Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People, Site

Location

88 Hawthorn St, Hartford, CT 06105, USA

Lat/Long

41.76345, -72.69968

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

In October 1869, John (1816-1901) and Isabella Beecher Hooker (1822-1907) founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association at a women’s suffrage convention held in Hartford, Connecticut and attended by prominent community leaders. At the convention, John read a draft of the association’s proposed constitution, which included that its objective was “to secure the ballot for the women of Connecticut equally with men.” Isabella was the longtime leader of the association, serving as president from 1871 to 1906. After their deaths, the association they helped to establish continued to work for women’s right to vote.

By August 1920, efforts of suffragists and the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association paid off with the passage and subsequent ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”