Their Battle for the Ballot: Preserving Hyde Park’s History of Women’s Activism

by Patrice Gattozzi

In March 1870, fifty years before the 19th amendment granted women citizens in the US the right to vote, a bold group of women from Hyde Park, Massachusetts, voted in a local election.

Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, sisters who actively fought for abolitionism, had moved to Hyde Park after the Civil War. After the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery, the sisters focused their activism on securing rights, both political and social, for women. They may have led the women in Hyde Park not only to organize and speak out for women’s suffrage, but to vote in 1870.

That March, a group of roughly fifty women, including the Grimké sisters and Sarah M. Stuart, turned out on election day and cast their votes in a separate box. Local officials did not count the women’s ballots. But women’s collective action–showing up and voting–brought widespread attention to their demands for political rights. It also helped inspire another generation of women to continue the fight.  The women’s ballots were saved and belong to the Hyde Park Historical Society (HPHS). They represent a valuable piece of local women’s history.

The HPHS contains a treasure trove of records, letters and photographs documenting the history of local women and men. Like many small historical societies, the collections of the HPHS live in a section of the the town’s library, in this case, Hyde Park Branch Library of the Boston Public Library. For a variety of reasons, including lack of funds and professional staff, over the past decade this private historical collection has received little preservation, organization, or research attention. Today, the HPHS society materials have reached a critical juncture. As graduate student studying History at UMass Boston, I hope to find a way to help protect and preserve the physical documents.

Recently, I’ve begun preparing my thesis; it focuses on the women’s clubs of Hyde Park in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Two of the clubs, the Thought Club and the Current Events Club, formed in 1881 and existed for 127 and 114 years respectively.

The HPHS holds the clubs’ records, from their establishment until their disbandment. These include handwritten minutes from every meeting, financial reports, and membership records of every woman.

Hyde Park is my hometown neighborhood, and what interests me is that the records include their home address and most of their houses still stand today. In addition to membership records,  the collection includes pamphlets, photos, directories, and maps. It’s exciting material, virtually untapped!

Hyde Park became home to some outspoken activist women, like Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké. The records of the HPHS reveal relationships to other women’s rights activists who lived in nearby Boston.((Hyde Park was incorporated in 1868 and annexed to Boston in 1912.))

Browsing through the Thought Club’s records, I found a handwritten note written by poet, author, and suffragist Julia Ward Howe.  Best know for her song, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Howe lived in South Boston and had planned to address the Current Events Club in fall 1869, just months before a number of Hyde Park women voted in the local election. Her note sent regrets that she could not attend the meeting due to her health that day, but she hoped to soon reschedule.

Other samples from the collection include Clover Blossoms written by Elizabeth Hedge Webster, a poet, author, suffragist, and member of the Thought Club.

The book tells an important piece of local history. The volume is filled with Webster’s reflections of people, events, poems, her thoughts and relationships with many important local people of the day.  It also discusses suffrage and women’s rights at length. Though a copy of the book was digitized and made available for viewing online by the Internet Archive, the volume at HPHS is a rare and precious find for those studying the history of Hyde Park’s activist women.

These and other examples of women’s history in the HPHS collection can be found on the open shelves. But the Nancy Hannon Room, which was named after the last active historical society president, contains even more archival materials. The HPHS should be commended for collecting and saving these important documents. Unfortunately, reflecting the circumstances of many local historical societies, an inventory of materials doesn’t yet exist. Most of the materials have not been cataloged or received any preservation treatment.  Two dedicated volunteers have begun to sort the materials, but they face a monumental task. And currently, the HPHS lacks funds to properly preserve and catalog the documents.

Luckily, I can begin my research. But ideally, I’d like to help design a plan for the cataloging and preserving of the materials so that future historians, especially those of women’s history, will be able to benefit from the collection. If you’re interested in women’s history and archives and would like to help with this archival project in some capacity–whether it be advice or hands-on work–please respond to this blog post!