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Abigail Scott Duniway (October 22, 1834 – October 11, 1915) was an American women's rights advocate, newspaper editor and writer, whose efforts were instrumental in gaining voting rights for women.

Biography


Duniway was born Abigail Jane Scott near Groveland, Illinois, one of eleven children of John Tucker Scott and Anne Roelofson. She grew up on the family farm, and in 1852 she traveled the Oregon Trail with her family. During the six months on the trail, her mother and youngest brother died. As a young woman, she taught school in Cincinnati (now Eola), Oregon before marrying Benjamin C. Duniway on August 2, 1853. They had six children: Clara, Willis, Hubert, Wilkie, Clyde and Ralph.

After her husband suffered a severe injury in 1862, Duniway supported the family by teaching and running a millinery in Albany, Oregon. Working in the millinery gave Duniway insight into women’s issues and spurred her interest in women’s rights. And in May of 1871, Duniway’s family moved to the growing city of Portland, Oregon after Benjamin accepted a job with the United States Customs Service. After this move, Duniway became involved with the women’s suffrage movement.

Upon arriving in Portland, Duniway began publishing a weekly newspaper The New Northwest. The paper was promoted as a human rights advocate paper, supporting education and women's suffrage. The National Women's Suffrage Association recognized Duniway as a leading women's advocate in the American West in 1886.

Duniway encountered personal setbacks such as poor health, money problems, and opposition. From birth, the women of Duniway’s generation were told that they would never compare to men, and should not bother trying. At age ten, Duniway’s mother told her that she was truly saddened by her daughter’s sex, and that being a woman would only bring trouble and pain. After the death of her mother, Duniway wrote in her autobiography explaining that she hoped she would have a better life than the lonely, tiresome, and desperate life of her mother. Duniway’s early life as a farmer was spent making butter, sewing, cooking, washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, and being “a pioneer drudge”. Duniway often complained of the “never-ceasing tasks allotted to a woman in that unmechanized era” and she argued that her husband often put his needs before hers. With all of her house and farm work Duniway was left with very little idle time. Duniway could have lived an ordinary pioneer life, however she hoped and tirelessly worked for more.

Duniway’s official involvement with suffrage began in 1870 when she founded a State Equal Suffrage Association in Oregon. The very same year, she began plans for her first newspaper. In 1871, Duniway acted as a representative for Oregon at a women’s suffrage convention in San Francisco. Here Duniway “met many leaders of the movement, and underwent an even more thorough transformation”. In 1872, she was the first woman to speak in front of the Oregon legislature, here she argued in support of women’s suffrage.

The first attempt to give women the ballot in Oregon was in 1884, which failed. There were other attempts in 1900, 1906, 1908, 1910, and finally in 1912 when it passed with a close margin of votes. Although the defeat of the suffrage bills in Oregon were felt as personal defeats to Duniway, she felt success when suffrage bills passed in Idaho in 1896 and in Washington in 1910.

Duniway persisted despite political opposition in the form of local resistance, the consistent failure of women's suffrage referendums on state ballots, and divisions with Eastern suffrage organizations. She and her newspaper actively supported the Sole Trader Bill and the Married Women's Property Act which, when passed, gave Oregon women the right to own and control property. Her persistence paid off in 1912 when Oregon became the seventh state in the Union to pass a women's suffrage amendment. Governor Oswald West asked her to write the proclamation for his signature. She was the first woman to register to vote in Multnomah County. Duniway is buried at River View Cemetery in Portland.

Publications
Duniway's 1859 novel Captain Gray's Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon was the first to be commercially published in Oregon. As a young woman of 17, Abigail kept a journal of the difficult, exciting, and sometimes, tragic trip across the Oregon trail. Her books were later inspired by these early journals. She wrote a booklet called My Musings after attending a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1872. During her life she wrote 22 novels, published and edited two newspapers, and authored several epic poems. Her last publication was Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States, in 1914. This autobiography, both written and published several years prior to her death, acted as the pinnacle of her writings.

After moving to Portland with her family, Duniway noted the plight of the women she saw living in the Pacific Northwest. In her equal rights newspaper, The New Northwest, Duniway observed that women were "borne down by the suffering and toil and weakness attendant upon and inseparable from incessant maternity; cooking for a concourse of hired men, and washing and scrubbing for everybody. This is the regular routine of thousands of farmers’ wives. The result is the early death of more than half of them…".

At the time of Duniway’s arrival to Portland in 1871, the women’s rights and suffrage movements were active, but involved a small amount of people and Duniway saw this as a challenge. Duniway believed that by creating a controversial reform and human rights newspaper, which she titled The New Northwest (1871-1887), she could offer advice, support, an outlet for her and other’s writing, publicize her cause, and gain additional income. Although she lacked traditional education, Duniway was educated in the “ways of the world” and she used her knowledge in all of her newspapers. It comes as no surprise that Duniway was highly influenced by The Revolution, a newspaper edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Duniway’s new publication created a group of small but loyal readers and she edited the newspaper for the following sixteen years.

