Mar 1, 2024
On a 70-degree, late-summer day, under fair skies in 1875, Medfield hosted a “Woman Suffragists’ Picnic” in Curtis Grove, which was once a popular day resort located at the north end of Adams Street and current West Mill Street.
The picnic served as a convening of suffragettes from towns in the Second Norfolk Senatorial District, including Medfield, Needham, Dover and Norwood, with a goal to advance women’s rights.
The event was held amidst a rapidly growing suffragette movement and with prominent civil rights activists in attendance. A feature article about the Medfield gathering appeared in the Sept. 8, 1875 issue of The Boston Daily Globe.
Featured guests included William Lloyd Garrison, the renowned abolitionist; Lucy Stone, co-founder of American Woman Suffrage Association; and Maria Mitchell, professor of astronomy at Vassar College and president of the Association for the Advancement of Women.
According to Mitchell’s personal diary, total attendance for the picnic was estimated at 75 people comprised of “simple country folk.”
As reported in the Globe, “The trains from Boston carried large numbers of the friends of the cause from that city and the various towns on the line of the road. The arrangements were made by some of the leading ladies and gentlemen connected with the flourishing suffrage club of Needham.”
The article also noted that among the attendees were two Medfield residents, Rev. Charles C. Sewall, and John Ellis.
Event speakers urged the picnicking attendees to seek out and support candidates running for office who would support the women’s movement, and to get involved by forming local groups.
Even simple actions, such as subscribing to the Woman’s Journal published by Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell to reach middle-class women interested in advancing their rights, was an easy step they could take, and it appears that Medfield citizens did just that.
Library of Congress records show that between 1892 and 1894 alone, these residents were Journal subscribers:
Harriet Adams Fowle (1862-1926) – a piano teacher and accompanist; private tutor in French, Latin, English, and History; and a volunteer who helped to compile a Catalog of Inscriptions for Vine Lake Cemetery.
Rosa Smith Allen (1859-1911) – a teacher, composer, New England Conservatory graduate, and past president of the Hannah Adams Woman’s Club (three terms), and a Medfield Historical Society curator.
Ellen Clifford (1846-1919) – a teacher; one of the first women to cast school committee votes in 1881, and the first woman to be elected to Medfield School Committee in 1884; and the manager of her family’s rental tenement properties.
“Mrs. Mary Marshall” – evidence suggests she was the same Mary A. Rowe Marshall (1843-1931) married to William Marshall, who ran the Medfield factory that manufactured bonnet wire.
Of course, as the first woman to make a living as a writer, Hannah Adams (1755-1831) was Medfield’s most famous trailblazer – and long before the suffragette movement took hold.
Anti-Suffragist Sentiment Equally Strong
While Aug. 18, 1920, was a momentous day for American women when they finally gained the right to vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, it took more than 70 years of hard work, political persuasion, and multiple disappointments before women were legally deemed equals to men at the election box.
Surprisingly, on the opposing side of the issue were women who belonged to the Medfield Women’s Anti-Suffrage Association founded in 1916, with powerful names tied to its origins, including Hazel Hahn Mitchell and Marie McKenna Brown.
Mrs. Mitchell served as association president and was the wife of Granville C. Mitchell, vice president and treasurer of the E.V. Mitchell Company hat factory and a Medfield selectman; Mrs. Brown was the wife of Davenport Brown, a wealthy man engaged in real estate trusts.
“These were wealthy individuals who believed a woman’s place was in the home, and that if women were involved in politics, it would hurt that role,” said Town Historian Richard DeSorgher.
DeSorgher also theorized that wealthy socialites saw themselves as superior to the suffragettes pushing for voting rights, and that if women were allowed to vote, the “riff-raff” in towns might dominate and threaten their status. Other historians share his view.
Ironically, the Medfield anti-suffragist group met at the Brown home on Elm Street, famously known as the birthplace of Hannah Adams.
A Time of Overlapping Movements
Beyond social motivations, one must wonder if economic motivations may have also been behind Mitchell’s opposition to suffrage – especially at a time when an estimated 1,200 workers were employed by the hat factory, with a majority of them women.
Women who worked in mill or factory operations in the 1830s and into 1850s – and most notably in Lowell – became increasingly vocal about dissatisfaction with their working conditions to the point of staging well-publicized walkouts, circulating petitions, and lobbying the state legislature for change.
While the same degree of organized labor activity did not surface among Medfield hat factory workers until about 100 years later, it’s possible that during the peak years of factory operations (early 1900s until Great Depression) fear of an employee uprising may have crossed Mitchell’s mind.
“In this same period, women became involved with other social causes, including temperance and abolition. Nevertheless, how far could women take a social movement without the right to cast ballots? By the early 20th century, Massachusetts was a major battleground in the fight for suffrage,” writes Allison Horrocks, Ph.D., formerly a Lowell National Historical Park ranger, as published on the Tsongas Industrial History Center website.
Ultimately, as history has shown, and for the benefit of countless Americans, the fight for women’s voting and workplace rights have paid off in innumerable ways.
And right here in Medfield, residents can take pride in knowing that a summer Curtis Grove “picnic,” plus ongoing efforts by suffragettes who founded or participated in groups like Hannah Adams Woman’s Club and Medfield Historical Society, helped to advance the early women’s rights movement and the ultimate passage of the 19th Amendment.
Resources and credits:
Library of Congress – National American Woman Suffrage Association Records
Maria Mitchell Association – In Her Own Words
Primary Research – Timeline of Woman’s Suffrage in Massachusetts
Tsongas Industrial History Center — Mill Girls and the Suffrage Movement
Women in Industry (1910) – A Study in American Economic History
Boston Globe Daily – Sept. 8, 1875 “Medfield Woman Suffragists’ Picnic” article
Richard DeSorgher, Town Historian and author, “History of the Town of Medfield, Massachusetts — 1887-1925” and “This Old Town – On the Banks of the Charles River.”