across the state was $43.50 (men made more -- $55.69) and they were calling for raises to these small salaries. For this former director in expensive Portland who also had to pay for streetcars to take her to markets all across the city $65 a month was not enough.
The Journal reported: "when asked whom she would recommend as her successor" Tingle "stated that she did not know any one competent to fill the position who would accept it."
The situation underscores the challenges women activists faced as they worked to create new institutions and carve out appointed civic offices available to women. Tingle, with graduate training in domestic science and considerable administrative experience, had taken the post as women celebrated victory. But with the city council unwilling to authorize enough salary and expenses they exercised a great deal of control over the situation. Perhaps they hoped to squelch the whole business. As the Journal noted, the "clean shop crusade is likely to languish."
Tingle moved on. She wrote a "Domestic Science" column for the Oregonian, headed the domestic science department for all Portland High Schools and, when the University of Oregon called in 1917, relocated to Eugene to found the U of O's first Home Economics Department. ("University Lures Miss Tingle Away," Oregonian, June 14, 1917, 6). She died in Eugene in 1951.
Faced with this dilemma -- a new city post in the health department created as a direct result of women's activism that was severely underfunded -- what would Portland women do? More soon on the rest of the story.

Lillian Tingle: Portland's First Market Inspector, May-June 1905

2010-08-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

When Esther Pohl served on the Portland City Board of Health from 1905-1907 (following Mae Cardwell, who was the first woman on the city board from 1903-1905) and as Portland City Health Officer from 1907-1909 (the first woman in the U.S. to hold such a position in a large city) she worked with Sarah A. Evans, Portland's market inspector from 1905-1935. Evans gained notoriety for her work and she and Pohl became lifelong friends.

But Sarah Evans was not the first market inspector in the city. That honor goes to Lillian Tingle. The story of Portland women's grassroots movement for pure food and a market inspector that I'm blogging this week helps explain why.

Lillian Tingle, Oregon Journal, April 14, 1905, 8

As an 1895 graduate of the Educational Trust School of Domestic Economy in Aberdeen, Scotland with additional graduate work at Gordon's College in Aberdeen in chemistry and physiology Tingle was an early participant in the domestic science movement that led to instruction in home economics on a scientific basis in public and private schools and in colleges and universities. Women scientists like Tingle found employment in this movement and worked with civic and women's groups to build cleaner and healthier communities. Tingle taught in Scotland and in North Dakota and then came to Portland sometime in 1901 or 1902 to work in the office of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop a course of study for domestic science in the state. And she then accepted the directorship of the Portland Y.W.C.A.'s School of Domestic Science, the position she held in the spring of 1905 when Portland women visited food markets, established a boycott, and called for the appointment of a market inspector.

Portland's city council and mayor George Williams were reluctant to do so, but with public pressure agreed to appoint a female market inspector with the advice and recommendation of the board of the YWCA's School of Domestic Science. Lillian Tingle was their unanimous choice and she accepted the position on April 24, 1905 to begin May 1.

Why did Lillian Tingle resign two months later? Stay tuned!

For more on the domestic science/home economics movement see Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982)
See also:
"Women in Earnest: Demand That Meat Markets of Portland Shall Be Kept Clean," Oregon Journal, April 14, 1905, 1.
"Woman Named as Inspector of Markets in Portland," Oregonian, April 25, 1905, 16.

Mae Cardwell, M.D.: Crusader for Cleanliness!

2010-08-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

Esther Pohl served as one of three physicians on the Portland Health Board from 1905-1907 and as Portland City Health Officer from 1907-1909, all under the administration of Democratic mayor Harry Lane, M.D. Pohl came to the board of health just as Portland women had scored an important civic victory -- the appointment of a woman as market inspector to enforce codes of clean food, including meat, to support the health of Portlanders.
One of the leaders of this pure food and market inspection campaign was none other than Mae Cardwell, M.D., a path breaker and leader of Oregon women and medicine. She was an advocate for a woman sanitary inspector for Portland as early as 1901 in the Home Department of the Portland Woman's Club, according to club records at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
In April 1905 Cardwell was one of three physicians on the city board of health (Pohl's predecessor) and worked with a coalition of Portland women, including members of the Y.W.C.A. and the Consumer's League, to get the city council under Mayor Williams to hire meat and market inspectors as part of the board of health.
On April 10 a group of women toured Portland's markets and were nauseated by what they encountered. And they held a mass meeting on April 14 to set up a boycott and demand action by the city council. The Oregon Journal (April 14, 1905, 1) gave it front page headlines.

