Amanda Way

[i] “Amanda Way,” 1850 United States Federal Census, Winchester, Indiana, 87A, accessed October 4, 2011 through ancestry.com,” “Amanda Way,” 1870 United States Federal Census, Indianapolis Ward 6 (2^nd Enum), Indiana, 392B, accessed October 3, 2011 through ancestry.com; “Amanda M. Way,” 1900 United States Federal Census, Boise Ward 1, Idaho, 12B, accessed October 4, 2011 through ancestry.com; “Obituary,” Pacific Friend, March 1914, p. 14, submitted by applicant; “Amanda M. Way,” Kansas Settlers, 1854-1879, 251, accessed October 3, 2011 through ancestry.com; Way, Mary Elizabeth, Way Family: John and Mary (Long) Way of Nantucket with Notes on Other Way Families, 1969, p. 135.

The census records from 1850 through 1910 disagree and estimate Way’s birth year as about 1828, 1829, and 1830. The 1870 and 1900 censuses give the year 1828. Way’s obituary in the Pacific Friend, her Kansas Settlers record, and the Way Family genealogy state that Way was born July 10, 1828, in Winchester, Randolph County, Indiana.

[ii] “Obituary,” Pacific Friend, March 1914, p. 14, submitted by applicant; Way, Mary Elizabeth, Way Family: John and Mary (Long) Way of Nantucket with Notes on Other Way Families, 1969, p. 83, 134.

Way’s obituary in the Pacific Friend states that “she was of Quaker parentage and has been most of her life an active Friend.” The entries on her and her family in the Way Family genealogy list her parents, Matthew and Hannah (Martin) Way as members of the Cherry Grove monthly meeting in Randolph County, Indiana and state that the “Way family were Friends from the earliest period.”

[iii] Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Record Book, 1851-1886 , William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SC 1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives;Journal of the Indiana State Senate during the Forty-Seventh Session of the General Assembly (Indianapolis: R.J. Bright, 1871), http://www.archive.org/details/journalofindiana1871indi. See footnotes 5 and 15 for further information.

The Indiana Woman’s Suffrage Association records show that Way offered a resolution to petition the legislature for women’s right to vote in Indiana as early as 1857: “resolved, that we memorialize our legislature at its next session to grant women the elective franchise, and that there be petitions circulated throughout the state to solicit signers of both men and women, and that there be a committee appointed to present said petition and to urge its claims before that honorable body.” The “Presentation of Petitions to the Legislature in 1871” reports that “petitions were [again] circulated in various parts of the state asking the right of suffrage for women and at the meeting of the Legislature in January 1871, Miss Amanda M. Way and Mrs. Emi B. Swank were appointed by the President of the association to present the prayers of the petitioners in a memorial to the Legislature.”

[iv] “City News,” Fort Wayne Gazette, July 26, 1883, p. 5, accessed October 3, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Good Templar Meeting,” National Republican, May 26, 1884, p. 4, accessed November 22, 2011 through Chronicling America; “Templars at Chicago,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 28, 1893, p. 7, accessed September 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com. See footnotes 12 and 13 for further information.

[v] “Women’s Rights Convention,” Indiana True Democrat, September 25, 1851; “Woman’s Rights Convention,”Indiana True Democrat, October 30, 1851; “Women’s Convention in Indiana,” Liberator, November 7, 1851, p. 3; Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Record Book, 1851-1886, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SC 1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives, October 14-15, 1851, October 15-16, 1852; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, ed. History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 1889, p. 311-312; “Abolitionism Plainly Spoken,” Brookville Indiana American, January 17, 1851, p. 2; For more information see: “Franchise Convention Recalls Woman’s First Fight for Ballot,” Indianapolis Star, May 3, 1914, p. 18, accessed September 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; Hoagland, Merica, “Indiana Woman’s Franchise, 1816-1916,” Indiana, Past and Present, September 1914, p. 12, Indiana State Library Clipping File; Osborn, Elizabeth R. and Jill Chambers, Indiana Women: 150 Years of Raised Voices: Sesquicentennial of Indiana’s Woman’s Rights Convention, Indiana Women’s History Association, Inc., 2001; “Indiana’s First Woman’s Rights Convention,” Indiana Historical Bureau, historical marker, 2003, http://www.in.gov/history/markers/26.htm.

