Esther Hobart Morris
Encyclopedia
Esther Hobart Morris a Tioga County, New York
native, distinguished herself as the first female Justice of the Peace
in the United States. A mother of three boys, she began her tenure as justice in South Pass City, Wyoming
, on February 14, 1870, and served a term of less than nine months. The Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners appointed Morris as justice of the peace after the previous justice, R. S. Barr, resigned in protest of Wyoming Territory's
passage of the women's suffrage amendment in December 1869.
Popular stories and historical accounts, buttressed by state and federal public monuments, point to Morris as a leader in the passage of Wyoming's
suffrage amendment. However, Morris' leadership role in the legislation is disputed.
Morris' life after South Pass City included participating in local and national women's organizations. She received but ultimately rejected an 1873 nomination by the Woman's Party of Wyoming as a candidate to the Wyoming Territorial Legislature. Morris served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association
in 1876.
Esther Morris died in Cheyenne, Wyoming
, April 2, 1902.
on August 6, 1814. Orphaned at an early age, she apprenticed to a seamstress and ran a successful millinery business out of her grandparents' home, "making hats, and buying and selling goods for women." Moreover, Morris agitated as a young woman against slavery
, reportedly during one incident countering efforts of slavery advocates who threatened to destroy a church that supported abolition
. Eight years into her millinery business, Morris married Artemus Slack in 1841. Three years later, just short of her 30th birthday, her husband died. Morris subsequently moved to Illinois
, where her late husband, a civil engineer
, had acquired property. She encountered legal roadblocks, however, in settling her husband's affairs because women were not allowed to own or inherit property. Thereafter she moved to Peru, Illinois
, where in 1842 she married a local merchant, John Morris. In the spring of 1868 her husband, along with Esther's son from her previous marriage, Edward Archibald "Archy" Slack, moved to a gold rush community at South Pass City
, Wyoming Territory
to open a saloon.
In 1869, Morris and her two eighteen-year-old twin sons, Robert and Edward, ventured west to rejoin the rest of their family. They first traveled by train to a waystation on the newly-completed transcontinental railroad
at Point of Rocks
25 miles east of present-day Rock Springs, Wyoming
. From there, Morris and her boys continued north by stagecoach. They crossed the Red Desert
and the Killpecker Sand Dunes before ascending a gradual mountain pass to the Sweetwater Mining District.
The dry, rocky landscape that confronted fifty-five-year-old Morris as she stepped off the stage at South Pass City appeared startlingly different from the fertile landscape she had known in Illinois and New York. Instead, her new home at 7500 feet (2,286 m) in elevation meant scratching out a living in a barren gulch at the mouth of canyon near the Continental Divide. The Morrises settled into a 24 feet by 26 feet (7 × 9 m) log cabin with a sod roof that Esther's oldest son had purchased. Only the summer flow of nearby Willow Creek and occasional bushes along with a few lone trees tempered South Pass City's sharp-edged terrain. Winters were brutal. South Pass area residents, whose population swelled to as many as 4,000 residents, according to one estimate, either left the camp for the winter or faced extreme isolation during the long winters. Those who stayed on the mountain pass, like the Morrises, battled sub-zero temperatures, high winds, and deep snow which might not retreat until June.
Both John Morris and Archy purchased interest in mining properties soon after their arrival, including the Mountain Jack, Grand Turk, Golden State, and Nellie Morgan lodes, according to historian Michael A. Massie. Initially prospects looked good in the midst of the gold rush, where the mines and adjoining businesses of South Pass City spurred employment for 2,000 workers during 1868 and 1869, according to a Stanford University
study. But then came the bust. By 1870 most miners had left, leaving as few as 460 residents. By 1875 less than 100 remained.
in 1870. It took some "prodding" but Morris subsequently completed an application for the post and submitted a required $500 bond. The Sweetwater County Board of Commissioners in a vote of two to one approved her application on February 14, 1870.
Subsequently, the county clerk telegraphed a press release announcing the historic event of the first woman justice of the peace. The Wyoming Territory's enfranchment of women to vote in 1869 made Morris' unprecedented appointment possible. The clerk's telegraph to the world in part read:
Morris' momentous appointment followed the resignation of Justice R. S. Barr, who quit in protest of the territorial legislature's passage of the women's suffrage amendment in December 1869. However, according to author Lynne Cheney
writing in American Heritage
magazine, the county board appointed Morris to complete the term of Judge J. W. Stillman.
