Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

House, People

Location

221 Pine St, Wallace, ID 83873, USA

Lat/Long

47.47347, -115.9288

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

May Arkwright Hutton (1860-1915) was a women’s suffrage leader and labor rights advocate in both Idaho and the State of Washington. Before moving to Washington, she lived at 221 Pine Street in Wallace, Idaho. In 1895, the Idaho State Legislature passed a proposed women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution, placing the amendment before the voters of Idaho on the statewide ballot in 1896. Voters approved the amendment, securing women’s right to vote in the state. After Idaho women achieved the right to vote, Hutton served on the board of elections in Wallace and represented Idaho at annual conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1898, Hutton, while still living in Idaho, helped to organize a women’s suffrage campaign in Washington. She eventually moved to Spokane, Washington where she continued her suffrage activism, serving as vice president of the Washington Equal Suffrage Association. In 1909, she established the Washington Political Equality League, serving as its president. Hutton’s activism helped to ensure the success of the 1910 campaign for women’s suffrage in Washington, resulting in an amendment to the state constitution that guaranteed women’s right to vote in the state.

You ask me why I believe in woman’s suffrage? … It is an injustice to refuse the ballot to more than one half of the nation’s population.

– May Arkwright Hutton, Spokane Chronicle, July 29, 1905.