Scavenger Hunt Clue
September 3, 2019 Clue
What is the common link between suffragist Elsie Hill, women’s right’s activist Helen Churchill Candee, the Connecticut Supreme Court case of Baker v. Norwalk, 152 Conn. 312 (1965), the 1960’s gothic TV series “Dark Shadows”, and the feature films “House of Dark Shadows” (1970), and “The Stepford Wives” (1974) and (2004)?
October 1, 2019 Clue
Born and raised in Connecticut, this feisty suffragette, feminist, and actress holds the second most Academy Award of “Best Actress” nominations. After graduating from college, she made her debut at this Connecticut playhouse.
November 1, 2019 Clue
After casting her ballot in the 1872 presidential election, Susan B. Anthony was arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted for voting illegally. The judge presiding at her June 1873 trial was Hon. Ward Hunt. Judge Hunt rejected the argument that Anthony had been denied the privileges guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment and invoked by the slaughterhouse cases (1873). He also refused to poll the jury and fined Anthony $100. The sentence was not enforced, however, and there was no appeal.
Judge Hunt, who was appointed to the US Supreme Court in 1872, attended law school in Connecticut. US Supreme Court Justices Levi Woodbury and Henry Baldwin attended the same school. Where did Ward Hunt attend law school?
Hint: Alums of this law school also represented Sojourner Truth when her son was kidnapped.
December 2, 2019 Clue
In November 1913, one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century took place across the street from this building. British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst called for “Freedom or Death” in a stirring, militant 90-minute speech, urging a huge crowd to use militant tactics to win rights for women.
January 2, 2020 Clue
Guestrooms at this luxury inn and spa celebrate several local historical figures, including: Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn, mother of actress Katharine Hepburn, and leader in the suffrage movement in the United States; and Anna Louise James, the first African American pharmacist and one of the first women to register to vote after the passage of the 19th Amendment. When you find this site, make sure to also stop by the James Pharmacy, which still operates as a bed and breakfast in town, called the Deacon and James Pharmacy B&B.
February 3, 2020 Clue
Elmer and Constant MacRae, the husband and wife who owned this historic home and operated it as a boarding house frequented by American Impressionist painters, were committed to the fight for women’s suffrage. An artist himself, Elmer MacRae donated one of his paintings for auction to benefit the Greenwich Equal Suffrage League. In 1914 the MacRae’s 10-year-old twin daughters and a group of their friends formed the second-ever Junior Suffrage Corps, under the leadership of the headmistress of the nearby school Rosemary Hall.
Beginning in February 2020, visitors to this historic site can learn about the MacRae family’s involvement in the suffrage movement, and much more, in the exhibition An Unfinished Revolution: The Woman’s Suffrage Centennial, on view through September 6, 2020.
March 2, 2020 Clue
The founder of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association was a frequent visitor in her older sister’s home. The older sister is known as the most influential American woman of the 19th century.
In October 1869, this influential woman lent her celebrity to Connecticut’s first woman suffrage convention, along with other national and state elites. “…Being something of a woman’s rights woman, as I am to some extent, something of almost everything that goes—I shall have a right to say a word or two on the other side.” In response to the question of women’s voting rights, this woman published My Wife and I in 1871, a novel which reinforced women’s control in the home while endorsing women pursuing careers.
April 1, 2020
This library located on the campus of a state university in Connecticut, is dedicated to the university's first female president (1946-1975), and has a collection of letters, notes, and other items from the suffrage movement in Connecticut.
May 1, 2020
Buried at this grave site is a suffragist who worked to ensure that black women were not being ignored in the fight for women’s liberties. She was also the first African American woman to run for state office in Connecticut.
June 1, 2020
The house and grounds of this estate are part of the Connecticut Heritage Trail, highlighting the historical significance of this woman who was a conservationist, businesses woman, and philanthropist. She was an active member of the suffragist movement and defied the odds to assume her father's business after his death, in a time when women were not only being denied the right to vote, but other leadership and business opportunities.
July 1, 2020
This woman’s New York Times obituary noted that she, “had her part in fostering an authentic American art” by enthusiastically opening her home as a boardinghouse for artists in the early 1900s. In 1919 she served on her local Executive Committee of the Connecticut Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Wives of some of the artists also were members of the group, which held meetings in local homes where members could present their reasons for opposing equal-suffrage. While there is no record of her home serving as a meeting place, the house is now a favorite Connecticut tourist destination.