Morris began her tenure as justice in South Pass City in 1870 by arresting Stillman, who refused to hand over his court docket. Ultimately, Morris dismissed her own case with a ruling that she as an interested party did not have the authority to arrest Stillman, according to author Lynne Cheney. Morris began anew with her own docket, holding court sitting on a wood slab in the living room of her log cabin. Cheney notes:
Morris looked to her sons for support in the courtroom. She appointed Archibald as district clerk and Robert as a part time deputy clerk with the tasks of keeping court records and drawing up arrest warrants. Unfortunately her husband John's support was not so forthcoming. John actively opposed his wife's appointment and reportedly made such a scene in her court that Esther had him jailed.
Judge Morris ruled on 27 cases during her more than eight months in office, including nine criminal cases. None were overturned according to records at the Wyoming State Archives, although a few cases were appealed but upheld by the appellate court. Morris held her justice of the peace post until the term that she had been appointed to fill expired on December 6, 1870. Morris sought reelection but failed to muster a nomination from either the Republican
or Democratic Party
.
Morris' historic judgeship not surprisingly garnered favorable review upon the completion of her term in the South Pass News, as her son Archibald was the editor. However, the historical record reveals little fanfare in the remainder of Wyoming's press. The Wyoming Tribune, published in Cheyenne, did note the comments of Territorial Secretary Lee: "the people of Sweetwater County had not the good sense and judgment to nominate and elect her for the ensuing term."
Troubles continued to mount for the family. An 1871 fire struck the South Pass City newspaper office owned and operated by Esther Morris' son Archibald Slack, forcing him and his wife Sarah to move to Laramie
in Albany County. Perhaps it was case of cabin fever after being cooped up all season during a particularly bad winter of 1871–1872 that spurred Morris to action. She left the camp and her husband. Morris traveled to Laramie where she briefly lived with her son Archibald. The former judge remained unsettled however. She moved to Albany, New York
, then to Springfield, Illinois
, where she spent her winters, according to Massie. Summers saw her returning to Wyoming where she spent time with her sons. Morris' wandering ended in the 1880s when she returned to Cheyenne
to live with her son Robert.
Meanwhile, Morris had been but one of many in a long history of residents who saddled-up and called it quits in South Pass City. Short-lived gold strikes in the 1880s, 1890s, and 1930s once again lured miners back to the mountains seeking their fortunes. But ultimately busts prevailed. South Pass City by the 1940s had deteriorated into a ghost town.
's groundbreaking 1869 legislation written a year before she became justice of the peace by Civil War
veteran and South Pass City resident William H. Bright. Yet critics claim the public record celebrating Morris as a suffrage leader is wrong.
The reports of Morris as suffragist goes back to South Pass City where she was said to have hosted a tea party for the electors and candidates for Wyoming's first territorial legislature. Popular accounts hold that Morris' purpose for the tea party was to ensure that the candidates committed to suffrage. Yet this party likely never happened. Nonetheless, the story seeped into the annals of history like a fine dust whose origin is unclear. Contemporary research, however, points to Morris' oldest son, later a Cheyenne newspaper editor, as at least one of the sources of the story. Indeed some say that he "concocted it".
Other research leads to Morris' friend, Melville C. Brown, who was president of the 1889 Constitutional Convention in Cheyenne, claimed that Morris presented the suffrage bill to the legislature. Subsequently, Morris' son, Archibald, began referring to his mother in the Cheyenne Sun newspaper as the "Mother of Suffrage."
The tea party story might have faded quietly were it not for H. G. Nickerson. Nickerson, who discovered and opened the Bullion Mine in 1868 and later served as territorial legislator, wrote a letter to the Lander
Wyoming State Journal. Nickerson's letter, published February 14, 1919, recounted the tea party and his attendance as a legislative candidate 50 years after the reported event. In a tip of the hat honoring Morris, Nickerson notes:
"To Mrs. Esther Morris is due the credit and honor of advocating and originating woman's suffrage in the United States."
Nickerson's story gained widespread prominence after his friend Wyoming historian Grace Raymond Hebard
(1861–1936) published the account in a 1920 pamphlet entitled "How Woman Suffrage Came to Wyoming (1869)". The pamphlet eventually became so widely distributed that students throughout the state's public schools read the story memorializing Morris's suffrage feats. Hebard spent many years advancing the claim, promoting Morris as an instigator and co-author of Wyoming's suffrage legislation.
This popular account of Morris' role in Wyoming's suffrage movement gained the permanence of stone after boosters placed a monument to Morris the suffragist in South Pass City.
