July 5, 1894: “An Open Letter Addressed to the Friends
President Lydia Hunt King, M.D., Secretary Abigail Scott Duniway, and members of the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association announced their reinvigorated campaign for votes for women in an open letter to “Friends of Equal Suffrage in the Northwest” in the July 5, 1894 edition of the Oregonian.
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In their long letter they cited “activity of the workers in other parts of the union” particularly at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the achievement of woman suffrage in Colorado that same year, and active ballot efforts in Kansas, California and New York as reasons for them to take up the Oregon campaign again in earnest.
Oregon suffragists were in the middle of a long campaign to achieve the right to vote. Before the initiative and referendum were passed in 1902, a change to the Oregon constitution (such as removing the word “male” from voting requirements) required that such a bill pass both houses of the state legislature in two successive sessions and then it would be put before the voters. In 1872 and 1874 legislators debated a woman suffrage bill but the measure did not pass. In 1880, a bill passed the House and Senate, and one also passed in 1882, but voters defeated the measure in 1884 when it came before them on the ballot.
Now, in 1894, Oregon suffragists were ready to try again. At the close of their letter Hunt King and Duniway asserted: “As we believe the time has come for the revival of our work in the Pacific Northwest, we hereby invite the friends of the movement, both men and women, to meet our committee at the parlors of Mrs. A.S. Duniway, 294 Clay Street, on Saturday of each week at 2 p.m., beginning with July 7, where equal suffrage meetings will be held regularly until further notice.”
OSWSA activists were successful in this campaign and the legislature passed a suffrage bill in 1895, but the Oregon House did not organize in 1897 due to factional disputes. The 1899 legislature did pass the measure for the necessary second time but voters defeated woman suffrage on the ballot in 1900. These challenges would be a major reason for suffrage supporters to support the new initiative and referendum system by which voters could obtain signatures for ballot measures.
Lydia Hunt King was an 1881 graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and after coming to Portland in 1883 married Samuel Willard King, a founder of the Olds, Wortman and King department store. She was one of five members of the original Portland Women’s Medical Society, which she joined in the fall of 1891. Hunt King resigned the presidency of the state suffrage society later in 1894 due to ill health and she died in 1900.
Additional Reading:
“The World’s Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath,” American Studies Program, University of Virginia, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/wce/title.html
“Equal Suffragists,” Oregonian, August 20, 1894, 5.
“Dr. Lydia Hunt King,” Oregonian, March 11, 1900, 24
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