This post uses biographies of women I’ve looked at for my suffrage research to see the range of ways classroom education work intersected with the suffrage movement in terms of life experience (rather than as impacting opinion on education policies, campaigning on campuses, or any arguments that education would/should be a requirement for voting). Others on the list had experience as music, elocution, or Sunday school teachers outside of typical classrooms, but I won’t include those in this post. Schools also were frequent venues for suffrage meetings and campaign events, see the page Places of Women’s Suffrage for more on those. Next the 1911 timeline.
The women are included in my Biographies of Women Suffrage pages; some have their own page and some are part of the alphabetical pages. The source citations will be in those biographies. In the biographical research I’ve done so far, I was more thorough in including names earlier in the alphabet and then narrowed my focus to more active suffragists as I went along. As I continue filling in the research, I’ll try to remember to make edits and updates to this post.
Edith M. Fitch — “Last week the Minnehaha county teachers’ institute unanimously adopted a resolution asking men to vote for the sufferage[sic] amendment in the fall election. The Pennington county institute did the same thing. When women get together and deliberate on this question they always ask for the ballot.” Dakota Farmers’ Leader (Canton SD), September 2, 1910.
In 1914, Mary Maguire Thomas spoke at the Davison County Courthouse for the Mitchell Franchise League — “‘It is strange,’ said Mrs. Thomas, ‘to think that the woman teacher, who gives your son lessons in civil government and history is not as capable of casting an intelligent ballot as the pupils she has taught.’” Mitchell Capital (SD), September 24, 1914, pg. 3, pg. 5.
Blanche Barber — “Women suffrage will result in an increase of education… Men’s unsuccessful attempt to idealize woman no longer satisfies or deceives her. She wishes to cease being parasitic, a creature of immunities and privileges. Women are rebelling against occupying a restricted, dependent position, and they are seeking an opportunity for growth.” Florence Hair — “I believe that I should have the right to vote… Because I am as well educated as the majority of men. Because I am as intelligent as the majority of men. And because it is unjust for men to delegate to themselves a right which there is absolutely no reason should not be mine also.” Both from: Woman’s West of the River Suffrage Number, Rapid City Daily Journal (SD), October 26, 1914.
[I’ll add to this if/when I can access additional sources. I welcome research suggestions if readers have any.]
Alpha Louise Mortenson (1887-1950) was born near Platte in Charles Mix County, then Dakota Territory, to Johan (John) Arnt and Anne Elizabeth Mortenson, both Norwegian immigrants. They had come to the U.S. in 1882, and were naturalized in 1887. In the 1900 census, she lived on her parents’ farm in Platte Township with her sisters Magdline, Anna, Edna, and Esther. At age 13, she was attending school. Her mother was recorded having lost one child, with five surviving. The 1906 and 1912 atlases for Charles Mix County noted that John Mortenson’s farm was the east half of Section 25 of Platte Township (T99 R68), just southeast of town. He had patented the northeast quarter first as a homestead in 1889. Alpha attended Jewell Lutheran College in Jewel, Iowa, for one year. The college had opened in 1894, and it later closed down in 1924.
She had commercial photography studios in Platte and Lake Andes in South Dakota, and in Lake Park, Minnesota. (She was not listed in the 1909 business directory for Platte. Either because she hadn’t started her business yet or hadn’t elected to be in the directory. Another photographer, H.L. Browning, was listed.) In 1910, she still lived on the farm, with her parents, younger sisters Annie and Edna (both high school students, graduated 1911), and a farmhand Rasmus Fosmoe(?), Norwegian and had immigrated in 1907. Alpha was then recorded as a photographer. In 1920, she lived in Platte with her parents and younger sister Edna, a teacher. She was recorded again as a photographer; her father recorded as a house carpenter. In 1930, she lived in Platte, recorded as single, living alone, and a photographer. In 1940, she owned her house (valued $750), lived alone, photographer, but also as widowed (census-taker’s assumption, or error…). In 1950, she was a resident patient at the Methodist State Hospital in Mitchell.
A collection of her photography is in the SD State Archives in Pierre under her own name, and some images with her studio as creator came up in search results as part of the Frank Blankenhagen (H2010-092) and Grebe Family (H2009-080) Collections also. Many of the photos in the Mortenson Collection are studio portraits, but there are a number that have the people at their house/property, with their horses or other animals, wide views of properties, and views of her own family. A few are of caskets/funerals as was fairly common in the period.
Olaf M. Norlie, School Calendar, 1824-1924, A Who’s Who Among Teachers in the Norwegian Lutheran Synods of America (University of Minnesota, 1924), 475. [Sister Edna’s bio.]