Ironically, one her sources of opposition came from her brother Harvey W. Scott. Scott was the editor of The Portland Oregonian, another local paper. Scott and The Portland Oregonian would prove a difficult adversary for Duniway in her struggle for suffrage in the Northwest. Prior to the Progressive Era from 1877 to 1883, Scott supported this sister. He “promoted his sister’s lectures, contributed financially to her cause, and gave woman suffrage occasional editorial support” in The Portland Oregonian. And when women gained the vote in Washington State Scott publicly declared his approval. However, as soon as suffrage became a serious issue out West Scott stopped supporting his sister like he had in the past. In 1884, Scott and his paper publicly proclaimed that they were anti-suffrage. This came as a shock and outrage to Duniway, who felt that this was not only a political attack, but also a personal one. Throughout Duniway’s time as a suffragist, until 1912, The Portland Oregonian, took a stance against local reform for women’s suffrage. This may have caused the suffrage amendments of the Northwest to fail multiple times.

Duniway also began another newspaper that focused on progress and reform called The Coming Century (1891-1892). In addition, she edited The Pacific Empire, a Portland weekly from 1895 to 1897. And although both these newspapers were short lived they achieved many of the same goals Duniway had set for The New Northwest. In many of Duniway’s writings, she discusses the differences between the East Coast and the West Coast. Duniway became such a successful leader on the West Coast partly due to the fact that she understood that each region had separate issues and the people lived very different lives. Through Duniway’s actions as a suffragist, her campaign strategies, and her writing it becomes apparent that she was able to perceive and address the differences between the two regions, while focusing on the elements that would help to strengthen the suffrage movement, which assisted in gaining women the vote in Oregon and several other states in the Northwest.

Speaking Engagements
In 1871, when Duniway and her family moved to Portland she started her weekly newspaper and invited Susan B. Anthony, who was currently on a lecture tour, to speak in Portland. Duniway had trouble finding a place for Anthony to speak, even though she was such a recognized figure. This quickly showed Duniway the struggles she had ahead of her in the Northwest as a female suffragist. Duniway introduced Anthony and gave an opening speech and those in the crowd and Anthony herself found the speech eloquent, captivating, and motivating causing Duniway to begin giving her own talks.

After both speeches, Anthony invited Duniway to travel on her two-month lecturing tour of the Pacific Northwest. Duniway’s contact with Anthony acted as her first official contact with the national suffrage movement and after completing the tour she traveled solo around the Pacific Northwest and the entire country giving lectures. After arriving home, Duniway came to the realization that she wanted to focus on suffrage in her home of the Pacific Northwest. Duniway traveled around Oregon, Washington, and Idaho speaking to thousands of people. In Idaho alone “Duniway reported that she had given over 140 public lectures…from 1876 to 1895, and had been obliged to travel an aggregate of over 12,000 miles”.

When she traveled to speak to people in remote areas, she would tailor her speeches to their needs and problems. Duniway traveled to spread the knowledge of suffrage in the Northwest and was more successful because she modified her strategies to fit the need of her audience and to encourage them to participate in suffrage. One of the ways that Duniway appealed to the Northwest audience was in the places that she visited to speak. Not only did Duniway travel to the large cities, but also she traveled to small towns and rural areas. This was one of the most important strategies that she used.

The United States government in 1848 created the Oregon Territory, and Oregon gained statehood on February 14, 1859, as the 33rd state. Because Oregon was a young state and more people lived in small towns and rural areas than in large cities, it forced Duniway to reach the working class and rural farmer population. If she wanted their support, she needed to travel outside of the large cities to speak with them. She would speak in pole barns, frames of old houses, blacksmith shops, and horse stables. Because Duniway was not afraid to speak to rural farmers, like herself, she was able to reach a wider audience, more effectively.

Often the trips taken by Duniway were not easy or comfortable. Although the Pacific Northwest boasted several large cities such as Portland and Seattle, it remained both difficult and time consuming to travel. Duniway explained her experience with traveling in the Northwest saying “it was no small task to travel, often by night, over the terrible roads of the Pacific Northwest”. In her early days of speaking, she would have to travel across the large states of Oregon and Washington by way of stagecoach, wagon, carriage, and horseback.