According to the 1851 Indiana True Democrat, the men and women of Indiana, while at a meeting of the Congregational Friends in Greensboro in January 1851, called for a convention “to consult upon, and adopt measures for, the removal of the various disabilities, political, social, religious, legal and pecuniary to which women, as a class, are subjected, and from which results so much misery, degradation and crime.” This convention was Indiana’s first Woman’s Rights Convention and was held in Dublin, Wayne County, Indiana in October 1851. Way is listed among the names of those who issued the call and helped organize it, as detailed in both the 1851 Indiana True Democrat and the October 1851 meeting minutes of the Indiana Woman’s Rights Association. Secondary sources, including an Indianapolis Star article from May 1914 and an Indiana, Past and Present article from September 1914 report that the Greensboro meeting was an anti-slavery meeting. IHB staff has examined anti-slavery newspapers of the time but has located no reference to the Congregational Friends or Amanda Way.

The meeting minutes for Indiana’s first Woman’s Rights Convention, dated October 14-15, 1851, provided the preamble and constitution for the organization. Article 1 stated that “this society shall be known by the name of the Indiana Woman’s Rights Association.” According to the records, Amanda Way served as vice president of the organization that first year and gave the opening address of the convention. At the 1852 meeting held in Richmond, Indiana, members agreed to a permanent Indiana Woman’s Rights Association; this society met annually from that point through 1859. In addition to vice president, Way’s positions in the organization included president, treasurer, and secretary. She also served on numerous committees, including the finance, business, nominating, and ways and means committees.

[vi] “Another Man Murdered,” Fort Wayne Times, April 5, 1854, n.p. (accessed November 3, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com); “Another Murder – A Summary Prohibitory Law,” Free Democrat, April 6, 1854, n.p., submitted by applicant; “Finale of the Winchester Case,” Fort Wayne Standard, September 14, 1854 (copied from Indiana Historical Bureau files from Randolph County Quakers marker); “Early Randolph County Temperance Work Led by Miss Amanda M. Way,” Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram, February 10, 1923, p. 14.

In April 1854, Indiana newspapers reported that forty or fifty women in Winchester, Indiana had assembled and marched to the grocery stores and drugstores of the town requesting that their owners sign a pledge agreeing “Not to sell any more liquor in Winchester.” When one owner, William Page, refused the pledge, the ladies “chopped his door down, knocked in his window, rolled the barrels [of liquor] into the street and poured his whiskey out.” Page took the women to trial for their actions. The Fort Wayne Standard recounts this story and includes a letter from Amanda Way to L.M. Ninde regarding the trial. In it, she states “We were prosecuted for malicious trespass” and includes herself among the witnesses for the defendants. The jury ruled the women “Not Guilty.” A 1923 article in the Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram gives an even earlier account of a whisky riot involving Amanda Way in 1847. IHB staff has not located any additional primary sources regarding the event, which Way was rumored to be the leader of.

[vii] “An Act Granting a Pension to Amanda M. Way, as Army Nurse,” in the Statutes at Large of the United States of America fromDecember 1895, to March 1897, vol. 29, 1897; “Amanda M. Way,” Civil War Pension Index: General Index to Pension Files, 1861-1934; Los Angeles Herald, December 18, 1895, p. 8, accessed through Chronicling America; Carroll Sentinel, March 28, 1896, p. 4, accessed October 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Mr. Kenney Sworn In-Senate Passes Fifty and the House Sixty-One Pension Bills,” Sun, February 6, 1897, p. 3, accessed through Chronicling America; “Sawtelle Miscellanies,” Los Angeles Herald, April 26, 1905, p. 5, accessed through Chronicling America; Mitchell, William Ansel, Linn County, Kansas, A History, 1928, accessed October 3, 2011 through GoogleBooks; Seigel, Peggy Brase, “She Went to War: Indiana Women Nurses in the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History, 86 (March 1990): 1-27.

The Statutes at Large of the United States of America from December 1895, to March 1897, state that Way was awarded a pension on March 1, 1897 for her service as a nurse in the Civil War. An article in the Sun that year reported that “a bill was passed granting a pension of $12 a month to Amanda M. Way.” According to the 1905 Los Angeles Herald, Way spoke about the scenes and events of the war while at a meeting of the Prohibition Alliance in April 1905. In Linn County, Kansas, a History, William Mitchell details her nursing work in Kansas in 1864, and states that “she had spent most of the preceding three years in the hospitals and on the battlefields of the South” (p. 311).

[viii] Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Record Book, 1851-1886 , William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SC 1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives), June 8-9, 1869.

According to the 1869 meeting minutes for the Indiana Woman’s Rights Association, Way served as president and chairman of the executive committee of the 1869 convention. She stated “that a Woman’s Rights Association was organized in Indiana in 1851, which had held annual meetings until the breaking out of the late war, and that war being now over the members deemed it proper to resume the work which has been interrupted and had therefore called this meeting.” Resolutions adopted at the 1869 meeting amended the organization’s constitution, changing the name to the Indiana Woman’s Suffrage Association.