Following are my notes for the women listed in the 1909 state business directory for the city of Brookings: http://files.usgwarchives.net/sd/brookings/business/broo1909.txt. It includes four milliners, a music store manager, and an owner of a notions store. I added lists of women from the 1910 census who were recorded with an occupation, and the list is roughly sorted by occupation type. There are many more working women in the census than the business directory.
I have done similar posts before for some other South Dakota towns/cities. I’ve included what I could find doing biographical research through mainly online sources (for factor of time).
During other projects, I have come across examples of two women who were doctors and faced criminal charges for performing abortions that resulted in the patient’s death. So I became curious and did a more detailed search in LOC Chronicling America‘s newspaper collections for South Dakota from the SD State Archives. For a few of the cases, I had time to do a bit of additional online or archival research. Remember also, the newspapers may not have had full or accurate or unbiased information…
I started out searching South Dakota newspapers for euphemisms for abortion: “criminal operation” (also used for bank fraud/embezzlement/forgery) and “illegal operation” (most results about different situations, including financial crimes, drugs/alcohol, and others). That led me to about nineteen news stories (some reported by multiple articles/papers). Then I tried a search for ‘abortion’ itself, and there were 7113 results… That was too many for the time I had available, so I combined the term ‘abortion’ with ‘charge/charged’ (65 results), ‘arrest’ (14 results), ‘murder’ (13), ‘manslaughter’ (8, no SD items), ‘dr.’ (108), ‘doctor’ (9), ‘woman’ (33), and ‘lady’ (6) within 5 words. [For the search term ‘abortion,’ I also saw results for ‘abort,’ ‘abortive,’ ‘adoption,’ ‘short,’ ‘above,’ and ‘about’ come up because of the digital search process and variances in the newspaper type.]
My initial observations: most news mentions of abortion were related to allegations of a crime committed, usually against the doctor and usually because the woman died as a result of the procedure. There were some women doctors involved in cases, but more male doctors (more male doctors generally). Sometimes the case started with the death, but in some there was complaint brought by a family member of the woman or another doctor in the community. There were a few where the person blamed was not referred to as a doctor. There were also a few cases where the abortion procedure took place in a different city or across state lines. A couple items mentioned that the abortion was attempted with drugs/medicines, but usually the method was omitted from the articles.
Following are my notes for the women listed in the 1909 state business directory for the city of Vermillion: http://files.usgwarchives.net/sd/clay/business/verm-1909.txt. I have done similar posts before for some other South Dakota towns/cities. I’ve included what I could find doing biographical research through mainly online sources (for factor of time).
Inspired by the Dig: A History Podcast episode “Ghosting the Patriarchy,” I thought I’d see what there was about spiritualism as a movement in South Dakota.
I tried the search terms [within 5 words]: spirit medium (127 results), held seance (30 results), hold seance (24 results), “progressive spiritual” (1 result [same]), spiritualistic (844 results), seance (569 results), spiritualist (855 results), spiritual research (4 results), spiritualist research (3 results), and spiritual society (26 results). I did not complete searches for clairvoyant or palmist. Since I restrained myself by state borders, I did not include below a couple reports that were in SD newspapers but for events that were just outside the state in Ellendale ND and Beloit IA.
In the search results, most were reprinted stories from Eastern/Midwestern states (and a few from Western states), also many reprinted jokes. Sometimes the term “seance” was used for non-spiritualist political or social meetings. Many news items were in context of preaching against the movement or about exposing frauds. Most mediums who came to give speeches or demonstration were just on larger tour circuits. One resident medium was mentioned briefly, Emma Hutt-Moore (or Nutt-Moore) in Mitchell, and there were three advertisements for clairvoyants/palmists/mediums in Aberdeen, Sioux Falls, and Madison. There were also brief mentions of a few different Spiritualist society/associations formed for short times in Sioux Falls, Mitchell, and Aberdeen. However, spiritualism appears to not have had a widespread or strong following in South Dakota.
In 1880, a “spiritualistic seance was held in a Capital street barber shop” in Yankton for a circle of attendees who were reportedly satisfied with the “phenomena produced by restless spirits” [Press and Daily Dakotaian (Yankton SD), July 30, 1880].
“Alexandria’s Mind Reader” : From the Alexandria Herald, John Chase “a celebrated mind reader and a thorough spiritualist” claimed to be in communication with Alexander Hughes, a commissioner from Yankton, about financial (or political?) knowledge. (I can’t tell if this is a straight piece, or political satire…) [Press and Daily Dakotaian (Yankton SD), March 31, 1883, March 28, 1883].
