Ellis Meredith
Ellis Meredith in 1902
Born1865 (1865)
Montana Territory, United States
Died1955 (aged 89–90)
NationalityAmerican
Occupations
  • Suffragist
  • journalist
  • novelist
Employer(s)Rocky Mountain News (1893–1917)
Women's Bureau of the Democratic Party
Spouses
Howard S. Stansbury
​
​
(m. 1889; div. 1901)​
    Henry H. Clement
    ​
    (m. 1913)​

    Ellis Meredith (1865–1955) was an American suffragist, journalist, and novelist, known as the Susan B. Anthony of Colorado.[1][2]

    Early years

    Ellis Meredith was born in Montana Territory in 1865 to Frederick Allison and Emily R. Sorin Meredith.[3][4] Her mother graduated from Hamline University at Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1859[4][5] and received her master's degree in 1863. Her father was the editor of the Red Wing Republican when they were married.[6] The Merediths were settlers of Bannack by the winter of 1862–1863 when they traveled by wagon to Bitterroot Valley in southwestern Montana.[5][7] Ellis, her mother and brother, went to her grandfather's house in De Soto, Missouri, for some time.[8] In 1885, she moved to Denver with her family, where her father was a printer and later managing editor of the Rocky Mountain News.[3] Her mother was the first journalist in Denver when she began writing for the paper in 1886. She was also a suffragist.[6]

    Career

    Suffrage movement

    In 1890 she and five other women founded the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association.[9] In 1893 she went to the Woman's Congress at the Chicago World's Fair in August 1893 to ask for help from Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone, leading suffrage activists, saying, "If Colorado goes for woman suffrage, you may count on a landslide in that direction throughout the west."[9] Susan B. Anthony agreed to send organizer Carrie Chapman Catt to help, and Meredith wrote to Anthony about the situation in Colorado while Carrie Chapman Catt traveled around Colorado organizing.[9][10]

    Journalist and author

    She joined the Rocky Mountain News in 1893.[2][11] She began writing the column A Woman's World for the Rocky Mountain News in 1889, where she (among other things) advocated women's suffrage.[9] In 1894 she became part of the editorial staff of the Rocky Mountain News, where was the first female journalist in Colorado, and probably the United States, to cover the legislature.[9]

    Ellis Meredith, Representative Women of Colorado, 1914

    Meredith also wrote three novels - The Master Knot of Human Fate (1901), Heart of My Heart (1904), and Under the Harrow (1907).[1]

    Politics

    On November 7, 1893, the men of Colorado voted for women's suffrage and Meredith stayed involved in politics.[9] In 1902, she helped write Denver's first city charter as one of only was four female delegates to the Denver City Charter convention.[9] She was the vice chair of the Democratic Party State Central Committee from 1904 until 1908, and in February 1904 she became one of the people from Colorado to testify to the House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary in favor of the suffrage amendment.[9] The first woman elected to office in Denver,[12] she became City Election Commissioner in 1910 and served in that role until 1915.[9] In 1917 she moved to Washington, D.C. to work at the National Democratic headquarters.[9]

    Personal life

    Meredith was married in 1889 to Howard S. Stansbury and they divorced in 1901. She married Henry H. Clement in 1913. She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1917 to take a job with the Women's Bureau of the Democratic Party and continued to be an active member of the Woman's National Democratic Club.[3]

    She died in 1955.[3] The Ellis Meredith Papers are held in the Colorado Historical Society in Denver, Colorado.[13] Meredith was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2018.[14]

    References

    1. 1 2 Smith, G.D. (1997). American Fiction, 1901-1925: A Bibliography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521434690.
    2. 1 2 "Meredith, "What it Means to Be an Enfranchised Woman," Aug 1908". womhist.alexanderstreet.com. Retrieved 2014-03-24.
    3. 1 2 3 4 Ann D. Gordon (June 10, 2009). The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Their Place Inside the Body-Politic, 1887 to 1895. Rutgers University Press. p. 524. ISBN 978-0-8135-6440-1.
    4. 1 2 "Emily R. Sorin Meredith (Mrs. Frederick Allison) of Fort Lupton, Colorado. 1859 graduate of Hamline University at Red Wing". Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
    5. 1 2 "Emily R. Meredith papers, 1862-1867 and undated. :: Letters, Diaries and Documents from the Montana Historical Society". Montana State Library. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
    6. 1 2 "The Passing of Emily Sorin Meredith, Class of 1859". Alumni Quarterly of Hamline University. Executive Committee of the Alumni Association of the College of Liberal Arts. 1913. p. 25.
    7. ↑ Not in Precious Metals Alone: A Manuscript History of Montana. The Society. 1976. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-917298-02-8.
    8. ↑ Meredith,Ellis; "Three Distinguished Figures of the Early Rocky Mountain News", Colorado Magazine, Vol. 27, No. 1, January, 1950.
    9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Trail's End - Ellis Meredith got the vote for Colorado women - Colorado Gambler | Colorado Gambler". coloradogambler.com. Retrieved 2014-03-24.
    10. ↑ Gordon, A. (2009). The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Their Place Inside the Body-Politic, 1887 to 1895. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813564401.
    11. ↑ "Ellis Meredith bio - Boom and Bust: Denver's History Artifact Kit". denvershistory.weebly.com. Retrieved 2014-03-24.
    12. ↑ James Alexander Semple (1914). Representative women of Colorado: a pictorial collection of the women of Colorado who have attained prominence in the social, political, professional, pioneer and club life of the State. The Alexander Art Publishing Co. p. 63.
    13. ↑ McConnaughy, C.M. (2013). The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107013667.
    14. ↑ Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, Ellis Meredith
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