CHAPTER L.
MONTANA.[1]
In August, 1883, Miss Frances E. Willard, national president, came to Montana and formed a Territorial Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Butte. At this time Miss Willard in her speeches, and the union in its adoption of a franchise department, made the initiative effort to obtain suffrage for the women of Montana. This organization has been here, as elsewhere, a great educative force for its members, training them in parliamentary law, broadening their ideas and preparing them for citizenship. Out of its ranks have come the Rev. Alice S. N. Barnes, Mesdames Laura E. Howey, Delia A. Kellogg, Mary A. Wylie, Martha Rolfe Plassman, Anna A. Walker and many other earnest advocates of the ballot for women. Within the past five or six years a number of professional and business women have joined the suffrage forces and to-day they compose a majority of the active leaders.
No attempt was made to organize the State until Mrs. Emma Smith De Voe was sent by the National Association in 1895. She visited most of the prominent towns and formed clubs or committees. The first State convention was called at Helena in September of this year by the suffrage association of that city, Miss Sarepta Sanders, president, and Mrs. Kellogg, secretary. It was assisted by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, to whose eloquent addresses was due the great impetus the cause received at this time.[2]
Mrs. De Voe again visited the State in the spring of 1896. The
- ↑ The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Mary Long Alderson of Helena, one of the first officers of the State Woman Suffrage Association.
- ↑ Officers elected: President, Mrs. Harriet P. Sanders; vice-president, Mrs. Martha Rolfe Plassman; corresponding secretary, Mrs. Delia A. Kellogg; recording secretary, Mrs. Mary Long Alderson; treasurer. Dr. Mary B. Atwater; auditors, Mrs. Martha E. Dunckel and Mrs. Hiram Knowles; delegate-at-large, Mrs. Mary A. Wylie. Dr. Atwater has been elected to the same office at each succeeding convention.
