March 20, 2026
Introduction: In this article – to help celebrate March being Women’s History Month – Katie Rebecca Merkley searches old newspapers to learn more about the women’s suffrage movement. Katie specializes in U.S. research for family history, enjoys writing and researching, and is developing curricula for teaching children genealogy. She has a website: krgarnergenealogy.com
The right to vote was a long battle for women that was not won until 1920. In the United States, women’s right to vote was guaranteed by passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, whose adoption was certified on 26 August 1920.
One of the battlegrounds for this struggle was the newspaper. Newspapers reported on rallies and meetings to push for women’s rights. They were also a place where people could publish their opinions on the matter, much like how people today use social media to post their opinions on current or controversial topics.
I did a search in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives to learn more about this important subject.
One newspaper article on this matter was published back in 1773! This shows how long the battle for women’s suffrage lasted. Sally Tickle wrote a letter to Mr. Holt, which was published in a New York City newspaper. In it, she claimed that men’s jealousy of women’s intellect is the reason they have limited women’s rights, including public affairs and education.
Sally wrote:
“That the men were always jealous of the intellectual talents of women, is very clear, from the pains which they have always taken to exclude them from a share in the administration of public affairs, to debar them from a liberal education, and on the contrary, to employ their minds on trifles. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, it is an undeniable Truth that, in the art of government, nobleness of sentiment, and the most refined exertions of the mind, there are many instances of women, who were, at least, equal, if not superior to the Men.”
Then she claimed history has proven this point.
Over a century later, the battle for women’s rights continued, especially the right to vote. In 1885, people sent letters to the American Woman Suffrage Association. The letter novelist Louisa May Alcott wrote was published in the newspaper.
In this letter, Miss Alcott lamented that her health prevented her from being more active in the cause. She brought up the abolitionist movement and referred to women’s suffrage as “emancipation of the white slaves of America,” implying that being denied the right to vote left women in a state of slavery.
Much was posted in Pennsylvania newspapers in 1914 about women’s suffrage after the Woman Suffrage Party held a two-day conference.
After quoting from the Declaration of Independence, the Woman Suffrage Party declared that the country could not achieve its stated goals while the women were in “political servitude.”
This article reports the Woman Suffrage Party’s “declaration of principles,” including this passage:
“We believe that this country will fail to attain the high standing set forth in the Declaration of Independence while women are held in political servitude, and that no government can properly perform its function or discharge its obligation to its citizens while compelling one-half of its population to bear its burden though denying them the right to share its privileges.”
The Woman Suffrage Party then announced that its goal was to secure the ballot for the women of the state “on the same terms upon which it is granted to the men.” They also would not align themselves with any particular political party or organization whose objective was other than securing the right to vote for women:
“We pledge ourselves to the task of securing the political freedom of women, not in any spirit of self-seeking, but with a desire to secure that political and economic justice for all men and women which is only possible in a free state, where the government rests not upon the consent of a fraction of the people, however large, but upon that of the whole people.”
In that same issue, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader published several related articles, including this one.
According to this article, several Western states had allowed women to vote before the rest of the U.S. did. This proved to suffragists the benefits of allowing women to vote. The total number of women in those states was close to 4 million. Other states granted partial voting rights to women, such as voting on school matters or taxation.
Equal suffrage states had higher voter turnout than male suffrage states. Only about 65% of men in states with only male suffrage voted. In equal suffrage states, up to 90% of the women voted. It didn’t give a number on how many men voted in these states but said that it was higher.
Mayors in equal suffrage states reported that many women voted and took an “intellectual interest in public affairs,” and that the “vote of disreputable women is negligible.” Furthermore, other equal suffrage states indicated that no evil had come of allowing women’s suffrage.
Women in these states had voted for laws to protect their interests, such as establishing maximum working hours and minimum wages for working women, equal pay for equal work, mothers having equal custody rights as fathers, married women having rights to their own incomes, and pensions for widowed mothers.
On that same page of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader was an ad for women’s suffrage, pointing out all the women’s influence in the world. Women do the missionary work. Women tend to the wounded during war. Women create love at home and raise the next generation. Therefore, women are better able to make laws for women. This women’s suffrage ad was posted by M. Heins, a self-proclaimed women’s store with female staff that sold women’s attire. They had used their regular ad space to focus on women’s suffrage.
Stay tuned for more newspaper articles about women’s suffrage in Part 2 of this series.
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Note on the header image: suffragist parade in New York city, May 1912. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
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