A “Spiritualist healer” named Mrs. Wilson was spending a few days with Mrs. J.R. Hanson in Yankton, having come from Sioux City traveling with Mrs. Booge [Press and Daily Dakotaian (Yankton SD), July 25, 1884].
In 1884, Aubrey Delemain “the celebrated illusionist, spiritualist and mind reader” was booked to present at LaBelle’s Hall in Elk Point. Afterwards the local Courier editor printed that she was “a stupendous fraud” [Union County Courier (Elk Point SD), September 24, 1884, October 1, 1884].
I have found myself doing a lot of “women’s history,” especially with the suffrage centennials. As a field of the history profession, women’s history tells the stories of women–how they have impacted history and how history has impacted them. To my understanding (and I welcome thoughts and responses), women’s history first gained traction as a field in the 1960s-70s. As it matured, this scope was found insufficient for some questions. The emerging fields of gender history and queer history now also ask questions such as: How have man/woman, male/female, and masculine/feminine been defined over time? Who says, and why? What are the stories of people who lived outside and between those definitions? In the study of history today, there’s a lot of interest in questions of identity, presentation of identity, and body politics, as well as in the erasures in the historical record because of long histories of discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.
Queerness in the suffrage movement has started getting attention from historians like Dr. Wendy Rouse, and there are some amazing stories out there that are now finding visibility in the historic record. I’m only partway through my biographical research on the list of names I have for people involved (in some way) in the suffrage movement, but so far, there are a fair set of women who lived their lives single (which at the time could be sufficiently unusual for public comment) and two women who lived long-term with another single woman (I haven’t found anything yet to indicate whether platonic or romantic), Elizabeth Bradley with Fannie Zerbe and June Emry with Alice Montgomery.
During the history of suffrage in South Dakota, there were numerous arguments for and against suffrage that relied on assertions about gender roles, either to challenge them or to assure audiences that voting would not change traditional roles. Men who supported suffrage were sometimes feminized, or the anti-suffragists claimed that feminine men would result from women voting. In at least one case, the existence of “effeminate” men was lifted up by supporters of suffrage to claim that women voting wouldn’t change the status quo. Then, women who supported suffrage were at times denigrated as already masculine, and there was the supposition that voting and political engagement would make women more masculine who took part in those activities. So there were, in turn, a number of times that suffrage supporters defended the femininity of suffragists, or the suffragists themselves sought to overtly project femininity. As women and men participated in the suffrage movement, there was gender-focused public comment on their appearance, which continued for women who participated in running for public office.
With all that, my sense is that the majority of suffragists and suffrage campaigning in South Dakota generally stayed within acceptable gender and sexual norms of the time. It seemed fairly rare for individual suffragists to be demonized for their gender expression or sexuality. Some commentary even lifted up the femininity or propriety of South Dakota suffragists in comparison to more militant suffragists getting press on the East Coast or in Britain. Even if suffragists were pushing claims for women to have more space in the public arena, a voice in government, access to jobs, and equal pay, the gender boundary line seems to have generally remained solid for most people in the South Dakota suffrage movement.
Following are anecdotes from my research, suffragist biographies, and my synthesis on items that speak to the queer history of suffrage in South Dakota. I’ll add to this as I continue with my research. Also my note-taking has changed as I’ve gone on, so I suspect I missed things in the sources while taking my brief early notes. Also, I likely missed things because I’m not deeply trained in queer history… things I didn’t see, or saw but didn’t recognize. One of the best things about studying history—there’s always more to be done. I welcome your thoughts.
Following are my notes for the women listed in the 1909 state business directory for the city of Custer: http://files.usgwarchives.net/sd/custer/business/cust1909.txt. I have done similar posts before for some other South Dakota towns/cities. I’ve included what I could find doing biographical research through mainly online sources (for factor of time).
In the post are the women I pulled from the 1880 census as recorded with a particular occupation in districts in Hughes and Stanley Counties, and what I could find about their lives from a general online search, censuses and other records from Ancestry online (library access), and from newspapers on Chronicling America-Library of Congress. I looked at a couple local histories–they had good information for general context, but pitiful information about the women on my list.
Importantly, the majority of women enumerated were recorded with the term “wife,” “keeping house,” or “at home.” In this post, I’m admittedly perpetuating a bad historical habit of ignoring and hiding the labor of these women in their families and communities. It may need to be a spin-off post…
In 1880, the Pierre and Ft. Pierre area was on the edge of significant political, societal, and cultural margins. Ft. Pierre is one of the communities in the state that has seen white settlement for the longest continuous period, since 1817. However, it was on the western bank of the Missouri River it fell within the Great Sioux Reservation. The American government had instigated a number of treaties and measures that left Dakota and Yankton(ai) tribes with small reservations “East River” and the Lakota tribes with the land West River. In 1876-77, the U.S. government took the Black Hills out and opened it to settlement and mining development. In 1890, they broke up the remaining Great Sioux Reservation, leaving the Lakota tribes with much smaller areas for their own residence.
