biography
| name: |
Morris, Esther Hobart Slack
|
| |
née McQuigg
|
| sex:
| female
|
| lived:
| (1814–1902)
|
| biography:
| Women's suffrage activist, born in Tioga Co, New York, USA. An orphan seamstress, she married a civil engineer (1841) and moved to Illinois after his death and married again. The family emigrated to Wyoming (1869), her husband opening a saloon in a gold-rush settlement called South Pass City. She became involved in the woman's suffrage movement, and in 1870, after the Wyoming legislature had granted women the vote (1869), she was briefly a justice of the peace. A big woman, blunt in speech, she attracted national attention and tried some 70 cases. She called her tenure a successful test ‘of a woman's ability to hold public office’. She separated from her husband (1871) and moved to Laramie, where one of her sons edited a newspaper. Although the extent of her contribution is debated, she became a legendary figure in the suffrage movement. Late in her life she was dubbed ‘the Mother of Woman Suffrage’, and the state of Wyoming officially commemorated her role as a leading suffragist in 1890. |
|
|
