The National Park Service and the 19th Amendment

By Suzan Younger

“What a lot of people don’t realize, is that the story of the Homestead Act of 1862 is closely connected to the story of women’s suffrage. Nearly all the states granting women full voting rights prior to the Nineteenth Amendment gave away land under the Homestead Act. Women homesteading in these states participated in local, statewide, and national suffrage networks, and as the ranks of land- owning women swelled between 1862 and 1920, and it was these homesteading women who led the way to the 19th Amendment.” – Jonathan Fairchild, Historian, Homestead National Monument of America.

I met Jonathan Fairchild in the National Parks Service booth at RootsTech 2020. He surprised me with the fact that women represented about ten percent of the homestead claims. Women claimed land in their own names and it’s no coincidence that much of that land was in western states where state legislatures led the way for woman suffrage. As a result of the Homestead Act of 1862, single women became landowners. As landowners, these women fueled the suffrage movement, pressing for participation in local government. That meant the right to vote. You can read Jonathan Fairchild’s full article “Planted in the Soil: The Homestead Act, Women Homesteaders, and the 19th Amendment” here.

Another article on the National Park Services’ website gives a timeline of when women won the vote in the western states and territories. “Woman Suffrage in the West” by Jennifer Helton will provide you a concise history of the relevant dates. On December 10, 1869, women in Wyoming Territory were the first to receive the vote and that right continued with statehood in 1890. Esther Morris became the first woman in the United States to serve as a judge and Amalia Post was one of the first to serve on a jury. Both were suffrage leaders in Wyoming Territory. This changed the records left by women and should give you clues of when and where you can begin searching. Be sure to read the National Park Service’s main webpage on the 19th Amendment with additional links to resources.

I hope you will take the opportunity on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to insert this historic event into your family tree. When I added dates for woman’s suffrage to the timeline for women in my tree, it brought home how close this event is to my own history. My grandmother, living in Oklahoma in 1918, was 30 years old when she received the right to vote. Her mother was 55 years old and all five of her daughters (my aunts) were born before women could vote. My 32-year old grandmother in New Mexico had to wait another two years, until the ratification of the19th Amendment; her mother was 62 years old at that time. I knew eight of these women. Do you have stories about the women in your family and the suffrage movement? Now is a good time to preserve them; write them down and share them with family.

Image credit: Get Out the Vote activists used advertising and education campaigns to boost women’s flagging turnout in the early 1920s. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, local advocates asked women to demonstrate that they had registered to vote by displaying window posters like the one above. Grand Rapids Americanization Society, c. 1924, from the collections of the National Museum of American History.