Grace Raymond Hebard - Suffragist

Suffragist

National suffragists heralded Wyoming when on Dec. 10, 1869, territorial Gov. John A. Campbell signed the suffrage act into law. Suffragists were not so celebratory two years later when legislators seeking to repeal women's enfranchisement failed by a single vote, according to historian Phil Roberts. Roberts cites the late T.A. Larson's research that found suffrage detractors feared women voters would seek Sunday closing of saloons. Yet, Hebard in a 1920 interview with the New York Tribune failed to account for opposition to women's suffrage in Wyoming, noting:

"I never before saw an anti-suffragist. You know, out in Wyoming we have had woman suffrage for fifty years, and there is no such thing as an anti-suffrage man in our state -- much less a woman."

Yet it was because of such anti-suffragists that Esther Hobart Morris made history for women in Wyoming in 1870 when she received an appointment as the nation's first female justice of the peace. Morris' historic posting in South Pass City, a mining town in Central Wyoming, followed the previous justice resigning in protest of Wyoming's suffrage legislation. Hebard spent many years advancing a claim that can be traced back to her trail marking companion H.G. Nickerson that Morris was an instigator and co-author of that legislation. That claim is considered false by some recent researchers.

Hebard and Nickerson erected a rock cairn monument in 1920 near Morris' South Pass City cabin as a crude memorial. A granite marker latter replaced the cairn with an inscription identifying Morris as co-author of Wyoming's suffrage bill. The Wyoming Division of State Park's and Historic Sites has tried to correct the record noting that "recent studies indicate that Bright was the only author of the suffrage bill." Author Virginia Scharff reads more than imperfect history into Hebard's statements concerning Morris. Scharff sees Hebard's portrayal of Morris as a suffragist as being rendered “in her own image."

Being the first of western territories or states to adopt women's suffrage placed Wyoming in the national spotlight. National suffragists in subsequent years found a potent symbol in Wyoming enfranchising women as states voted on the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting suffrage to women. Carrie Chapman Catt, who was president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, incorrectly claimed that Wyoming "gave so much evidence of positive good to the community arising from the votes of women that she became the direct cause of the establishment of woman suffrage in all of the surrounding states." Larson challenged such broad generalization noting that there is "no short, simple, all-encompassing explanation for the West's priority in woman suffrage."

If support for social justice as the national suffragists claimed did not fully explain Wyoming's lead role in suffrage, what did? One factor was the prospect of free advertising that lawmakers expected to arise following the passage of the territorial suffrage bill, according to Larson. The reasoning ran that the national attention would attract settlers, especially women. The record is unclear if Wyoming territorial adoption of suffrage influenced Hebard's decision to migrate to Wyoming in 1882.

Just as suffragist found an ideal symbol in Wyoming for their campaign, so too did Catt and others laud the feminist role of Hebard. Suffragists were eager to "hold her up as an example of the finest type of American womanhood," according to former Wyoming state historian Agnes Wright Spring. The fact that Hebard as a pathbreaker for women just happened to live in Laramie bolstered the credentials for her as a role model. For Laramie was home to the nation's first vote cast by a woman and where women first sat on a jury. Both historic events took place in 1870, before Hebard had finished her studies in Iowa.

Yet Hebard established her own standing as a suffragist when she petitioned the Wyoming constitutional convention to adopt a suffrage clause in advance of Wyoming entering the Union July 10, 1890. Moreover, national suffragists tapped Hebard to participate in the National American Woman Suffrage Association and later as a member of the Suffrage Emergency Brigade. The latter group lobbied Connecticut's governor for the state's legislature to become the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. Subsequently, Hebard was among the select few who spoke at the 1920 suffragist celebration in Chicago following passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Hebard's association with national suffragist leader Catt allowed Hebard to achieve an "academic coup d'etat" in 1921. Hebard teamed up with Professor June Downey to convince faculty members to award the University of Wyoming's first honorary degree to Carrie Chapman Catt. Catt came to Laramie to receive the university honor and to present the baccalaureate address. The imagery of Catt appearing in Laramie where women voters and jurists made history would not have been lost on the suffragists. In addition, Catt was at the forefront of a one-year anniversary celebration of the 19th Amendment later that summer in New York City. Catt, following the suffrage victory, turned her focus to the newly-established League of Women Voters. Hebard telegraphed Catt at the headquarters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association:

"Congratulations to you on this the first anniversary of the birth of national suffrage. I thank you for the Tennessee touchdown which scored victory."