From 1810s-50s, there were several fur trading posts in the area, and in the 1830s-80s, there were a series of military posts. Fort Pierre became a (steam)boat port and trade center for people and goods moving to and from the military posts in the immediate area and those up the river. Steamboats started in use in 1832.
White people living in Stanley County in 1880 were either associated with military or mission installations, had married into native families and acquired rights of residence, or they were squatting. In 1876, the settlement had about 200 people, two hotels, a post office, stores, and saloons (operating illegally on the reservation, but there was no enforcement). The area around the mouth of the Bad River was full of freight goods getting off-loaded from boats and loaded onto wagons. Freighting was a seasonal occupation, and the town largely cleared out in the off-season. Fort Pierre in 1880 had 300 residents (plus several hundred more ‘transient residents’), and the Lakota objected. The federal government ‘investigated’ but determined that the community was necessary and embedded, serving as the freighting and trader center for the wagon road to Deadwood that had been established in 1877 by an Act of Congress. Of the government-approved “wagon trails,” the Fort Pierre to Deadwood was the busiest because the distance across the reservation was shortest. Residents in Fort Pierre had occupations such as freighter/teamster, working with shipping goods and people across the reservation, or stock raiser, likely working with cattle for local foodstuffs and oxen for wagon teams. Two-thirds of the buildings were built with log, and one third with frame construction.
[2022] A description of Fort Pierre in the continuation of “Up the Missouri. The Diary of a Passenger on the Steamer C.K. Peck” for the Daily Press and Dakotaian (Yankton SD), July 24, 1879.
On the east bank of the river, the settlement at Pierre was miniscule. Only just from 1877 or so when the gold rush traffic started, there was one log “road ranch”–a house and bunkhouse run by the Kirleys (as below)–and a transient camp of people (mostly men) waiting for steamboat transportation across the river to go to the Black Hills. One account of the population in the spring of 1880 was five men and three wives. Yet, it proved a transitional year. The first frame-built business was erected in May 1880, and by July, there were eighteen houses. The Chicago & Northwestern Railroad was building towards that point, and the population slowly grew in anticipation. Some of the men running hotels and freight depots in Fort Pierre moved their operations across the river. Residents organized a town government for Pierre in October 1880. The first train arrived in November. That first winter was hard — heavy snows blocked food and supplies reaching them by railroad or river from December 20, 1880 to May 8, 1881. Material had to be issued from nearby Fort Sully. In March 1881, there was an ice gorge at Farm Island and the Missouri River flooded severely, impacting Fort Pierre most and further favoring development in Pierre later that summer. By 1887, Fort Pierre’s population had dipped below 200.
E. Frank Peterson, Historical Atlas of South Dakota (1904).
The counties included two religious mission posts to the native tribes in the area. The Oahe Mission at Peoria Bottom was run by the Riggs family of the Congregational church, established in 1873. The St. John’s Mission by Fort Bennett was established by the Episcopal church. Both operated central boarding schools, and Oahe had outpost day schools as well. More in the respective sections below.
My thanks to former co-worker Ken Stewart for guidance on the history of this early period.
General sources:
Hughes County History. County Superintendent of Schools, 1937.
Harold H. Schuler, A Bridge Apart: History of Early Pierre and Fort Pierre. Pierre SD: State Publishing Co., 1987.
In the previous posts I have worked on about South Dakota women in business or professions, a great number of those women listed in those books, directories, and newspapers have been in millinery work. But, I quite honestly don’t know much about millinery work. I’ve seen ads with lists of the types of goods for sale, and feel like I have a basic idea how retail worked in the late 19th and early 20th century, but if pressed for specifics of what their daily workload was, how they ran the businesses, who their employees were, who their customers were… I would find that difficult.
So here, I’m going to start taking additional notes about millinery work in South Dakota (and maybe some general material. I’ll record things by research ‘session,’ so I’ll just keeping adding new material to the end whenever I find something helpful–at least helpful to me, hopefully to others as well. Please feel free to comment with questions or suggestions.
For the women profiled in my earlier posts, I usually have “professional women” or “women in business” as the title, you can search those in the sidebar. Below, I’m going to ‘bold’ any additional women named in these sources. Maybe I’ll get the chance to look at them closer someday.
History in South Dakota 