Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

Event

Location

84 W 0100 N, Morgan, UT 84050, USA

Lat/Long

41.037437, -111.679325

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

The Mormons, led by Brigham Young, arrived in the Utah Territory around the year 1847. As they built their communities they established local government and passed laws.The Utah Territory made history when, in 1870, it became one of the few places in the United States to give women the right to vote. For nearly 20 years the women of the territory enjoyed this right until 1887, when Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act. This act, which was geared against the Mormon Church and the practice of polygamy, stripped women in the Utah Territory of their voting rights. Not long after, Woman Suffrage Associations began to form in different communities across the Territory. In one such community, local women met at the Morgan City school house on June 22, 1889 and organized the Morgan County Woman Suffrage Association.  A July 1, 1889 edition of the Women’s Exponent described the proceedings of the meeting and a gave a summation of remarks made the Morgan County Woman Suffrage Association president, Mrs. H.C. Smith:

Mrs. Smith being called responded in a short address. Thanked the ladies for the honor they had conferred upon her, and hoped to be able to retain their confidence. Her heart was enlisted in the Woman’s cause, never could see why women should be subject to laws she had no hand in marking, nor rules over by those not of her choice, that men and women should work together politically as well as religiously and socially, said there was a wide field in which women could be profitable employed, that they could materially aid in correcting many of the evils of the day.

With this vision in mind citizens throughout the territory mobilized for the cause of woman suffrage. At the Utah State Constitutional Convention in 1895 women spoke on behalf of woman suffrage. When Utah became a state on January 4, 1896, voting rights for women were restored.