History Colorado

Denver Public Library, Special Collections and Archives

Explore a timeline of key dates of the Women’s Vote Movement to discover where women already had the right to vote and who was left out.

Voting Rights Timeline

Colorado Suffrage

Explore Minnie Reynold's desk at the Denver Women’s Press Club. 

Suffrage Work in Action!

Learn about key leaders of the suffrage movement and how they contributed to the cause.

Suffrage Movement Hall of Fame

Make a meme that draws comparisons to this billboard. 

For or Against?

Over 100 years ago the 19th Amendment was passed. It was the largest expansion of voting rights in US history and continues to be relevant today.

How did women gain the right to vote and why does it matter?
How was voting different then vs. today?  
Who was excluded from voting over time? 
Who were key leaders in the national and Colorado suffrage movement? 
How did Colorado passing women’s suffrage in 1893 help lead to national women’s suffrage in 1920? 
What was the long term impact? 


Elected Women in Colorado Teacher’s Guide

“This Shall be the Land for Women!-The Struggle for Western Women’s Suffrage”

Caroline Nichols Churchill, Active Footsteps (Colorado Springs, 1909). 

, Denver Public Library, Western History Collection (DPLWHD). 

Women's Voting Rights in Colorado-Middle School

Civics and Government

Social Studies

U.S. History

(1859 - 1947) Carrie Chapman traveled throughout Colorado in 1893 speaking in favor of passage of the suffrage referendum that year.  The referendum passed partly due to her support.  She was a national leader of the suffrage movement.

Illustratio, Carrie Chapman Catt

(1820 - 1906) Anthony was a major national leader in the suffrage movement.  She traveled throughout Colorado in 1877 speaking in support of the woman suffrage referendum that went down to defeat that year.  She kept a Day Diary of her travels throughout the State which can be found on the Library of Congress web site.

Prepatory sketch for Denver Judicial Building mural made by  Angelo di Benedetto.

Sketch, Portrait of Susan B. Anthony

(1818-1893) Stone and her husband, Dr Henry Blackwell, traveled throughout Colorado in 1877 speaking in support of the woman suffrage referendum that went down to defeat that year.  She was a national leader of the suffrage movement and is believed to be the first woman to keep her maiden name after marriage.

Photo of Lucy Stone from a set of Progressive Chautauqua Cards.  Each card has two prints of famous men or women. There are seven women in this set and Lucy Stone is one.  Front of the cards to the right or left of the print gives the date born and in most cases date died, six questions printed in green by each man/woman. Back of the card is information to be read to the players to help identify the person is they have failed to answer correctly any of the six questions on front.

Photo, Lucy Stone

Photograph, Lucy Stone

(1825 - 1909) Dr. Blackwell traveled throughout Colorado in 1877 with his wife Lucy Stone speaking in support of the woman suffrage referendum that went down to defeat that year. He and Lucy were the largest financial contributors to the 1893 campaign.

1903 General Election Ballot Box.  NATIONAL BALLOT BOX / PATd / JUNE 17, 1884 / MF'D BY AMOS PETTIBONE / CHICAGO

Ballot Box, General Election 1903 (Image 1)

Ballot Box, General Election 1903 (Image 2)

Ballot Box, General Election 1903 (Image 3)

Ballot Box, General Election 1903

(1865-1955) She was Vice President of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association in 1894. Ellis was staff writer for the Rocky Mountain News in 1889, and became involved with the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association. Ellis was a representative from Colorado to the World’s Fair in 1893, where she and a contingent of Colorado suffragists met with Susan B. Anthony. She had correspondence with national suffrage leaders like Anthony, Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Harriet Taylor Upton, and Carrie Chapman Catt throughout her life. Ellis’ articles were instrumental in persuading the men of Colorado to vote for equal suffrage in 1893. After the 1893 campaign, Ellis served as Vice-Chair of the Democratic Party’s Central Committee from 1904-1908. Between 1901 and 1910 she continued to work for the News, but also published 3 books: The Master Knot of Human Fate (1901), Heart of my Heart (1904), and Under the Harrow (1908). She was elected to the Denver Election Commission in about 1910, during which time she helped to write the Charter for the City and County of Denver. She worked for the National Woman Suffrage Association at their headquarters in Washington, DC in 1915. She continued to write articles in the Denver newspapers. By 1917, she was mentioned in the Denver Post as “second in command of the Woman’s National Democratic Committee.” 

Photograph print of women's suffrage movement leader Ellis Meredith riding a bicycle.

Photograph, Ellis Meredith on a bicycle

(1833-1908)  Dr. Alida Avery was the founder and first president of the Territorial Woman Suffrage Society, and two time Vice-President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association representing Colorado and California. She moved to Colorado in 1874, leaving a position at Vassar to become the Superintendent of Hygiene for Colorado.

(1839-1907) She was President of the Arapahoe City League of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association in 1894. She married Colorado Governor John Routt in 1874 and was First lady of Colorado, 1876-1879 and 1891-1893. Eliza was the first woman registered to vote in Colorado. She started the Woman’s Home Club and was on the Board of directors for the Denver Orphan’s Home. She held a suffrage meeting in her home on 9/28/1893 where the Suffrage League was formed.

Elizabeth Pickrell Routt was the second wife of John L. Routt, Governor of Colorado Territory 1875-76 and Governor of State of Colorado 1876-79 and 1891-93.

