User:Editor0904/Mary Sperry

Mary Sperry was one of the leading suffragists in the state of California, specifically San Francisco, and was personally supported by noted suffragist Susan B. Anthony. '''Mary Sperry also worked alongside Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Shaw. '''

Mary Sperry was actively involved in the failed 1896 campaign for women's suffrage in California. While serving as treasurer to the state suffrage association, for seven years , Sperry wrote opinion articles advocating for the passage of what was known as Amendment 6. Much of her work was organized from Market Street in San Francisco. National suffragist Anna Howard Shaw was quoted on this failed campaign, in 1896, as saying "it was not a Waterloo; it was Bunker Hill." '''The Susan B. Anthony Club was formed in Mary Sperry's home shortly after the campaign failed; she served as the club's president for many years. '''

The California Equal Suffrage Association was incorporated in 1904. Sperry was involved in this organization from on beginning and worked with many other California suffragists including Gail Laughlin, Ellen C. Sargent, Alice L. Park and Minora Kibbe. In October of 1907, Mary Sperry gave an address at the California Equal Suffrage Association's annual conference in Oakland; she explained that the suffrage movement was a "progressive movement, and must go on to equality". On October 3, 1908, Sperry was was unanimously re-elected as the organization's president for a seventh year in a row.

Sperry was politically active in the 1911 campaign for women's suffrage in California. That year she served as president of the Susan B. Anthony Club. She served as president of the California Woman Suffrage Association where she organized hundreds of suffragists, from 1902 to 1909, succeeding Mary Wood Swift. The Stockton Record published her successful re-election in 1903. In 1905 she presided over a major suffage convention on Sutter Street in San Francisco; suffragist, Dr. Minora Kibbe, also attended this convention. She resigned on October 2, 1909 while attending a suffrage convention in Stockton, California. Mary Elizabeth Simpson was born in Brunswick, Maine on June 3, 1833. She moved to California after she married Austin Sperry, founder of the Sperry Flour Company, in 1862; together they had four children. Following her husband's death in 1881, she became the company's senior partner with Simpson Enterprises in 1884. The last 33 years of her life were spent in San Francisco. Her personal wealth helped fund the suffrage cause in California. The Sperry family were a prominent family in the city of Stockton, California. When her daughter, Dr. Mary A. Sperry died, Mary Simpson Sperry contested her will as Dr. Sperry had lived for many years with suffragist Gail Laughlin.