[ix] Winchester Journal , February 21, 1872, n.p., submitted by applicant; “W.C.T.U.,” Fort Wayne Gazette, July 26, 1883, p. 5 (accessed October 3, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com); Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Record Book, 1851-1886, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SC 1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives), November 24, 1875.

[x] Winchester Preparative Meeting Minutes, 1880-1884, typescript, accessed November 14, 2011 through http://www.winchesterfriendschurch.org/mmminutes.htm, July 30, 1884. The Meeting Minutes state that “Amanda Way requests to be joined in membership with Friends. The Meeting unites in forwarding her name to Monthly Meeting;” “Oregon Yearly Meeting” American Friend, vol. 6, no. 32, August 10, 1899, in American Friend: Five Years Meeting (Society of Friends), p. 760, accessed through GoogleBooks. Charles R. Scott writes about resigning his pastorate at Salem and leaving for service in the field in Boise, stating “I found a few Friends organized into a monthly meeting under the efficient labors of Amanda M. Way forming a nucleus for what promises to be in the near future, under God’s blessing, a work of no small magnitude;” “News from the Field,” American Friend, March 30, 1899, p. 303, submitted by applicant; American Friend, October 31, 1901, n.p, submitted by applicant; American Friend, April 17, 1902, n.p., submitted by applicant; “Indiana Yearly Meeting,” Christian Worker, September 4, 1884, submitted by applicant; Christian Worker, March 19, 1885, n.p., submitted by applicant.

Way returned to the Society of Friends after the Methodist Episcopal church revoked the right for women to preach. She spoke frequently and was active in the Friends’ meetings, particularly in Idaho.

[xi] “Annual Meeting of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association,” Saline County Journal, October 29, 1891, p. 3, accessed through Chronicling America; “Woman Suffrage: Meeting of the National Convention at Cleveland, Ohio-Report of the Executive Committee-Progress of the Movement-Financial Condition,” New York Times, November 23, 1870, p. 1, accessed through ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times; Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Record Book, 1851-1886, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SC 1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives.

[xii] “Amanda M. Way,” Kansas Settlers, 1854-1879, 251, accessed October 3, 2011 through ancestry.com; “Amanda Way,” 1880 United States Federal Census, Lawrence, Kansas, 83B, accessed October 3, 2011 through ancestry.com; “Journal State Jottings,” Logansport Journal, June 2, 1876, p. 2; “Suburban,” Fort Wayne Gazette, August 25, 1883, p. 5, accessed October 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Good Templar Meeting,” National Republican, May 26, 1884, p. 4, accessed November 22, 2011 through Chronicling America; Logansport Journal, August 12, 1887, p. 4, accessed November 7, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Templars at Chicago,” Winnipeg Free Press, June 28, 1893, p. 7, accessed September 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “I.O.G.T.’s Here,” Centralia News-Examiner, July 21, 1905, p. 1, accessed October 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “The Good Templars,” Centralia News-Examiner, July 28, 1905, p. 1, 5, accessed October 20, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com.

Way moved to Kansas in October 1876 according to her Kansas Settlers record, but continued to return to Indiana in the years after the move, working with the Indiana Woman’s Suffrage Association and speaking on temperance. Sources are unclear, but circa 1900, Way moved to Idaho and later settled in California. The 1880 census lists Way’s occupation as a temperance lecturer and she traveled widely in her work for the movement. Articles in the Logansport Journal and National Republican report on her attendance and involvement at meetings of the Independent Order of Good Templars (I.O.G.T.) in Louisville, Kentucky and Washington, D.C. An 1893 article in the Winnipeg Free Press describes her work at the World’s Temperance Congress in Chicago and refers to Way as “the grandmother of the order.” Articles from the Centralia News-Examiner in 1905 list her as being present at the I.O.G.T.’s annual session in Washington that year, stating that “among the more prominent people present are Miss Amanda Way, Right Grand Templar and Past Grand templar of Kansas and Idaho.”

[xiii] “Grand Lodge Session,” Dawson’s Fort Wayne Daily Times, October 25, 1860, p. 6; “Journal of Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Session of the Right Worthy Grand Lodge of North America (I.O. of Good Templars) held in Detroit, Michigan, May 28^th, 29^th, and 30^th, 1867,” in Ladies’ Repository: A Universalist Monthly Magazine for the Home Circle, vol. 37 (Boston: N.E.U. Publishing House, 1867); “Journal State Jottings,” Logansport Journal, June 2, 1876, p. 2; “Recent Reflections,” Abilene Weekly Reflector, February 14, 1889, accessed November 22, 2011 through Chronicling America; “Local Matters,” Iola Register, September 4, 1891, p. 5, accessed October 20, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Our Grand Lodge Session,” New York Templar, 28(5), March 15, 1909, p. 6, accessed through GoogleBooks; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, ed. History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1, 1889, p. 311-312.

