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June 28, 2009
WOLF CREEK HERITAGE MUSEUM NOTES by Virginia Scott MUSEUM HAPPENINGS Well, I think I am back to my normal routine (knock on wood). My family is back to normal as normal goes these days and I appreciate all your thoughts and good wishes. The museum ladies are busy cleaning and building a list of items we can contribute to a community wide garage sale in August. Stay tuned for the exact date and details later this month. The museum will host the sale with anyone who wants to participate can buy a table and sale your stuff. It should be fun and enable us to clean our closets. We have also completed our calendar for the year. A revised calendar is available here at the museum , we can mail upon request and I will publish it in our newsletter. Unfortunately, I am still without my computer which had to be sent back to the manufacturer for a makeover. When I am back to normal I will try to bring us up to date. REMINDER: MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR SATURDAY ,JULY 18 FROM 4PM TO 7PM , RECEPTION FOR JEAN WEIS AND FRIENDS, ALSO A BOOKSIGNING FOR ELAINE LITTAU AND HER NEW BOOKS. HISTORICAL MUSINGS Last column, I talked about Carrie Nation and the temperance movement. Another group of ladies in that same period were the suffragists fighting for the right to vote for women. Two important events happened this week of June in 1918 and 1919 in Texas. In 1918, Horense Sparks Ward became the first woman in Harris County to register to vote. She married Houston lawyer William Henry Ward in 1908. In 1910 she became the first woman admitted to the Texas state bar. Ward worked tirelessly in support of women's rights and penned moving newspaper essays and pamphlets for that cause. She was instrumental in the passage of the Married Woman's Property Law of 1913 by the Texas Legislature and she campaigned with suffragist Minnie Fisher Cunningham for enfranchisement. Texas women won an important victory in 1918 when the legislature permitted them to vote in primary elections. In a short span of less than three weeks, 386,000 women across the state registered to vote, and Hortense led the way. In 1919, The Texas Senate ratified the national amendment granting women the right to vote. Texas thus became the first Southern state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and the ninth in the nation. Woman suffrage had been discussed in Texas as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1868. The short-lived Texas Equal Rights Association (1893-96) helped organizae a suffrage movement. The Texas Equal Suffrage Association , state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association led the fight for suffrage from 1913 on, with the victory in 1918 as described above, feelings were running strong on both sides of the issue, with some women joining the Assocaition Opposed to Woman Suffrage.However, In June 1919 a woman suffrage amendment was sent to the states for approval. The Texas House passed the amendment on June 23 and the Texas Senate on June 28. ( source: Handbook of Texas online by the Texas State Historical Association ) The spirit of these women continues in Texas Women and this week with the Fourth of July is an excellent time for daughters and granddaughters to visit with their mother and grandmothers about women's rights and freedoms that our generations have had to fight for in our homes , workplace, and country. As with freedom in general , we sometimes take our freedoms for granted. Enjoy your Fourth of July and think about the cost that this holiday commerates. I leave you with a little poem written by W.E. Meredith in 1909 a example of our freedoms.
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