Colorado

Colorado was the first state to elect women to its legislature – in 1894, decades before most women even had the vote. 

Clara Cressingham

    Clara Cressingham was the youngest of the three trailblazers who won seats in 1894.  A native of New York City, she grew up in Brooklyn and was trained in elocution, something that no doubt furthered her future career but was of little value in helping to support her needy family.  She remained a working woman after marriage, as her husband was sickly.  The couple moved to Denver for his health, where Cressingham wrote articles for East Coast newspapers and raised their two children.   As a legislator, Cressingham served as secretary of the Republican Caucus and introduced innovative bills to support the new sugar-beet industry.  Along with the other two women, she successfully supported a bill to create homes for delinquent girls.

Carrie Clyde Holly

    Carrie Clyde Holly was a native of New York City, and her passion for the suffrage movement was cultivated there.  She married and moved to Vineland, now a suburb of Pueblo, in 1889 – and just five years later, was a legislator.  The liberalism of a western frontier state also can be seen in that she won a seat on the Vineland school board prior to her legislative election.  The strongest feminist of the three legislators, she criticized Populist Governor Davis H. Waite, who supported only partial voting rights for women.  She was the first of the three women to introduce a bill – making Carrie Holly the nation’s first woman to do so.  She also won a battle for husbands of female legislators to have the same access to the House floor that wives of male legislators traditionally had, and in line with such equitable treatment, led a crusade to give mothers equal rights with fathers on child custody.  Fathers were favored in the era’s legal system, and another of the era’s feminist fights was to raise the “age of consent” – the age at which a man can legally argue that a “woman” consented to sex.  In Delaware at the time, it was age seven.  Colorado’s was a more reasonable 16, but Holly worked to raise it to 18.  “Holly’s Bill” was so important because it addressed issues of morality and the prostitution industry.  Upon passage of this “Holly Bill,” delegates at the National American Women’s Suffrage association sent a telegram of congratulations.

Frances Klock

    Frances Klock was the only unmarried legislator elected in 1894.  Originally from Massachusetts, she moved to Wisconsin and developed organizing skills with participation in the volunteer US Sanitary Commission during the Civil War.  (This commission soon became the model for the International Red Cross.)  Like many other Americans, Klock moved west after the war; she lived in Denver and worked with veterans.  Although she was not involved in the suffrage movement, she benefited when Colorado women won the vote in 1893 and was one of the three women elected to the legislature.  A Republican, Klock was the first woman to chair a committee, Military and Indian Affairs.  Her longtime interest in Civil War veterans resulted in a new Soldier’s Home, and she passed a bill creating a home for destitute girls.

    In the same 1894 election, Colorado followed North Dakota’s 1892 precedent and became the second state to elect a woman to statewide office – and the nominees of both major Colorado parties were women.  Republican Antoinette Peavy defeated Mary C.C. Bradford, but Bradford went on to be an early female president of the National Education Association.