Women's Suffrage - "Let us face the issue like real men."

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, extending the right to women, was ratified through the vote of Tennessee 100 years ago this August. The fight in the Virginia General Assembly took place earlier in the year in February(so I am a little late). The fight came to a head as the Virginia Senate passed the Leedy Resolution rejecting the amendment, which was then taken up by the House of Delegates. Julien Gunn, New Kent's Senator (later a judge in Henrico), voted for the Resolution.

Sen. Robert Franklin Leedy of Luray

DELEGATES ADOPT LEEDY RESOLUTION  

Richmond Representatives Are Split, Haddon and Wilcox Opposing Measure.  

TRY TO STAVE OFF DEFEAT  

Norris Offers Measure Referring Question to People, Which Loses, 57 to 29. 

________________ 

Through its lower branch the General Assembly of Virginia yesterday rejected the Susan B. Anthony amendment to the Federal Constitution. By a vote of 62 to 22 the House of Delegates concurred in the Leedy resolution. calling for rejection of the amendment. which passed the Senate by a vote of 24 to 10.  

Richmond's delegation in the House was evenly divided in its vote, Delegates Boschen and Fuller voting for the Leedy resolution and Delegates Haddon and Wilcox casting their votes against it. Delegate Price was absent. Ten delegates were paired.  

Supporters of woman suffrage made desperate eleventh-hour attempt to stave off inevitable defeat when Delegate Robert O. Norris of Lancaster, offered a resolution to refer the question to the voter of the State for their determination. This resolution. which was similar to the one which the House adopted last week before the Senate had acted, was lost. 23 to 67.  

How the delegates Voted. The recorded vote on the Leedy resolution was as follows:

[there is then in the text of yeas and nays both for the Leedy resolution and the Rew resolution  ]

Debate Is Limited. 

Following a conference between Democratic Floor Leader Willis and Delegates Rew, Norris, Hunter and Ozlin, it was decided to allow one and one-half hours to each side and to vote at 2 o'clock.  

The resolution was set as a special continuing order for yesterday at [garbled] clock, and the gallery was crowded with visitors in expectation of flights oratory and spirited debate. In this they were disappointed. 

Those who spoke in behalf of the Anthony amendment- and they were few- apparently realized that their task was a hopeless one and that little they could say would chance minds that already had been made up. There was little that was convincing in their arguments, and their oratory lacked much of its wonted fire. 

Floor Leader Willis opened for the advocates of suffrage. He asked his colleagues in the House whether they were prepared to stand by their own action in adopting the Rew resolution granting a referendum on suffrage to the people, or if they would repudiate their own action by adopting the Senate rejection amendment. He said he expected the House to vote its convictions regardless of the action of the upper branch.  

"There are more brains on this side of the Capitol this session than on the other side." he asserted.  

The suffrage question, he said, will never be permanently settled until it is settled right, and that, he said. Is by giving woman the vote.  

"If only one woman in a thousand in Virginia wants the vote, you have no right to deprive her of that right." he said.

Attacks Newspaper Critics

He took a fling at newspaper critics, who he said, had charged the House with attempting to straddle the issue.  

Delegate Ozlin, patron of a previous resolution to reject the Federal suffrage amendment declared it as his belief that the temper of the house to adopt the Leedy resolution.  

"Let us face the issue like real men." he urged his hearers. Nothing was to be gained, he argued, by referring the question to the people, as, he asserted, sentiment is over overwhelmingly against the Anthony amendment. The house, he said should support the Senate and should recede from its position in adopting the Rew resolution.
He was confident, he said, that fellow-delegates would not vote for something they knew their constituents did not want. 

"I have heard members of the House say that, personally, they were in favor of woman suffrage, but would not vote for it because such a vote would not reflect the sentiment of those back home." 

The Delegate from Lunenburg said that, with the Anthony amendment out of the way, a suffrage amendment to the Constitution of Virginia might be introduced and passed. 

He was asked by Delegate Willis, if such a bill were introduced in the House if he would vote for it. Delegate Ozlin answered in the affirmative.

Question Most Serious

"The suffrage question is the most serious that ever has confronted the people of Virginia and the Democratic party since I have been a member of the House," Delegate Norris declared. "If we do not settle it for ourselves, it will soon be settled for us, and against our will," he added. 

He did not think referring the question to the people could be construed as straddling the issue. 

Delegate Norris said that, while he believed a large majority of his constituents were opposed to the Anthony amendment, he believed the question should be referred to the people. 

Delegate Parke P. Deans, of Isle of Wight, hoped he would not live to see the day when Virginia must look to the North and West for guidance as to what to do in enacting legislation. 

He referred to the patriotism of Patrick Henry, who, he said, was ever jealous of States' rights. He called on the House to support the Leedy resolution.

-Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 February 1920

New Kent's Delegate at the Norvell Lightfoot Henley, a Williamsburg attorney, voted against the Leedy Resolution and thus for women's suffrage. The former Commonwealth's attorney of Williamsburg he represented Charles City, New Kent. James City, York and Warwick, and the City of Williamsburg in the House of Delegates from 1916 until his death in 1923.

N.L. Henley(1869-1923)

Women's Day

On this International Women's Day (though it is a Marxist holiday, but enough about that. . .) it seems like a good idea to touch on some of the firsts in women's history that that took place in New Kent.

There is Mrs. Belle B. Turner of Lanexa, the first women in Virginia elected trustee on a county school board in 1920. 

There is Katherine Joyce Spivey, a Providence Forge attorney, who in 1961 was elected New Kent's Commonwealth's Attorney, the first woman in Virginia to hold that post. Hers is a story I haven't got around to telling here yet.


And then there is the odd case of the New Kent woman who was declared head of her household by a Federal Court.

New Kent's Woman Yeoman

Personal and Brief Items Gathered Prom Mountains to Seashore.

Mrs. J.R. Taylor and her daughter, Miss Lucy Taylor, passed through town on last Saturday afternoon for their home at "Eltham." New Kent. It will be remembered that Miss Taylor, after a spell of influenza in Norfolk, where she was enrolled as a yeoman*, in making an effort to reach her home on the Norfolk and Western train about two weeks ago fainted. When she reached Petersburg she was placed in the care of the Red Cross, and was taken to a hospital, where she was attended by physicians, who sought in vain to find out something about the curious malady that robbed this young lady of her memory for two weeks. There was nothing about her belongs  that could enlighten her attendants. In the meantime her parents, having heard that she had left Norfolk for home, started out to search for her. Suddenly her memory returned, and her parents were notified, and she was restored to them. The papers said she was from West Point. West Point is her post-office station, but her home is at historic "Eltham," New Kent, Va.

- Richmond Times-Dispatch, 10 November 1918


*Find here the link to an interesting piece about the women yeomen of the First World War.

Who's the Boss? Pt. I

The United States Circuit Court of Appeals decides that under laws of Virginia a woman may be "the head of a family" in the sense demanded by homestead exemption law of this state.  

The case arose in New Kent county and has attracted much attention. It is entitled Marian H. Richardson vs. W. f. Woodward, trustee, et al. It went up from the United District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The lower court decided that a married woman living with her husband could not claim the benefit of the exemption law.

                                                 STATEMENT OF FACTS.

Mrs Marian H. Richardson, a married woman living with her husband, conducted a mercantile business at Plum Point, New Kent county, under the style of  "J. L. Richardson, Agent." J. L. Richardson, the agent, was her husband. Besides the wife and husband, there was a daughter 13 years old, all of whom resided in the home, owned by the wife. Mrs. Richardson was postmaster at Plum Point, the post-office being kept in the store and managed by the husband, who conducted the business. Previous to entering into this business J. L. Richardson was a clerk for R. E. Richardson, and he and the other clerks boarded with his wife. Just when J. L,. Richardson ceased to clerk for R. E. Richardson does not appear, but about May 10, 1898, Mrs.Richardson made an assignment for the benefit of her creditors, and closed the business. 

About September, 1898, J. L. Richardson again commenced business in the same house as agent for T. J. Richardson, his brother. During all the time Richardson was. conducting business for his wife and for his brother he carried passengers back and forth between Plum Point and the station. Money made in this was used to aid his wife to support the family. 

The goods conveyed in the assignment did not pay off the creditors of J. L. Richardson, agent, and in January, law, Mrs. Marian 11. Richardson filed a petition in bankruptcy, the order of adjudication being entered the next day.

                                         BOTH CLAIMED EXEMPTIONS.

Afterwards J. L. Richardson filed a petition and claimed all his property under the Virginia "Poor Debtors' Law" (section 3650 et. seq., Code of Virginia), which exempts certain chattels to "a householder or head of a family. Marian H. Richardson filed an amended petition and claimed her real property under the "Homestead Exemption Law." The title to the real estate is in the Wife, who, according to her husband's testimony and that of the wife on examination, was, and always had been, regarded 'as' the head of the family. The husband was her assistant and agent. The only question argued was whether, being a married woman, living with her "husband, petitioner is entitled to the homestead exemption as "a householder or head of a family," as provided by the Constitution and laws of Virginia.

                                            SHE IS HEAD OF A FAMILY

The District Court decided to the contrary, and the case was taken up to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, and heard before Judges Goff and Simonton. of that court, and Purnell, of the District Court. Judge Purnell handed down a decision at Raleigh yesterday, which reverses the decree of the District Court, and remands the cause in "order that the bankrupt's claim for homestead exemption may be allowed."

-Richmond Dispatch., August 26, 1900