Women's rights issues in Ohio were put into the public eye in the early 1850s. Women inspired by the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention created newspapers and then set up their own conventions, including the 1850 Ohio Women's Rights Convention which was the first women's right's convention outside of New York and the first that was planned and run solely by women. These early efforts towards women's suffrage affected people in other states and helped energize the women's suffrage movement in Ohio. Women's rights groups formed throughout the state, with the Ohio Women's Rights Association (OWRA) founded in 1853. Other local women's suffrage groups are formed in the late 1860s. In 1894, women won the right to vote in school board elections in Ohio. The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was headquartered for a time in Warren, Ohio. Two efforts to vote on a constitutional amendment, one in 1912 and the other 1914 were unsuccessful, but drew national attention to women's suffrage. In 1916, women in East Cleveland gained the right to vote in municipal elections. A year later, women in Lakewood, Ohio and Columbus were given the right to vote in municipal elections. Also in 1917, the Reynolds Bill, which would allow women to vote in the next presidential election was passed, and then quickly repealed by a voter referendum sponsored by special-interest groups. On June 16, 1919, Ohio became the fifth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.
Early efforts
The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments created at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention inspired many women in Ohio to work towards women's rights. Elizabeth Bisbee of Columbus decided to create a women's suffrage newspaper, the Alliance after reading the Declaration. Heading into the early 1850s, there began to be considerable support for women's suffrage in Ohio.
The first Ohio Women's Rights Convention took place in Salem, Ohio in April 1850. President of the convention was Betsy Mix Cowles. This convention, attended by around 500 people, was the first women's right's convention held outside of New York. It was also the first convention completely organized and run by women. Only women were allowed to speak or vote during the convention. Women said of the men attending the convention, "They then learned for the first time in the world's history how it felt to sit in silence when questions in which they were interested were being discussed." Women at this convention published Address to the Women of Ohio. The effects of the convention were later felt as far west as Wyoming, where John Allen Campbell in 1869 signed the first bill granting equal women's suffrage in the United States. Campbell had attended the Salem conference as a young man.
In 1851, a second Ohio Women's Rights Convention took place in Akron, Ohio with Frances Gage as president. Sojourner Truth was one of the speakers at the Akron convention, presenting a speech, "Ain't I A Woman?". Truth's words had a profound effect on the audience. One of the women who was inspired by Truth was Cleveland suffragist, Caroline Severance.
At these conferences and at other women's rights meetings, Gage collected signatures to influence delegates to the 1850 Ohio Constitutional Convention to include women's suffrage. Many people also submitted petitions to the convention to allow voting "regardless of color or sex." Thousands of signatures were collected and the debates at the Constitutional Convention were so heated, that the exact words were not kept in the official records of the proceedings. The delegates to the convention decided to only extend voting rights to white men and by a large majority voted against both women's suffrage and suffrage for African-American people. Only delegates from the Western Reserve area of Ohio favored giving the vote to African-Americans in the state.
On May 27, 1852, a third Women's Rights Convention was held in Massillon, Ohio. The convention drew women from all over Ohio and from different social classes. Attendees of the convention decided to create the Ohio Woman's Rights Association (OWRA). OWRA met for the first time in Ravenna on May 25, 1853 with members from around the state. The group extended membership to any interested person and the first president was Severance. The group immediately began working on a petition to present to the Ohio Legislature requesting women's suffrage. On April 1, 1854, Severance brought the petition to the Ohio Senate.
Cleveland held the fourth National Women's Rights Convention on October 6, 1853. Well-known suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Antoinette Brown, Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone all came to participate in the convention that drew women from around the country. At the convention, women discussed various women's rights. One of the rights they outlined was "That women be exempted from taxation until their right of suffrage is practically acknowledged." In 1855 on October 17 the sixth National Women's Rights Convention was held in Cincinnati.
A national suffrage organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was established in Cleveland in 1869 on November 24 and 25 at a convention held at Case Hall. AWSA was meant to be a "less radical" group compared to the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Early on, Toledo and Dayton also created women's suffrage organizations. The Toledo Woman's Suffrage Association (TWSA) and the Dayton Woman's Suffrage Association were both formed around 1869.
Some women in South Newbury, Ohio voted in elections between 1871 and 1876, though the women's votes were never counted. In 1873, women brought a petition for women's suffrage to another Ohio constitutional convention. The petitions had almost 8,000 signatures and represented thirty-three Ohio counties. At the convention, delegates formed a women's suffrage committee to report on the issue and submitted an equal suffrage proposal to the convention. The proposal was debated for two days and some delegates used "the Bible to prove that man's position was and should be superior to that of woman." Others argued that women's suffrage would help women be better wives, mothers and Christians. The proposal never came before the electors of the convention and failed by 4 votes.