Way did much of her temperance work through the Independent Order of Good Templars (I.O.G.T.), serving leadership positions in the organization throughout much of her life. The Iola Register of 1891 describes how “Way has been connected with the organization for nearly forty years and is thoroughly conversed with the methods and results of its work.” Newspaper articles in Indiana and Kansas publications provide details on her involvement and the positions she held, including Grand Worthy Chief (G.W.C.), Grand Deputy, Right Worthy Grand Vice-Templar (R.W.G.V.T.), Right Worthy Grand Templar (R.W.G.T.), and Past Grand Worthy Chief Templar (P.G.W.C.T.). Way also served as Grand Worthy Chief Templar (G.W.C.T.), the highest position within the I.O.G.T.

[xiv] “W.C.T.U. District Convention,” Iola Register, September 21, 1888, p. 4, accessed October 12, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Local Matters,” Iola Register, April 26, 1889, p. 5, accessed October 20, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; Centralia News-Examiner, July 28, 1905, p. 5, accessed October 20, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Grand Lodge of Good Templars,” Record-Union, October 2, 1895, p. 3, accessed through Chronicling America; Saline County Journal, August 28, 1879, journal supplement, accessed through Chronicling America; Blackmar, Frank W. “Woman’s Christian Temperance Union,” Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, Etc., vol. 2, (Chicago: Standard Publishing Company, 1912), transcribed by Carolyn Ward, 2002, accessed through GoogleBooks.

[xv] Tomlinson, William P., ed. “Woman Suffrage Call,” Woman’s Advocate, vol. 2, November 1869, electronic edition, accessed December 28, 2011 through http://womenwriters.library.emory.edu/ advocacy/content.php?level=div&id=advocate2_520&document=advocate2 ; Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association Record Book, 1851-1886, William Henry Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, SC 1792, Department of Manuscripts and Archives), June 9, 1870.

The Woman’s Advocate of November 1869 includes Amanda Way’s name among a list of those who sought to organize an American Woman Suffrage Association. A delegate convention was held in Cleveland, Ohio in November 1869. According to the 1870 meeting minutes for the Indiana Woman’s Suffrage Association, Way requested that Indiana’s organization be made auxiliary to the American Woman’s Suffrage Association.

[xvi] “Temperance: Meeting of the National Convention,” Chicago Tribune, September 3, 1869, p. 2, col. 9, accessed January 10, 2012 through Chicago Tribune; “The Temperance Party,” Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1869, p. 2, col. 1, accessed January 10, 2012; “Temperance: A Temperance Political Party,” Independent…Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts, September 9, 1869, p. 2; Ness, Immanuel and James Ciment, ed. “Prohibition Party,” Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America, vol. 2 (M.E. Sharpe Reference, 1998), p. 475-481; Andersen, Lisa. “‘Give the Ladies a Chance’: Gender and Partisanship in the Prohibition Party, 1869-1912,” Journal of Women’s History, 23(2) (2011): 137-161.

The Chicago Tribune of September 3, 1869 lists Way as being present at the National Temperance Convention held in Chicago of that month. According to the Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America, “five hundred delegates from twenty different states showed up to make political history” and organized the Temperance Party. Way was among those who spoke at the convention and the Chicago Tribune recorded her speech, stating “she said although persons said that if women took part in political meetings they would be contaminated, yet she felt no less pure or less womanly after taking part in the convention. Women would go hand in hand with the Temperance party.” The Temperance Party changed its name to the Prohibition Party in 1873.

[xvii] “Amanda Way,” 1900 United States Federal Census, Boise Ward 1, Ada, Idaho, 12B, accessed October 3, 2011 through ancestry.com,” Warren Tribune, April 20, 1900, p. 4, accessed November 7, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “Talk About Women,” Omaha Daily Bee, April 22, 1900, accessed November 21, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; Webster City Tribune, April 27, 1900 accessed October 20, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; “She Would Go To Congress: Miss Amanda Way, of Idaho, Who Has Had an Interesting Career,” News, May 5, 1900 accessed September 27, 2011 through newspaperarchive.com; History of Idaho: the Gem of the Mountains, vol. 1-3 (Chicago, IL: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1920), accessed October 6, 2011 through ancestry.com, p. 256.

[xviii] “Amanda Way,” 1910 United States Federal Census, Los Angeles, California, 15B, accessed October 4, 2011 through ancestry.com,” “Obituary,” Pacific Friend, March 1914, p. 14, submitted by applicant. The obituary states that Way died February 24, 1914 in Whittier, California; “Obituary of Amanda [M.] Way,” Clyde Republican, March 12, 1914, typescript, accessed November 3, 2011 through KSGenWeb Digital Library.