Suffragists Road Trip: Natick & Framingham, MA, New Haven, CT

We recently drove to Natick, Massachusetts for an overnight stay.  With women’s fierce fight for the vote always on my mind, I did a Google search for suffragists in Natick. Olive Augusta Alger Cheney, who lived in Natick for 56 years, was a wonderful discovery. Augusta Cheney, the name she preferred, led an activist life as temperance advocate, suffrage leader, ardent feminist, editor, and author. In 1877, she founded the Women’s Suffrage Club of Natick, serving as president until 1891. In 1881, the Suffrage Club got a measure on the agenda of the town meeting that the “Town” ask the state legislature to “extend to women who are citizens, the right to hold Town offices, and to vote in Town affairs, on the same terms as male citizens.” Only men could vote at town meetings and they voted

We then stopped in neighboring Framingham, home of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller who lived on Warren Street. A prominent African American artist, Fuller, a

Mary Ware Dennett lived on Gates Street. A divorced suffragist with two young sons, Dennett supported herself working as  the highly effective corresponding secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her sons handed out fliers, sold tickets to suffrage events, held placards, and endured abuse from name-calling to

In front of the Edgell Memorial Library, I photographed the sign for “Mayo-Collins Square,” honoring

An hour and a half from home, we spontaneously decided to visit the Yale Art Museum in New Haven, Connecticut. Much to my amazement, I serendipitously saw Hiram Powers’ statue The Greek Slave that he made in 1850, after his original statue of 1844.  It is the

“I was a woman before I was an abolitionist, I must speak for women,” she replied.

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