In 1960, Wyoming further celebrated Morris as a key impetus of Wyoming suffrage by donating a life-sized bronze
statue of her to the National Statuary Hall Collection
in the rotunda
of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Officiating at the Statuary Hall ceremony were Vice President
Richard M. Nixon and Richard Arnold Mullens (1918–2010), the president at the time of the Wyoming State Society. Mullens was also a member of the first baseball
team of the University of Wyoming
Cowboys, a veteran of both World War II
and the Korean War
, and a business partner with Leonard Silverstein of a District of Columbia law firm specializing in tax law.
In 1963, Wyoming officials placed a replica of the nine-foot sculpture at the state capitol building in Cheyenne. An inscription hails Morris as the "Mother of Woman Suffrage." Furthermore, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
in Fort Worth
, Texas
, inducted Morris in 2006, thus continuing the tale of the Wyoming justice as a suffrage pathbreaker. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame claims that her "influential efforts made it possible for women to vote in the Wyoming Territory in 1869."
Morris' involvement in women's causes punctuated her life after she left the gold mines in South Pass City.
The former justice died in [Cheyenne on April 2, 1902, four months shy of her 90th birthday. She is interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne where a simple stone monument adorned only with her name marks her gravesite.
Tioga County, New York
As of the census of 2010, there were 51,125 people residing in the county, with 22,203 housing units, of these 20,350 occupied, 1,853 vacant. The population density was 98 people per square mile...
native, distinguished herself as the first female Justice of the Peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
in the United States. A mother of three boys, she began her tenure as justice in South Pass City, Wyoming
South Pass City, Wyoming
South Pass City is an unincorporated community in Fremont County, Wyoming, United States. It is located 2 miles south of the intersection of highways 28 and 131. The closest town is Atlantic City...
, on February 14, 1870, and served a term of less than nine months. The Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners appointed Morris as justice of the peace after the previous justice, R. S. Barr, resigned in protest of Wyoming Territory's
Wyoming Territory
The Territory of Wyoming was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 25, 1868, until July 10, 1890, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Wyoming. Cheyenne was the territorial capital...
passage of the women's suffrage amendment in December 1869.
Popular stories and historical accounts, buttressed by state and federal public monuments, point to Morris as a leader in the passage of Wyoming's
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...
suffrage amendment. However, Morris' leadership role in the legislation is disputed.
Morris' life after South Pass City included participating in local and national women's organizations. She received but ultimately rejected an 1873 nomination by the Woman's Party of Wyoming as a candidate to the Wyoming Territorial Legislature. Morris served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association...
in 1876.
Esther Morris died in Cheyenne, Wyoming
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Cheyenne is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming and the county seat of Laramie County. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne, Wyoming, Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Laramie County. The population is 59,466 at the 2010 census. Cheyenne is the...
, April 2, 1902.
Background
Esther Hobart McQuigg was born in Tioga County, New YorkTioga County, New York
As of the census of 2010, there were 51,125 people residing in the county, with 22,203 housing units, of these 20,350 occupied, 1,853 vacant. The population density was 98 people per square mile...
on August 6, 1814. Orphaned at an early age, she apprenticed to a seamstress and ran a successful millinery business out of her grandparents' home, "making hats, and buying and selling goods for women." Moreover, Morris agitated as a young woman against slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, reportedly during one incident countering efforts of slavery advocates who threatened to destroy a church that supported abolition
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
. Eight years into her millinery business, Morris married Artemus Slack in 1841. Three years later, just short of her 30th birthday, her husband died. Morris subsequently moved to Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, where her late husband, a civil engineer
Civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...
, had acquired property. She encountered legal roadblocks, however, in settling her husband's affairs because women were not allowed to own or inherit property. Thereafter she moved to Peru, Illinois
Peru, Illinois
Peru is a city in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. The population was 10,295 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Ottawa–Streator Micropolitan Statistical Area...
, where in 1842 she married a local merchant, John Morris. In the spring of 1868 her husband, along with Esther's son from her previous marriage, Edward Archibald "Archy" Slack, moved to a gold rush community at South Pass City
South Pass City, Wyoming
South Pass City is an unincorporated community in Fremont County, Wyoming, United States. It is located 2 miles south of the intersection of highways 28 and 131. The closest town is Atlantic City...
, Wyoming Territory
Wyoming Territory
The Territory of Wyoming was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 25, 1868, until July 10, 1890, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Wyoming. Cheyenne was the territorial capital...
to open a saloon.
