Maine Suffrage Trail: Road to the 19th Amendment
Suffragists parade in Houlton's Market Square in 1917. Photo: Maine State Museum.
The year 2020 was the centennial celebration of women’s suffrage. Here in Maine, suffragists began campaigning for women’s right to vote in the mid-1850s in Ellsworth through a lecture series, and that same year the first women’s suffrage petition made it to the legislature. The fight continued through the 1860s and 1840s, and by 1873 the Maine Woman Suffrage Association was formed. In 18876 the Maine Legislature cast its first vote on the women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution, but it failed to gain the necessary two-thirds vote.
That refrain would repeat for the rest of the century and into the next. Most Maine women finally gained the right to vote when the state ratified the Nineteenth Amendment on November 5, 1919. It took until 1924 for Native Americans to be considered citizens of the country, and until a 1954 voter referendum for Native Americans to receive full voting rights.
The Maine Suffrage Trail is a project of the Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaboration, which identified seven suffragists and locations to be commemorated through permanent suffrage markers. These remarkable women include Black matriarchs of Bangor, who supported suffrage through the Mothers Clubs and the Household of Ruth; and Lucy Nicolar Poolaw, who, in recognition for her extraordinary advocacy, was selected to the first Native American on a Maine reservation to cast a vote.
The work to highlight the history of Women’s activism in Maine, including the inclusion of more BIPOC narratives, is ongoing, but this project is a fantastic start to sharing this incredible history. Download the trail map and take a journey through the history of Maine suffrage today!