Duniway began traveling around speaking in the late 1870s and this was before the era of the Oregon railroad. Although there were some railroads in operation during this time, many of these were not for passengers or were rudimentary. In Duniway’s autobiography she explains that she often choose to travel by steamboat to visit coastal areas. After 1900, many more railroad companies began expanding and travel around the West was made slightly easier. However, this was one of the challenges that suffragists in the West faced. Travel in the East would have been somewhat easier and more developed. This is only because the East would have had more time to build and expand their railroads. However, Duniway was motivated and overcame the problem, traveling all across the Northwest in her time as a speaker.

Appealing to the Western Audience
During her speeches and in her writings, Duniway was able to modify her information and approach to suffrage to the Western female audience. Duniway’s newspapers, The New Northwest and The Coming Century were primarily aiming for a female audience. Her newspapers were accessible to the large majority of women, because she wrote about what she had experienced as a working-class women at a young age, and as a middle-class suffragist. Duniway “identified with farm wives and their common experiences of overwork, loneliness, and too-frequent childbirth”. She gave women who had difficult lives the hope they needed and she helped them realize that they were not the only people experiencing a life that left them unfulfilled. Duniway’s female audience received advice for their marriages and children. She used personal stories, examples, frustrations, and disappointments to relate and give information to her audiences. By realizing many of these problems were unique to women living in rural areas of the Pacific Northwest, Duniway was able to tailor her newspapers to better fit her audience.

Not only was Duniway able to address the issues facing the women of the Pacific Northwest, but she also empowered them by helping them realize they were apart of something larger than themselves. Because many women in the Pacific Northwest were alienated from other women, they were made to feel alone in their circumstances. By personally writing about her life as a woman of the Pacific Northwest and having other women author articles in the newspapers, she helped women gain increased regional and gender identity. Because many women in the late 19th century and early 20th century were an early generation of Westerners, creating a regional identity was important.

In her newspapers, Duniway discussed the “social, cultural, and economic challenges in Portland and the greater Northwest”. She also did not limit her newspaper to local news, but also discussed national and international issues, while relating it back to the Pacific Northwest. Duniway helped “refine, reshape, and redefine the West to embrace wider frontiers”. By publishing stories about gender, local and national issues, Duniway’s writings helped women develop an increased sense of local, national, and gender identity.

Eastern Opposition
One of the issues that Duniway faced in her newspapers and books was the fact that many Eastern authors were prejudiced against Western authors. There was a lack of support from the Eastern literary establishments and they were largely “against western writers and western subjects”. This proved most difficult for Duniway in 1892, when she resigned as editor of her second newspaper, The Coming Century. At the time literary preferences were changing and many people were wary of her radical feminist stance. This did not phase Duniway, instead she focused her attention on the Oregon State Suffrage Association, continued to speak throughout the Northwest, and began writing her autobiography. However, this would not be the last time Eastern prejudice affected Duniway and her work.

Duniway had many friends and acquaintances within the national woman suffrage movement, but she also faced some opponents within the same group. Early in her career the Eastern suffragists “first emphasized justice (natural rights) arguments and later turned to expediency (benefits to society) arguments for woman suffrage”. However, from the beginning of her career Duniway had chosen to focus on both aspects. She believed that it was women’s given right to vote, voting would improve women’s lives, independence, and future, and thus society, overall, would improve. Although this seems a minor difference between Duniway’s strategy and that of the Eastern suffragist, each individual had a specific plan that she thought would bring suffrage to women, and any modification to that plan they alleged would only bring failure. Issues within suffrage, during the Progressive Era, were very sensitive subjects and many people were easily tempered when it was discussed and when differences in opinions arose, even among the nations leading suffragists.

In the later years as her work as a suffragist, Duniway continued to clash with the some of the Eastern suffragists. The majority of these problems occurred over the issue of campaign strategies and Duniway was opposed to “what she saw as Eastern interference with the campaigns she waged in the Pacific Northwest”. Not only did Duniway feel threatened when the Eastern women began to campaign in her region, but she was against the way that they campaigned. “I have found it to be by far the better way to abstain from all sorts of hurrah methods,” she wrote, “and let the men feel that we trust them for votes.” The Eastern women used tactics to gain votes by directly attacking the opposition and their arguments, while Duniway hoped to keep the opposition lacking information, unexcited, and unthreatened by women’s rights. Susan B. Anthony, although a friend of Duniway’s, she quickly became an opponent when it came to tactics to gain suffrage. There were several years between 1902 and 1912 when Eastern suffragists doubted Duniway’s ability to organize a successful campaign.

After what the Eastern suffragists viewed as a failed campaign in 1900 they aimed to take control of the 1906 campaign and appoint new leadership. The National American Woman Suffrage Association’s President Carrie Chapman Catt and Anthony became convinced that they should take charge of the 1906 election, with the help of other Portland suffragists. Eastern “suffragists concluded that a well-organized campaign led by Easterners would succeed” in the West.

