Abigail Scott Dunaway: First Suffragette in Oregon

In recognition of Women’s History Month, this post is about the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement in Oregon, with a focus on Abigail Scott Dunaway, known as Oregon’s “Mother of Equal Suffrage.” I came across Abigail Dunaway in researching prominent women in early Oregon.

Abigail was born in Illinois in October 1834 and traveled west on the Oregon Trail with her family in 1852 when she was seventeen. Her mother and one younger brother died along the trail, but the remainder of the family settled on a farm near what is now Lafayette, Oregon. Abigail taught school in Oregon, but soon married a farmer, Benjamin Charles Duniway, in 1853.

Benjamin lost his farm and was later disabled by runaway horses, leaving Abigail to support him and their six children. By 1864, the time of my current work-in-progress, Abigail was teaching at a small boarding school she instituted. She later ran a millinery shop. In 1871, she moved the family to Portland, Oregon, and started a newspaper, The New Northwest, which she published for sixteen years. Abigail was the first female publisher in Oregon.

Abigail also wrote many novels, mostly about her experiences on the Oregon Trail. Her first novel,’s Captain Gray’s Company; or, Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon (1859), was the first novel to be commercially published in Oregon.

Abigail was motivated to start The New Northwest because of stories she heard from her female customers in her millinery shop about abuse they suffered at the hands of their husbands. I have to think her experience supporting her family while female must also have contributed to her support of women’s suffrage. In 1872, she spoke in support of women’s suffrage before the Oregon legislature. She masterminded the women’s suffrage movements in Washington and Idaho, which passed laws permitting women to vote in 1883 and 1896 respectively.

In 1899, Abigail spoke again before the Oregon legislature in a session commemorating Oregon’s fortieth anniversary of statehood. She was introduced as follows:

“Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway is known throughout the nation as perhaps the ablest champion now living of the claims of woman for equal political rights. Her voice and pen have been always eloquent and powerful in any cause in which they were engaged, and many a foe has keenly regretted having called forth her batteries of reasoning, ridicule and retributive castigation. Mrs. Duniway is a noble woman, of whom Oregon is justly proud.”

Her address in full can be found online. Its themes were to praise the Pacific Northwest and its progressiveness, the heroism of the men and women of the region (especially the women) in overcoming hardship, and the right of Oregon women to a say in government equal to that of men.

Nevertheless, it took over a decade longer for Oregon to pass a law permitting women to vote—after five unsuccessful attempts. Despite the long battle for women’s rights, Oregon was nevertheless in the forefront of this movement—in 1912, Oregon was the seventh state to permit women to vote. Congress didn’t pass the Nineteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution until 1919, four years after Abigail died.

As Abigail wrote in 1914, a year before her death,

“The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future.”

For more on Abigail Scott Duniway, see here and here and here.

What interesting women have you learned about in studying history?