News Articles

PIONEER OREGON SUFFRAGIST IS HAPPY
Believes Her Life’s Fondest Dream Is Near Realization

[Pictures of Duniway at 78 and 35, as well as a picture of a house]
Above—Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway today and at 35. Below—House in Albany, Or., in which Mrs. Duniway lived about 1865.

WITH a life crowned with a multitude of great and noble deeds and with a mind as bright and clear as it was 60 years ago, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway is giving and receiving much pleasure by greeting her seventy-eighth birthday anniversary, at her home in Clay street.

Rare indeed is the Oregonian who does not know something of the life and accomplishments of this remarkable woman. The story of her life is an additional proof of the truth of that trite axiom, “truth is stranger than fiction.”—but Mrs. Duniway herself tells it better than anyone else could, so here it is very briefly from her own lips.

“Just after I had passed my seventeenth birthday my father and mother and we children left our home in Illinois and started across the plains with a team of oxen; that was in 1852. My dear mother was stricken with the cholera and died in the Black Hills of Wyoming, leaving her motherless brood to continue their journey west with their father and settle in the wilds of Oregon territory, then compromising [sic] what is now Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

“In 1853 I was married to Mr. Duniway and we settled on a farm in Clackamas county. After four years we sold the Clackamas county farm and purchased what is now known as the Millard-Lonsdale farm, where we lived for five years in much the same fashion as we had in Clackamas county. In all probability, we would have lived and died there as it was a beautiful farm, but for a heavy debt which took the farm and its belongings and left us stranded in the village of Lafayette where my husband became a chronic invalid, the result of an accident with a team, and from which he died a few years later.

“Not knowing how to spell defeat, I opened a private school and boarding house. It being impossible to secure assistance in the home, I would arise at 3 o’clock in the summer and 4 in the winter to care for the house, family and boarders. At 9 o’clock I would open school and teach, with the intermission of noon hour, until 4 in the afternoon, when I would return to cook and otherwise care for my numerous household.

“After four years spent in Lafayette, we sold our belongings and removed to Albany, where I taught for several years. I studied very hard in order to keep ahead of my pupils and after mastering simple mathematics, I managed to conquer algebra and geometry. One of my specialties was my own method of teaching grammar.

Pioneer Advocates of Suffrage

“Finding school teaching not sufficiently remunerative for the needs of my growing family, I sold the school house and embarked in millinery, which I followed for six years with success. When I sold this business I came to Portland and established the New Northwest, a weekly paper; that was in May 1871. I published the paper for 16 years. At the end of that time I gave up active business and have since devoted my time to work in the interests of womankind, being, as everyone knows, a pioneer advocate for suffrage. The very facts and theories for teaching which I was practically ostracized, are the accepted theories of today. Many declared in my younger days that through my teachings I was preparing my children for the penitentiary, but instead, one of my sons is the state printer of Oregon, another is president of the University of Wyoming, another is a successful merchant in New York, still another is associated with the telegram here, and the fifth is a lawyer in this city.

“The great changes in this northwest country and particularly in Portland are almost beyond belief. When I came here there were only a few thousand people in Portland. The growth and expansion of the cities and country of this section has been notable and yet substantial. I have never ceased in my efforts to put women on equal footing with men and I am so happy that now in the sunset of my life my fondest dream is beginning to be realized.”

Mrs. Duniway, whose birthday and anniversary falls on October 22, is to be honored with a reception. Mrs. Duniway is recovering very nicely from a long illness and as she pluckily said: “I expect to be at the reception if I have to be carried. I went to the luncheon for Dr. Anna Shaw the other day and though I could not stand, I just had to talk, so I was like the Dutchman’s hen that ‘set a standing,’ and I ‘stood a sitting.’”

 

Her Voting

“It is feared that women will neglect their homes for the polls” –Argument of the Antis.

Oh! wicked women, can it be
That in your new-found energy
You would from home and baby stay
And vote and vote the livelong day?

O Women! Can they all be true–
The awful things they say of you?
Would you neglect your breed of six
To spend each day in politics?

Would you go out at morning light
And stay until the dark of night
To cast your ballots every day?
Must woman’s vote be cast that way?

Is home to see you never more?
We’ve heard of naught of that before
With ‘Lection Day (the truth I seek)
For women come seven days a week?

Our husbands, fathers, brothers go
To vote. It takes an hour or so
With months between – yet, you I note,
will juggle a contentious vote.

–Lurana Sheldon in New York Times.

“Women’s Rights”