The newly appointed leaders of the 1906 campaign managed to placate Duniway while still rejecting her campaign strategies and opting for those of Anthony and the NAWSA. Although the majority of their interference ended with the 1906 campaign, still Eastern suffragists remained involved in the West throughout the remainder of the Progressive Era. And the struggle between the NAWSA and Duniway continued until her death in 1915. Although Duniway faced resistance from many Eastern women, she gained support from women living in the Pacific Northwest. Along with the support of general local women “a number of suffrage leaders…were loyal supporters of Duniway and agreed with her resistance to Eastern interference”. This shows that while both coasts were working towards suffrage, their methods, beliefs, and political affiliations often differed.

Temperence in the West
Duniway did recognize that Portland and the surrounding areas did have an issue with saloons, bars, and the amount of alcohol that was consumed. In 1871, “The New Northwest reported that Portland had 149 liquor dealers-roughly one for every sixty persons: men, women, and children-in the city”. Duniway’s lack of support for prohibition was against many suffragist’s opinions, especially those living in the East. In response to a critic asking her about her personal opinion on prohibition Duniway responded, in her witty speech, saying: "I believe we can protect ourselves from all the elements.  We are protected from this snowstorm, but we can’t prohibit it.  God has put it among the elements of nature.  There is only one Power that is capable of prohibition snowstorms or alcohol, and He doesn’t seem ready to act". Duniway knew that there needed to be some approach to deal with the use and overuse of alcohol, but she did not believe that prohibition was the answer. And although the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was not as active on the West coast as it was in the East, Duniway still felt pressure from suffragists three thousand miles away who disagreed with her stance on prohibition.

Although Duniway did not support prohibition, the political move that she was strictly against was combining the campaign for women’s suffrage and the temperance movement. Although the trend throughout the East was for suffragists to pair  their work for women’s rights with the restriction of alcohol, Duniway could not justify this morally or politically. Because of Duniway’s stance on prohibition it created tension between her and members of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, national suffrage leaders, fellow Oregonians, and personal friends of Duniway such as Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw.

Duniway believed if suffragists began to support prohibition they would lose the support of the male drinking population who could have otherwise voted for women’s suffrage. Throughout the problems she encountered with other suffragists, Duniway stood strong and behind her opinions arguing that she wanted to solely focus on women’s rights and suffrage and she viewed prohibition as a separate issue.

Oregon’s Women’s Suffrage Proclamation
After dedicating her life to suffrage in the Northwest, Duniway was able to see Washington, Idaho, and her beloved home state of Oregon gain suffrage. Idahoan women gained the vote in 1896, and Washingtonians achieved suffrage in 1910. These were huge successes for Duniway and showed that her work of more than 40 years was beginning to pay off. However, after several near wins during previous campaigns, Oregonian women, including Duniway, gained the vote in 1912. This was an extraordinary victory for women living in the Pacific Northwest because women had gained the vote eight full years before the passage of the federal suffrage amendment.

On November 29, 1912, Oregon issued the Women’s Suffrage Proclamation, which was written by Duniway, signed and approved by the Governor, Oswald West. Section two of Article 11 of the Proclamation was modified to state the following: "In all elections not otherwise provided for by this Constitution, every citizen of the United States, of the age of 21 years and upwards, who shall have resided in the State during the six months immediately preceding such election, and every person of foreign birth of the age of 21 years and upwards, who shall have resided in the State during the six months immediately preceding such election, and shall have declared his or her intention to become a citizen of the United States one year preceding such election, conformably to the laws of the United States on the subject of naturalization, shall be entitled to vote at all elections authorized by law".

Both men and women were given the right to vote in Oregon after the implementation of this amendment to the state Constitution.

Remembering Duniway
In 1905, when “the Lewis and Clark Centennial was celebrated in Portland in 1905, it featured an ‘Abigail Scott Duniway Day’ and contemporaries honored her as the quintessential ‘pioneer mother,’ as well as the ‘Mother of Woman Suffrage’”. Currently Portland’s Duniway Park and Duniway Middle School remember Duniway.

Duniway played an integral from the beginning of campaigning for suffrage in Oregon in the 1870s to writing the suffrage amendment in 1912. Duniway was the first woman to register in Multnomah County, and the entire state of Oregon. Duniway will forever be remembered as a woman with an ordinary beginning who rose to become a revolutionary. She stood strong for what she believed. In addition her writing and speeches carry on her legacy as well as what concerned women and the rest of society during her lifetime. By working tirelessly to gain suffrage she significantly changed the lives of the women that would live after her.

Abigail Scott Duniway died October 11, 1915 in Portland. Her ashes were interred in the grave of Clara Belle Duniway Stearns, her daughter. Her simple gravestone, bearing only her name, is fitting in a way, but does not encompass the things she achieved in her lifetime.