CHAPTER XLIX.
WYOMING.[1]
Wyoming was the pioneer Territory and the pioneer State to give full suffrage to women. It is an interesting fact that the women did not find it necessary to have a Territorial or State Suffrage Association, or even a convention except the one during the campaign for Statehood in 1889-90. This rare situation is explained by the fact that universal suffrage came to the women in the newly organized Territory in 1869 without any general demand for it but through the efforts of a very few progressive men and women. [History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV, page 994.) When the Constitutional Convention was preparing for Statehood in 1889, holding its sessions in Cheyenne, the women of the Territory held a convention there in order to pass resolutions asking that the constitution should contain an article granting to the women a continuation of the right of suffrage which they had possessed for twenty years. This was granted and both men and women voted on the constitution, which was adopted by a three-fourths majority of the votes cast. The fact that there was no women's association for suffrage or for political purposes was at times a serious handicap to women of other States, who were not able to appeal to an organized body for an endorsement of woman suffrage or related subjects.
In 1901 and at subsequent dates by joint resolution of both Houses of the Legislature a strong appeal was sent to Congress to submit the Federal Suffrage Amendment. On Feb. 14, 1919, a joint resolution was passed and signed by Governor Robert D. Carey commemorating the granting of woman suffrage in Wyoming, Dec. 10, 1869, by making this date each year Wyoming Day, "to be observed by appropriate exercises commemorative of the history of the Commonwealth and the lives and work of its pioneers."
- ↑ The History is indebted for this chapter to Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, profesor of Political Economy and Sociology in the State University of Wyoming.
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