What's online?
The majority of the collection has been digitized and is available online.
What's in the entire collection?
The Woman's Suffrage Movement in Pennsylvania Collection includes mainly pamphlets and handbills from various suffrage organizations throughout the Commonwealth. Although it is not clear how these materials were assembled or by whom, many include a stamp from the Equal Franchise Society of Philadelphia.
About the Woman's Suffrage Movement in Pennsylvania.
On June 24th, 1919, Pennsylvania became the seventh state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment securing the right for women to vote. The women’s suffrage movement in Pennsylvania was heavily influenced by Quaker ideologies and can be traced back to abolitionist movements, namely the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society founded by Lucretia Mott in 1833 that also advocated for women’s rights. By 1866, the Equal Rights Association of Philadelphia was advocating not only for African Americans but also for women’s suffrage. The Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia with Mary Grew serving as its first president. At their first meeting in 1870, they declared their affiliation with the American Woman Suffrage Association, which later merged with the National Woman Suffrage Association and became the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
The first women’s suffrage demonstration was held in Philadelphia in 1914, at which time suffragists were attempting to pass a law through the Pennsylvania state legislature to allow women the right to vote but it was defeated by referendum in 1915. During this campaign, Jennie Bradley Roessing, the head of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association and later the NAWSA, led the state tour of the Liberty Bell of Suffrage that went to every county for woman’s suffrage. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the NAWSA turned into the League of Women’s Voters that is still active today.
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