Living and working in the state capital means it’s not unusual to see well-known public figures around town, especially during legislative sessions. In 1871, residents experienced that first-hand when noted suffragist Susan B. Anthony traveled to Olympia and became the first woman to address the Washington Territorial Legislature.
During her visit here to speak on women’s right to vote, Anthony dined with several legislators at the home of Daniel R. Bigelow, prominent attorney and Territorial House of Representatives member. They were by joined Bigelow’s schoolteacher wife and women’s rights supporter, Ann Elizabeth White Bigelow, whom Anthony wrote in her diary was “splendid.”
Today, you can see the chair in which Anthony reportedly sat when you tour the 1860 home, which is now the Bigelow House Museum operated by the Olympia Historical Society.
Arduous Journey on ‘Dreadful Roads’ Brings Voting Rights Reformer Susan B. Anthony to Olympia and Tumwater
Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) fought for universal suffrage through her writings and public speaking. Anthony, vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and fellow reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton took the train from the East Coast to San Francisco in 1871 while expanding their crusade to the West. During the Pacific Northwest leg of her speaking tour, Anthony traveled to Oregon and Washington Territory, stopping in Salem, Portland, Walla Walla, Olympia, Tumwater, Seattle, Port Townsend, Coupeville, Whidbey Island, Victoria and other communities.
In “Sowing Good Seeds: The Northwest Suffrage Campaign of Susan B. Anthony,” author G. Thomas Edwards describes how Anthony recognized there was support in this area for women’s suffrage. Of the 170 speeches she made in 1871, 60 were in the Pacific Northwest.
However, getting here to deliver those speeches wasn’t easy. After leaving San Francisco, Anthony voyaged north by boat and became seasick. She rode more trains in her sojourn, took a steamer named the “Tenino” up the Columbia River, and then circled back to the coast. She journeyed to Olympia by stagecoach over heavily-rooted logging roads that sometimes required passengers to get out and walk while the driver repaired the coach. “Dreadful roads,” “hard jolting” and “roughest road I have ever known” her diary chronicled.
Olympia Press Cover Susan B. Anthony’s Legislative Remarks: ‘What’s Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander’
On October 18, 1871 Anthony arrived in Olympia with Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915). They stayed with Albert and Olive Manning, civic leaders and suffrage supporters, and dined with the Bigelows.
Anthony addressed the Territorial Legislature the next day in Tacoma Hall, a two-story structure at Fourth Avenue and Columbia Street in Olympia that was used temporarily during the original Capitol Building’s repairs. Given the era, her legislative audience included opponents of women’s right to vote. Nevertheless, Anthony also had friendly legislators like Bigelow who were ready to hear her remarks. Bigelow had introduced a proposal on women’s suffrage, explaining to members that, “No class of men ever did make just and equal laws for another unrepresented class; and our whole systems of laws demonstrates that man has never done so for woman.”
In her legislative speech, Anthony noted it was her first time appearing before a state legislature, and the first time in the nation’s history that any woman had been allowed to speak to lawmakers during session. The Washington Standard newspaper covered the event with Olympia editor and occasional legislator John Miller Murphy plainly supporting women’s suffrage and Anthony.
“She appeared as the advocate of woman suffrage under the guarantees of the 11th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution,” described the Washington Standard. “Governments, she held, were instituted not to establish rights but to secure them to their possessors.” Anthony stated that a government’s power derives from the consent of the governed, and their right to vote applies to both men and women. “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” the Washington Standard reported she told legislators.
In her diary that day, Anthony wrote, “Made pretty good argument.”
Convention Guided by Susan B. Anthony Establishes Thurston County Suffrage Association
After more inspirational speeches in the Puget Sound region, Anthony returned to Olympia to guide the Woman Suffrage Convention beginning November 8, 1871. “The object of this convention is to arrange some plan by which to secure concert of action among women voters of the Territory,” organizers stated. In addition to Anthony, those organizers included Ann Elizabeth Bigelow. The convention established the Washington Woman Suffrage Association and the Thurston County Suffrage Association.
After fits and starts, the Washington State Constitution was amended in 1910 to grant women the right to vote, a decade before the rest of the country.
To learn more about the historical role of the Bigelow House, visit the Olympia Historical Society & Bigelow House Museum webpage.
Bigelow House Museum
918 Glass Ave. NE, Olympia
