User:Lilithcamefirst/sandbox

Background
Claiborne Catlin Elliman was a 19th-century and 20th-century suffragist and political leader. She was born in the 1880s in Baltimore, Maryland where she grew up. She married Joseph Albert Catlin, but he died four years after they married which left her to be a thirty-two-year-old widow.

Education and Employment
After her husband’s death, Catlin moved to New York and went to the New York School of Philanthropy, a higher education institution that trained people to do social work. Next, she worked with Dr. Charles Davenport studying eugenics in Cold Spring Habor, Long Island. Additionally, she worked at a psychological clinic at the University of Pennsylvania where she wrote an excerpt in Volume 8 of The Psychological Clinic titled, “Incorrigibility Due to Mismanagement and Misunderstanding.”

Suffragist & Political Activism
During her work and educational experience, Catlin joined the suffrage movement and started her journey as a political activist. She joined the Massachusetts Political Equality Union and became a member of the National American Women Suffrage Association(NAWSA). For one NAWSA rally at Tremont Temple, she was in charge of publicity and rode a horse through downtown Boston to call attention to the movement and gain supporters for the rally. Her work towards gaining supporters was wildly successful and inspired her to do the same thing on a larger scale.

On July 2, 1914, Claiborne Caitlin began her horseback tour around Massachusetts to spread the word about women's suffrage. She received money with a collection box that was passed around for donations. She was a well-known horsewoman and planned to ride a horse named Trixie, who had competed and won in many horse races across the country. Claiborne packed very light because she was a minimalist, and only carried a raincoat and necessary feminine articles in her saddlebag. She rode around in a khaki suit, leggings, and a sombrero with a feather. Her trip covered five hundred-thirty miles, she visited thirty-seven cities and organized fifty-nine meetings along her trip. Claiborne rode around her horse, drumming up support for the cause. She felt it gave her purpose in the movement and in politics that she didn’t have before joining the suffrage movement. It also gave her exhilaration and camaraderie to be apart of the women's suffrage movement.