This commentary is by historian Marilyn Blackwell, Ph.D., a member of the Vermont Suffrage Centennial Alliance organized under the leadership of the League of Women Voters of Vermont.
As two women, Jill Krowinski and Rebecca Balint, assume the most powerful positions in the Vermont Legislature, it is well to remember that this is the 100th anniversary of women’s legislative debut.
On Feb. 8, 1921, Vermont legislators finally acquiesced to the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ironically, a month earlier, Edna L. Beard of Orange, the first woman elected to the Vermont Legislature, had taken her seat in the House.
Beard’s entry was fully documented by contemporary news accounts, but little notice has been given to Vermont’s belated approval of the suffrage amendment. With chivalrous respect, legislators allowed Beard to choose the first seat, but to their great amusement, none of the gentlemen agreed to sit beside her for over an hour. Often repeated today, the story and Beard’s portrait prominently displayed at the Statehouse are part of Vermont’s heritage.
Contrary to its liberal constitution and recent history of progressive change, Vermont lagged behind the nation on women’s suffrage for decades. Legislators ridiculed suffragists, claimed that women in their towns did not want the vote, and attempted to raise the poll tax to accommodate female voters. In 1917, they finally approved the right for taxpaying women to vote in municipal elections, after 11 states in the West as well as New York had passed full suffrage for women.
By 1920, a groundswell of Vermont women demanded the vote, but Gov. Percival W. Clement, a perennial opponent of both suffrage and Prohibition, was adamantly opposed. Equally dismayed were elite women in the Vermont League Opposed to Suffrage, who argued that politics would besmirch women’s moral influence and compromise their nonpartisan social reform work.
Legislators finally passed presidential suffrage in the 1919 session, but Clement vetoed the bill, and they failed to override his action.
As part of the national strategy to finalize the amendment by making Vermont the “Perfect 36” and last state to ratify, the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association organized a massive campaign of letters and petitions urging Clement to call a special session of the Legislature for that purpose. Lillian Olzendam of Woodstock, chair of the campaign, traveled the state seeking legislators’ pledges to meet in special session.
Upon Clement’s refusal, Olzendam orchestrated the largest nonviolent protest in Vermont’s history on April 21, 1920, when 400 women paraded silently through Montpelier and converged on the Statehouse to meet with the governor. She proclaimed their rights to justice under the state constitution. Well-known suffragist Annette Parmelee of Enosburg Falls demanded removal of the “sex restrictions upon the voting privilege.” Appealing to the governor’s ego, Ann Batchelder of Woodstock urged him to “make yourself the biggest man in the country and Vermont the proudest state in the Union.”
Clement’s stance notwithstanding, women’s suffrage became a reality on Aug. 26, 1920, after Tennessee had become the “Perfect 36.” By November, over 28,000 Vermont women had registered to vote, expanding the electorate by a third. They helped elect a pro-suffrage GOP governor and Edna Beard of Orange. Gov. James Hartness welcomed women into the political arena as the natural representatives of the home.
For Beard, who had worked outside her home most of her life, politics affected more than home issues. She helped approve both the 19th Amendment and an amendment to the Vermont Constitution that replaced “man” with “person” in the requirement to take the Freeman’s Oath. Her presence led officials to change the way a representative was recognized on the floor of the chamber; instead of the “gentleman,” each would be addressed as the “member” from his or her town.
It was not just Beard’s historic election, but what she did once elected that was significant for Vermont. In 1921, she introduced a bill that became Act 218, which extended state welfare payments for widows to include mothers with disabled husbands. While serving in the Senate in 1923, she prompted the requirement that county sheriffs appoint at least one woman as a deputy.
Beard was not the only woman to make an immediate difference in Vermont politics. Lillian Olzendam — who had campaigned for the Republican Party, attended the party convention, and served as a presidential elector — was appointed by the governor to head a commission to investigate conditions for women at Windsor State Prison. Her report recommended their removal.
Olzendam also worked with Vermont women’s organizations to advance other reforms. In May 1921, she thanked both legislators and women activists for success in achieving their priorities, including equal guardianship of children, removal of women from Windsor State Prison, improvement in factory inspections, and amendments to the Mothers’ Pension law.
Neither Beard nor Olzendam remained politically active for long, but women’s legislative representation grew steadily over the last hundred years, outpacing national trends. Today it is approximately 42.2%.
— Quotations from Montpelier Evening Argus of April 22, 1920.