The article, in addition to providing great information about the campaign, carries the added thrilling bonus of an early image of Mae Cardwell.

At the mass meeting, Cardwell "congratulated womankind on the growth of her influence in the past few years and the attention with which she is listened to now."

Women physicians, according to Regina Morantz Sanchez in Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine, participated in the Progressive Era public health movement in great numbers across the nation. This was certainly true of Portland. In coalitions and as members of women's clubs and groups like the Consumers' League, Mae Cardwell, Esther Pohl and other women doctors made a powerful impact. And as Karen Blair notes in The Clubwoman as Feminist, while some histories give most of the credit to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, women in their organizations changed the nation's policies about pure food, sanitary markets and consumer health and empowerment in the first part of the twentieth century and beyond.

In the next few posts more from this market inspection campaign, including new faces and links to the career of Esther Lovejoy.

Fred Clayson, the Christmas Day Murders 1899, and Lone Fir Cemetery, Portland

2010-08-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

We last read of Esther Clayson’s brother Fred in Skagway, Alaska as a new gold rush arrival from Portland in August 1897. Fred soon prospered as a risk-taking outfitter and head of F. H. Clayson and Company [pictured here in an advertisement in Skagway newspapers reprinted in Howard Clifford, The Skagway Story (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing, 1975), 44]. By the fall of 1899 he had saved some $40,000 by Esther’s estimate, enough to make him a millionaire in today’s dollars.

Fred was heading from Dawson, Yukon to Skagway in December 1899 via bicycle – a new fad for traveling on the iced trails – and disappeared on Christmas Day, December 25, 1899. The family hired a private detective, Philip Maguire, to assist the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with the investigation. The Oregonian interviewed Esther for a story on January 19, 1900 (“May Have Been Murdered” p. 8) when it became apparent that her missing brother had probably been murdered and featured this likeness of Fred.

Fred’s body and the bodies of two other men murdered with him were found in the Yukon River after spring thaws – Fred’s on May 30, 1900. George O’Brien was convicted for their murders by a Dawson, Yukon jury and he was hanged on August 31, 1901.

After a send-off funeral in Skagway by the Arctic Brotherhood, a Yukon/Alaska fraternal organization, Esther’s mother Annie brought Fred’s body back to Portland and buried him in the plot that would become the resting place of many in the family, including Esther, at Lone Fir Cemetery. Annie planted holly trees there to commemorate her youngest son’s death on Christmas Day. The holly trees still guard the family plot.

In Esther’s view, written in notes for an autobiography at Historical Collections & Archives at OHSU, “the short life of my brother was far more significant than his tragic death and more thrilling in its living realities than the detective stories founded upon his murder.” And there were and are many such detective stories. See, for example:
Henry Woodside, “The Great Yukon Murder Case,” Wide World Magazine 8 no 44 (December 1901): 154-162
Allan Curtis, “Christmas Day Murders,” Canadian West 13 (Fall 1988): 81-85 and 14 (Winter 1988): 126-133
Ed Ferrell, Frontier Justice: Alaska 1898: The Last American Frontier (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007), 5-11.

Esther Pohl in Alaska

2010-08-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

The Alaska/Klondike gold rush drew much of Esther Pohl's family from Portland in 1897-1898. Her husband Emil and brother Fred were on the first ship from Portland in July 1897. That fall Esther's brother Will, her mother Annie Clayson, and her younger sisters Charlotte and Annie May joined them.

Esther attended post-graduate medical clinics in Chicago that fall of 1897 and joined her family in Skagway in the spring of 1898. That spring the area suffered a severe epidemic of spinal meningitis and both she and Emil put their medical skills to work. In notes for a biography in the Esther Lovejoy Collection at OHSU, Esther recalled that "in this emergency the minister of the little church with the big stove took the lead. Funds were raised and a log-stable built for mules was converted into a hospital for meningitis cases."

According to Howard Clifford (The Skawgay Story [Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing, 1975], 30) this was the Presbyterian Reverend Robert McCahon Dickey, who raised funds and dedicated the Union Church in December, 1897. There is a splendid image of the church at Alaska's Digital Archives. It served as the town's first school and, according to Clifford, "a community hospital, humane society, and a club for both men and women." Perhaps Esther or Emil or both provided medical care here in the building's function as hospital.

Esther Pohl would become Portland City Health Officer in 1907. Here in Skagway some nine years earlier she had a powerful first-hand experience with an epidemic and in organizing a public health response. And she would draw on all of these experiences as a leader of transnational medical relief after the First World War.