When the bill was before Congress in 1912 to make Alaska a Territory of the United States an amendment was added on motion of Representative Frank W. Mondell of Wyoming to give its Legislature full power to enfranchise women. This was accepted by the House without objection. Afterwards the official board of the National American Woman Suffrage Association gladly responded to the request of Arthur G. Stroup of Sitka, one of the Territorial Representatives, who intended to introduce a bill for the purpose, to send up some suitable literature. The board also asked women in Seattle, former residents of Alaska, to write to the members of the new Legislature.
Woman suffrage in Alaska possesses the unique record of being granted without any solicitation whatever from the residents. It is not known that a suffrage club ever existed in the Territory; it is quite certain that prior to the convening of the first Territorial Legislature in Juneau in 1913 no suffrage campaigning whatever had been carried on, yet two members, coming from towns not ban 1.500 miles apart, brought drafts for an equal suffrage bill. House Bill No. 2, "An Act to extend the elective franchise to the women in the Territory of Alaska," was the first to pass both Houses — 7 Senators and 15 Representatives and the vote on it was unanimous, Senator Elwood Brunner of Nome, the only member who had expressed himself as unfavorable, having had the good sense or caution to absent himself during roll call. This was also the first bill to be approved by the Governor, J. F. A. Strong, on March 21, 1913, and the Act became effective
- ↑ The history is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Jeannette Drury Clark, a graduate of the University of California, who with her husband, John A. Clark, an attorney, has made her home in Fairbanks for the past fifteen years.
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