In May 1885, the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association (OWSA) was founded in Painesville. OWSA focused on changing local and state laws to provide suffrage to women.
After the creation of the WCTU, there was an influence on women's suffrage around the state. In Shelby, a small town with a disproportionate number of saloons, women became involved in political organizing over prohibition and creating alternative places for men to visit, such as reading rooms. The Shelby Equal Franchise Association was also created as an offshoot of the WCTU.
To counter the idea that women did not really want to vote, Louise Southworth in Cleveland became the national superintendent of enrollment. Starting in 1888, she created a list of people in Ohio who endorsed women's suffrage.
Women gained the right to vote in school board elections in 1894 but the right did not extend to allowing women to vote on bonds involving school infrastructure. The National Woman Suffrage Conference was held in Cincinnati in April 1898.
In 1899, Harriet Taylor Upton was elected president of OWSA. Upton also served as the treasurer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) from 1894 to 1910. Starting in the Spring of 1900, Upton visited fifteen important Ohio towns and helped organize local suffrage efforts there. By the end of 1900, she had doubled participation in organized suffrage efforts.
In 1900, the Ohio General Assembly considered a suffrage bill in January. The Dayton Herald pointed out that it was significant that the Ohio Federation of Women's Clubs (OFWC) had not yet endorsed women's suffrage.
In 1903, NAWSA moved their national headquarters to Warren, Ohio. NAWSA used Upton's house as a temporary center before moving to the Trumbull County Courthouse in 1905.
School board suffrage In the Ohio House of Representatives, E. W. Doty introduced a bill for both women's suffrage on school board elections and to allow them to serve on these boards. Doty's bill lost by seven votes and he brought it forward again in the House in 1893, where it lost by six votes. In January 1894, Representative Gustavus A. Wood introduced another bill, that was again narrowly defeated. Caroline McCullough Everhard, who helped form the Equal Rights Association of Massillon and Canton, was a wealthy woman who was taxed, but unable to vote. In 1894, Everhard and Governor William McKinley worked together to lobby Ohio lawmakers on the issue of women voting in school board elections. Everhard convinced Senator William T. Clark to bring up a school board suffrage bill in the Ohio Senate. The Senate bill, which also would provide the right for women to run for the school board, passed on April 10 in the Senate and the House on April 24.
In 1895, women voted for the first time in school board elections. Everhard also worked to promote Elizabeth Folger in her successful run for the school board in Massillon, Ohio in 1895. In Xenia, Ohio, Mary Moore and Eliza Carruthers also won positions on their local school boards.
State amendments
When California gave women the right to vote in 1911, many women in Ohio were equally encouraged in their work on women's suffrage. In 1911, Elizabeth Hauser of Cleveland questioned each of the six candidates running for mayor on whether they supported women's suffrage and only one publicly did not. Florence E. Allen traveled to 66 counties in Ohio in 1911 speaking to farmers' groups and unions about women's suffrage.
Upton was heavily involved as a leader in the campaign to add women's suffrage to the Ohio Constitution during the 1912 constitutional convention. There was a campaign to collect signatures for a referendum to change the words in the constitution from describing voters as "white male" to "every citizen." Only issues relating to women's suffrage at the convention were limited in time by the committees. Unlike other issues, like bond issues for roads which had a two-week discussion, only three minutes were allowed for debate on women's suffrage and only over the course of two days. A proposal for a voter referendum created by the Committee on the Elective Franchise at the convention passed by a vote of 76 to 34. Now the referendum would go out for a state-wide vote.
Women in Dayton distributed around 20,000 leaflets and letters in support of women's suffrage leading up to the 1912 referendum election. From Cleveland, Hauser brought petitions to the Ohio State Legislature and then started working as a lobbyist for suffrage there. Suffragists in Cincinnati reached out to German-American voters, who were normally anti-suffrage. OWSA organized a parade in support of women's suffrage in Columbus on August 27. Ohio received national attention for the possibility of passing the amendment.
Anti-suffragists were also campaigning against the amendment during this time. A campaign using anonymous handbills tied the issue of women's suffrage to prohibition, making it unpopular. OWSA offered a $100 reward for information about who was passing out these anti-suffrage handbills, but the authors were never discovered.
The 1912 women's suffrage amendment failed with 88 counties opposing and 24 supporting. Nearly 100,000 people voted against the measure. The vote may not have passed for several reasons. There were worries that women's suffrage would lead to prohibition and anti-prohibitionist, Percy Andreae, claimed that the vote had become a "wet and dry issue" rather than one on suffrage. Suffragists had also aligned themselves with Theodore Roosevelt who was running as a third-party candidate which was seen as a negative by the press.