Photograph, Eliza Routt

(1865-1936) (Also Minnie Reynolds Scalabino). Minnie came to Colorado in 1890 to make her career as a newspaper writer, working for the Rocky Mountain News. She became Press Chair of the Colorado Women’s Suffrage Association in 1893 and persuaded 75% of the newspapers in Colorado to offer pro-suffrage space for her writings. She was part of the group that went to the World’s Fair in 1893 to convince Susan B. Anthony to come to Colorado. She became involved in the Populist Party, and ran for State Legislature in 1894. In addition to founding the Denver Women’s Press Club, she was also one of the organizers of the Denver Women’s Club.

Minnie J. Reynolds was the founder of Denver Woman's Press Club, 1898.  This photo shows her Press Club office.

Photograph, Minnie J. Reynolds

(1847-1919) Elizabeth attended West Newton English and Classical School and married Newell Howard Ensley (1852-1888) in 1882. Newell had been born into slavery, graduated 3rd in his class at Roger Williams University, and then became a professor of Latin at Howard University in Washington and Alcom State in Mississippi, where he also gave lectures on women’s suffrage. The couple moved to Denver in about 1887 or 1888 and were both involved in the suffrage movement.   Ensley became Treasurer of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association in 1894, was on the Board of Directors of (Colored) Women’s League, 1895, and founded the Colorado Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1904. With Ida De Priest she founded the Colorado Colored Women’s Republican Club. She also was the Denver Correspondent for the Woman’s Era, the monthly newspaper of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

(1833-) He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Colorado Woman Suffrage Association in 1877.  Vigil was a Spanish speaking rancher from southern Huerfano and Las Animas counties who was supportive of women’s suffrage during the Constitutional Convention in 1876. In the minority report with H. P. Bromwell, they wrote: “It is false that Woman is inferior to Man. This capacity of Woman to govern has been shown. There is hardly a kingdom or empire…which does not point out to a reign when the scepter was held by women in war or in peace. The truth is we are a human race. Part of us are men, part of us are women; both equal, each superior, and each inferior; each is part and parcel of the same humanity” He also served in the first session of the Colorado Legislature.

(1837-1924) She was Treasurer of the Colorado Woman Suffrage Association in 1876 and the Treasurer or Territorial Women’s Suffrage Society in 1876. Ione was part of the Denver Fortnightly Club that established public kindergarten in 1881. She was a speaker at the Chicago World’s fair in 1893 and was the first woman elected to a governing school board body in CO, even before Colorado suffrage passed in 1893.

Margaret “Molly” Brown was a staunch supporter of women’s rights, and an active member of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. She even ran for office before women could vote nationally.

Painting of Margaret Brown (Unsinkable Molly Brown).  Brown was a suffrage activist and a survivor from the Titanic.

Painting, Molly Brown

(1854-1935) Elizabeth McCourt Doe Tabor married Horace Tabor in 1882. He was a wealthy silver miner.  She donated rooms in the Tabor Grand Opera House for the Colorado suffrage campaign headquarters and was involved in the suffrage effort for Colorado. 

Elizabeth McCourt Tabor (Baby Doe Tabor) known for her rags to riches and then back to rags story has been the subject of an opera, a Hollywood film, and numerous books and articles.
Born in 1854 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin she became one of the most popular figures in Colorado history. Known for her beauty and rebellious nature, she divorced her first husband, Harvey Doe, in 1880 after three years of marriage. Moving from Central City to Leadville, Colorado, she met wealthy miner, Horace Tabor. Having a secret affair, he married Baby Doe in 1882 before his divorce from his loyal wife of twenty years was final. Horace and Baby Doe had a luxurious life in their Denver mansion, but given the scandalous nature of their union, Denver's elite shunned them. Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 brought an end to their life style and fortune. Horace's health failed and he died nearly penniless in 1899 leaving Baby Doe with their two daughters. She returned to Leadville to the spent, flooded Matchless Mine living in a tool shed. One daughter left to work in Denver, the other moved to Wisconsin. For the next thirty-five years, Baby Doe lived alone in the cabin, writing in her journals and known in the area as the "mad woman." She was found there in 1935 frozen to death., Charles Waldo Love was born in Washington D.C. His early art training was in Denver with Henry Reed at the Reed Art School He won a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City. He studied in Paris, worked in New York as a commercial artist, and returned to Denver where in 1937 he began a twenty-year career at the Denver Museum of Natural History. There he created habitat backgrounds, many of them atmospheric, colorful dioramas. He did a number of historical portraits for the Colorado State Historical Society of Colorado figures for the WPA. He traveled and painted widely in the West and Southwest, and his work is in the Santa Fe Railroad Collection. During retirement he worked on special projects for the Museum painting thirty-three panoramas in the habitat section. Ask/ARTs Biographical Sketches.

Oil Painting, Baby Doe Tabor

(1833-1895) Augusta Louise Pierce married Horace Tabor in January 1857 and came to Colorado during the Gold Rush in 1859. She was an astute business woman and money manager who helped her husband become one of the wealthiest men in the country. She was a strong supporter of the suffrage movement in Colorado.

Tabor, Augusta, 1833-1895.  Augusta was the first wife of Horace Tabor, well known for mining.

Resource Kits

Object Library

Museums

Women's Voting Rights in Colorado-Middle School

Suffrage Movement Hall of Fame

Guiding Question

Carrie Chapman Catt