Anne Martin: The March for Suffrage

By John L Smith

The Fields of Silver and Gold series brings the past alive. Meet the trailblazers and the pioneers, the first people and the famous explorers, the legends and the everyday heroes that shaped the history, land, and culture of the West. Their powerful stories will fascinate and inspire you.

Activist. Scholar. Trailblazer.

Before she was old enough to vote, Anne Martin began fighting for women’s rights and equality. Traveling across Nevada to every small town and mining settlement she could reach, she advocated for women’s suffrage. She was the first woman to run for the U.S. Senate. As an author, speaker, organizer, and protester she paved the way for a new generation of activists, in Nevada and across the nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keystone Canyon Press
• Release date: Sep 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953055170

John L Smith

Native Nevadan John L. Smith is a longtime journalist and the author of more than a dozen books. He has won many state, regional, and national awards for his writing and was inducted into the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame in 2016, the same year that saw him honored with the James Foley/Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Award, and the Ancil Payne Award from the University of Oregon. He freelances for a variety of publications, including The Nevada Independent. The father of a grown daughter, Amelia, he is married to the writer Sally Denton and makes his home in Boulder City, Nevada. Sarah Winnemucca and Snowshoe Thompson are his first in the Fields of Silver and Gold Series.

Book preview

AnneMartinFrontCovervf.jpg

Anne Martin

The March for Suffrage

John L. Smith

For my grandmothers,

Catherine Curtis and Emma Smith

Publisher Alrica Goldstein

Copyeditor Paul Szydelko

Cover Designer Alissa Gates Booth

Cartographer David Stroud

Photo Research/Proofread Caelin De Sa

Keystone Canyon Press

2341 Crestone Drive

Reno, NV 89523

www.keystonecanyon.com

Copyright © 2021 by John L. Smith

This work benefits greatly from the impeccable research and writing of historians Anne Bail Howard and Dana R. Bennett, senior analyst in the Research Division of the Legislative Counsel Bureau and Kathleen F. Noneman along with everyone who participated in the Nevada Women’s History Project.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934110

ISBN 978-1-953055-16-3

EPUB ISBN 978-1-953055-17-0

Manufactured in the United States of America

Author’s Note

Historians prefer to use primary sources (letters, diaries, speeches, and photographs) to learn about historical events. Sometimes facts aren’t written down as they happen so historians use secondary sources (things written about a historical event by someone who did not witness the event). With these pieces of information, they have to be critical thinkers that put the facts that they know together to make their best guess at what really happened.

You can be a critical thinker too! Keep reading about history that makes you think and dig deeper. Find new sources and think about how that might fit in with what you already know. Understanding our history helps us understand our world.

Timeline

1787 Founding Fathers meet from May to September in Philadelphia to draft and pass the US Constitution. The Constitutional Convention considered allowing women the right to vote, but eventually limited voting rights to white male adult citizens.

1848 In July at Seneca Falls, New York, women meet to discuss the need for equal voting rights. Susan B. Anthony emerges as a national leader of the emerging suffrage movement.

1864 Nevada becomes the thirty-sixth state. Voting limited to every white male citizen of the United States at least twenty-one years old who had been a state resident at least six months. No women allowed.

1869 One-term Assemblyman Curtis Hillyer addresses his colleagues at the state legislature in Carson City on the subject of equal voting rights for women, receives resounding applause and some support for his suffrage resolution.

1870 On February 3, the Fifteeenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving Black male adults the right to vote.

1871 Equal voting resolution fails in the Nevada Legislature, and the issue struggles to be heard for the rest of the century.

1875 Anne Henrietta Martin is born September 30 in Empire City, Nevada. She died on April 15, 1951.

1889 The Nevada Legislature passes the school office resolution, enabling women to be elected to school boards and superintendent positions.

1895 The Nevada State Equal Suffrage organization is founded and devoted to winning equal voting rights for women.

1911 Attorney Felice Cohn drafts a resolution to change the state constitution to allow women to