Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

206 State Hwy 75, Hailey, ID 83333, USA

Lat/Long

43.5213716, -114.3165066

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915) was a prominent suffragist leader in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, even before the territories were admitted as states. She served as an officer in both the Oregon Equal Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1870, Abigail bought The New Northwest, a progressive newspaper that she managed and edited for 16 years. In a letter to the editor of The New Northwest in 1876, Susan B. Anthony implored her:

Now, Mrs. Abigail Duniway, you must forge the thunder for us that shall roll its echoes through the past and present centuries! As the namesake of Abigail Adams, wife of one president and the mother of another, and the first woman who asked for suffrage for her sex at the hands of the First Federal Congress, we look to you, planted as you are upon the furthest slope of the American Occident, to come over and help us until taxation without representation shall be Done-away. How I wish you were with us now. Rouse your societies and demand of them the financial aid you need to bring you to our councils. They owe you this assistance, and you should have it. Let every man and woman in Oregon and Washington Territory who feels a spark of local patriotism forward you one dollar to meet your expenses, and reimburse you for the time spent to represent them, and the work is done.

Abigail also attended joint sessions of Idaho’s Territorial Legislature and state-wide constitutional conventions as well as national events. She is credited with giving more than 140 public lectures on suffragist topics. Throughout her career, Abigail wrote a variety of suffragist literature, including editorials, short stories, poems, and travelogues. She remained active in the suffragist movement until her death in 1915.

As of 2021, the marker commemorating Abigail Scott Duniway stands near the former Hailey Theatre, where she addressed audiences, and near the former home of the Picotte family, where she was a guest during her lecture tours in Hailey.