In 1869, Morris and her two eighteen-year-old twin sons, Robert and Edward, ventured west to rejoin the rest of their family. They first traveled by train to a waystation on the newly-completed transcontinental railroad
Transcontinental railroad
A transcontinental railroad is a contiguous network of railroad trackage that crosses a continental land mass with terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad, or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies...
at Point of Rocks
Point of Rocks, Wyoming
Point of Rocks is a census-designated place in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States. As of the 2000 census, the CDP had a total population of three. According to the United States Census Bureau, it is one of only nine places nationwide with a population of three people...
25 miles east of present-day Rock Springs, Wyoming
Rock Springs, Wyoming
Rock Springs is a city in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 18,708 at the 2000 census. Rock Springs is the principal city of the Rock Springs micropolitan statistical area, which has a population of 37,975....
. From there, Morris and her boys continued north by stagecoach. They crossed the Red Desert
Red Desert (Wyoming)
The Red Desert is a high altitude desert and sagebrush steppe located in south central Wyoming, comprising approximately 9,320 square miles...
and the Killpecker Sand Dunes before ascending a gradual mountain pass to the Sweetwater Mining District.
The dry, rocky landscape that confronted fifty-five-year-old Morris as she stepped off the stage at South Pass City appeared startlingly different from the fertile landscape she had known in Illinois and New York. Instead, her new home at 7500 feet (2,286 m) in elevation meant scratching out a living in a barren gulch at the mouth of canyon near the Continental Divide. The Morrises settled into a 24 feet by 26 feet (7 × 9 m) log cabin with a sod roof that Esther's oldest son had purchased. Only the summer flow of nearby Willow Creek and occasional bushes along with a few lone trees tempered South Pass City's sharp-edged terrain. Winters were brutal. South Pass area residents, whose population swelled to as many as 4,000 residents, according to one estimate, either left the camp for the winter or faced extreme isolation during the long winters. Those who stayed on the mountain pass, like the Morrises, battled sub-zero temperatures, high winds, and deep snow which might not retreat until June.
Both John Morris and Archy purchased interest in mining properties soon after their arrival, including the Mountain Jack, Grand Turk, Golden State, and Nellie Morgan lodes, according to historian Michael A. Massie. Initially prospects looked good in the midst of the gold rush, where the mines and adjoining businesses of South Pass City spurred employment for 2,000 workers during 1868 and 1869, according to a Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
study. But then came the bust. By 1870 most miners had left, leaving as few as 460 residents. By 1875 less than 100 remained.
Justice in South Pass City
Esther Morris had hardly settled in her new home in South Pass City when District Court Judge John W. Kingman appointed her as justice of the peaceJustice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
in 1870. It took some "prodding" but Morris subsequently completed an application for the post and submitted a required $500 bond. The Sweetwater County Board of Commissioners in a vote of two to one approved her application on February 14, 1870.
Subsequently, the county clerk telegraphed a press release announcing the historic event of the first woman justice of the peace. The Wyoming Territory's enfranchment of women to vote in 1869 made Morris' unprecedented appointment possible. The clerk's telegraph to the world in part read:
- "Wyoming, the youngest and one of the richest Territories in the United States, gave equal rights to women in actions as well as words."
Morris' momentous appointment followed the resignation of Justice R. S. Barr, who quit in protest of the territorial legislature's passage of the women's suffrage amendment in December 1869. However, according to author Lynne Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Lynne Ann Cheney is the wife of former United States Vice President Dick Cheney and served as the Second Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009...
writing in American Heritage
American Heritage (magazine)
American Heritage is a quarterly magazine dedicated to covering the history of the United States for a mainstream readership. Until 2007, the magazine was published by Forbes. Since that time, Edwin S...
magazine, the county board appointed Morris to complete the term of Judge J. W. Stillman.
Morris began her tenure as justice in South Pass City in 1870 by arresting Stillman, who refused to hand over his court docket. Ultimately, Morris dismissed her own case with a ruling that she as an interested party did not have the authority to arrest Stillman, according to author Lynne Cheney. Morris began anew with her own docket, holding court sitting on a wood slab in the living room of her log cabin. Cheney notes:
- "When the lawyers who appeared in her court tried to embarrass her with legal terms and technicalities, she admitted her lack of training but was quick to let them know just whose court they were in. One of the lawyers who practiced before her recalled that 'to pettifoggers she showed no mercy.'"
Morris looked to her sons for support in the courtroom. She appointed Archibald as district clerk and Robert as a part time deputy clerk with the tasks of keeping court records and drawing up arrest warrants. Unfortunately her husband John's support was not so forthcoming. John actively opposed his wife's appointment and reportedly made such a scene in her court that Esther had him jailed.