Editor Journal:
There are over 100,000 women in Oregon.  The majority of them do not want to vote. A small proportion in any given community is asking for the ballot.  Is that not true in your town?  What do the rest want?
Many of them are actively opposed.  To put upon these women a responsibility from which they have hitherto been exempted and which they do not wish to assume is not “Women’t Rights.”
Many of them are indifferent.  The indifferent male voter is one of the serious problems of the present electorate.  Would you add to it a large body of votes avowedly indifferent?
The demand for woman suffrage is the demand that woman shall assume an equal share with men in the government of the city, the state, the nation.  It means she shall enter with him the political arena.  For it is an arena.  Politics is not a conflict of opinions. It is a conflict of wills.  It carries with it public meetings, public debates, public marchings and counter-marchings, public discussions of public questions, and of the character of public candidates, and all other incidents of a campaign.
It is not democratic, nor just, nor fair to draft this large body of women into this campaign against their wills.
This is the sixth time voters of Oregon have been asked to vote upon this question in spite of the fact that every two years the opposition to it has increased so that in 1910 suffrage carried in only one county in Oregon, and in that one by five votes, the total vote being 35,270 for suffrage, the smallest vote for it since 1900, and 59,665 against, a majority of 23,795.
The Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women asks that you give this amendment your earnest consideration, and that you defeat it this time by so great a plurality that the suffragists, local and imported, must bow before the will of the people of Oregon, and acknowledge that the majority rules in America.
The Oregon State Association Opposed to the Extension of the Suffrage to Women.
Mrs. Francis James Bailey, Pres.

LAST LAP OUTLINED

Suffragists Discuss Work for Final Month.

LIVELY FINISH IS IN SIGHT

Street Speeches, Tonneau Talks, Suffrage Sunday, Debates and Noon-day Factory Meetings in Windup of Campaign.

What has been accomplished in the past, and more especially in the last month, coupled with the plans formulated for the final month of the campaign for equal suffrage, were the main topics unfolded and in the address of the president, Miss Emma Wold, at the general meeting of the College Equal Suffrage League yesterday afternoon in the Journal building. Mrs. Sara Bard Field Ehrgott, but recently returned from an organization tour of the counties, and who is to leave again today, gave details of her trip and of the encouraging reports she had received on all sides. So also did Mrs. E. E. Griffith, of Columbia County.

Miss Wold laid stress on the need for the hearty co-operation of all the suffragists throughout the state. She detailed the work that had been done recently by the workers of the organization. Miss Griffith had just returned from Columbia County, while Mrs. Ehrgott had been covering Hood River and many other places.

Miss Wold announced that the latter leaves today for Forest Grove, whence she will go to Yamhill, and the week afterwards to Lane County. In the large counties in the state which are not densely populated the inhabitants will be reached by the newspapers.

Another method by which the voters had been reached, in the majority of cases with great effect, was the maintenance of booths at the county fairs. From these literature and information were given out and speeches made.

With the object of reaching every voter in Portland efforts must be made, said Mrs. Wold, in every conceivable way. Street speeches, a Suffrage Sunday, noonday meetings, talks from automobiles, and debates, one of which had been arranged to be held in the new Lincoln High School with Wallace McCamant as the the opposer, are in the final plans.

Praise for the press, information about the amount of literature sent out, and other data were given before the speaker advocated the use of billboard advertising till the close of the campaign.

A serious problem confronting not only them, but all suffrage organizations, was the monetary side. They were badly in need of subscriptions, and ways of raising money were discussed. At the conclusion of the president’s address Miss Griffith gave details of her organization work in Columbia County. She gave instances of objections she met with, the type of objections most common, and the answers she had found most fitted to individual cases.

Mrs. Ehrgott told of the towns and villages visited by her in her trip through Eastern Oregon. She gave details as to the number of members in every club, of the new clubs she had formed or helped to organize, and of a feeling of hopefulness all over Eastern Oregon that suffrage would carry.
Mrs. A. C. Newill, the president of the precinct workers and also of the Civic Progress Circles, asked for further help and more helpers for her precinct work, which, from its canvassing, provided a true line as to the opinions of the women in the city.

Suffrage Spellbinders Out
Men and Women Speakers Start on Final Campaign Tour.

Many local men and women have been leaving town recently to work in the campaign for equal suffrage. Among those to go within the next few days are: Dr. A. A. Morrison, who will speak at the Prineville County Fair: C. E. S. Wood, who goes with him: Mrs. L. W. Therkelsen and Mrs. Olive Stott Gabriel, who are going out tomorrow on an organization tour.

The county fair at Prineville is fixed for October 16 to 19. A suffrage booth has been erected on the fairgrounds, from which literature will be distributed and information given to all attending the fair.

On the previous day, October 15, William Hanley, C. E. S. Wood and Dr. A. A. Morrison will give the principal speeches at a meeting when between 2000 and 3000 are expected to be present. Mrs. Margaret M. Sharp is energetically working for the success of the meeting.
Last night in the Pendleton Hotel there was given a large suffrage luncheon similar to the one given here recently at the Portland Hotel, in that it was a “political” affair. Governor Hay, of Washington, and Governor West, of Oregon, were among the invited guests. One speaker from each political organization was heard and Mrs. Edyth T. Weatherred, who has been doing such good organization work in Umatilla County, was also a guest and speaker.

A rally of all the suffrage societies of the county is planned for next Saturday under the direction of Dr. J. P. Tamlesle at Hillsboro at the operahouse. Colonel Robert Miller and Mrs. Olive Stott Gabriel will speak and Mrs. Helen Miller Senn will give an interesting and humorous recitation.

Tomorrow evening there will be another street meeting, on the corner of Sixth and Alder, with an address from an automobile the same night in South Portland.

Mrs. Gabriel, who leaves with Mrs. Therkelsen tomorrow, is an Oregon woman who has lived the last 19 years in New York. There she is associate editor of the Woman Lawyers’ Journal and vice-president of the William Lloyd Garrison Equal Suffrage League.