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Indiana's First Woman's Rights Convention

Location: 2224 Cumberland Road/US 40 & Davis Street, Dublin. (Wayne County, Indiana)

Installed: 2003 Indiana Historical Bureau, Indiana Women's History Association, Indiana Commission for Women, and Town of Dublin

ID# : 89.2003.1

Visit the Indiana History Blog to learn about Hoosier women's suffrage automobile tours.

Text

Side one:

A convention was called for by reform-minded Congregational Friends meeting at Greensboro, Henry County, January 1851. Convention held October 14-15, 1851 at Dublin adopted resolutions for political, social, and financial rights for women. Women and men who favored abolition, temperance, and suffrage attended.

Side two:

The 1852 convention formed Indiana Woman's Rights Association to promote united action for woman's rights. Association's 1853 convention demanded equality in all political rights and functions. It voted to be auxiliary to American Woman Suffrage Association 1870. It became Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association.

Keywords

Women, Politics

Annotated Text

A convention was called for by reform-minded Congregational Friends meeting at Greensboro, Henry County, January 1851. Convention held October 14-15, 1851 at Dublin adopted resolutions for political, social, and financial rights for women. Women and men who favored abolition, temperance, and suffrage attended.(3)

The 1852 convention formed Indiana Woman's Rights Association to promote united action for woman's rights.(4) Association's 1853 convention demanded equality in all political rights and functions.(5) It voted to be auxiliary to American Woman Suffrage Association 1870. It became Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association.(6)

Notes:

(1) Ellen D. Swain, "From Benevolence to Reform: The Expanding Career of Mrs. Rhoda M. Coffin, " Indiana Magazine of History, 97 (2001), 201; Indiana True Democrat, September 25, 1851.

(2) Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Records, typescript, Manuscript Section, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library, October 14, 1851 (Original and transcribed Association records are in the William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SCI1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives); Indiana True Democrat, September 25, 1851.

(3) Thomas D. Hamm, The Anti-Slavery Movement in Henry Co. Indiana, (New Castle, Ind., 1987, 2nd. ed.), 21, 23-25, 73; Thomas D. Hamm, God's Government Begun, the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform, 1842-1846 (Bloomington, Indiana, 1995), pp. 111-12, 217-18; Inez Haynes Irwin, Angels and Amazons: A Hundred Years of American Women (Garden City, NY, 1933), 91-92.

(4) Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Records, October 15-16, 1852.

(5) Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Records, October 12, 1853.

(6) Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Records, June 9, 1869, June 9, 1870, May 26, 1875.