Judge Morris ruled on 27 cases during her more than eight months in office, including nine criminal cases. None were overturned according to records at the Wyoming State Archives, although a few cases were appealed but upheld by the appellate court. Morris held her justice of the peace post until the term that she had been appointed to fill expired on December 6, 1870. Morris sought reelection but failed to muster a nomination from either the Republican
Wyoming Republican Party
The Wyoming Republican Party is the affiliate of the Republican Party in Wyoming. In May 2007, Fred Parady was elected Chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party, Diana Vaughn is Vice Chair, and Judy Catchpole is Secretary. - Current elected officials :...
or Democratic Party
Wyoming Democratic Party
The Wyoming Democratic Party is the local branch of the Democratic Party in the state of Wyoming. The party is led by State Party Chair Chuck Herz.-Legislative leaders:*Senate Minority Leader: John Hastert*House Minority Leader: W. Patrick Goggles...
.
Morris' historic judgeship not surprisingly garnered favorable review upon the completion of her term in the South Pass News, as her son Archibald was the editor. However, the historical record reveals little fanfare in the remainder of Wyoming's press. The Wyoming Tribune, published in Cheyenne, did note the comments of Territorial Secretary Lee: "the people of Sweetwater County had not the good sense and judgment to nominate and elect her for the ensuing term."
The boom goes bust
Esther Morris, as a working mother, held court over a camp of miners, gamblers, speculators, business owners, prostitutes, and rounders. Men outnumbered women 4 to 1 in her mountain community. The challenges in the court dealing with a rough constituency were compounded by her husband, John, who had a reputation as "a brawler, an idler, and a drunk." Morris had him arrested after her term in office was over for assault and battery, according to the American Heritage Magazine.Troubles continued to mount for the family. An 1871 fire struck the South Pass City newspaper office owned and operated by Esther Morris' son Archibald Slack, forcing him and his wife Sarah to move to Laramie
Laramie, Wyoming
Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 30,816 at the . Located on the Laramie River in southeastern Wyoming, the city is west of Cheyenne, at the junction of Interstate 80 and U.S. Route 287....
in Albany County. Perhaps it was case of cabin fever after being cooped up all season during a particularly bad winter of 1871–1872 that spurred Morris to action. She left the camp and her husband. Morris traveled to Laramie where she briefly lived with her son Archibald. The former judge remained unsettled however. She moved to Albany, New York
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, then to Springfield, Illinois
Springfield, Illinois
Springfield is the third and current capital of the US state of Illinois and the county seat of Sangamon County with a population of 117,400 , making it the sixth most populated city in the state and the second most populated Illinois city outside of the Chicago Metropolitan Area...
, where she spent her winters, according to Massie. Summers saw her returning to Wyoming where she spent time with her sons. Morris' wandering ended in the 1880s when she returned to Cheyenne
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Cheyenne is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Wyoming and the county seat of Laramie County. It is the principal city of the Cheyenne, Wyoming, Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Laramie County. The population is 59,466 at the 2010 census. Cheyenne is the...
to live with her son Robert.
Meanwhile, Morris had been but one of many in a long history of residents who saddled-up and called it quits in South Pass City. Short-lived gold strikes in the 1880s, 1890s, and 1930s once again lured miners back to the mountains seeking their fortunes. But ultimately busts prevailed. South Pass City by the 1940s had deteriorated into a ghost town.
Role in suffragist bill questioned
A story arose from the canyon of South Pass City that celebrated Esther Hobart Morris as the "Mother of Woman Suffrage." Subsequently Morris became known as instigator and even co-author of Wyoming TerritoryWyoming Territory
The Territory of Wyoming was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 25, 1868, until July 10, 1890, when it was admitted to the Union as the State of Wyoming. Cheyenne was the territorial capital...
's groundbreaking 1869 legislation written a year before she became justice of the peace by Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
veteran and South Pass City resident William H. Bright. Yet critics claim the public record celebrating Morris as a suffrage leader is wrong.
The reports of Morris as suffragist goes back to South Pass City where she was said to have hosted a tea party for the electors and candidates for Wyoming's first territorial legislature. Popular accounts hold that Morris' purpose for the tea party was to ensure that the candidates committed to suffrage. Yet this party likely never happened. Nonetheless, the story seeped into the annals of history like a fine dust whose origin is unclear. Contemporary research, however, points to Morris' oldest son, later a Cheyenne newspaper editor, as at least one of the sources of the story. Indeed some say that he "concocted it".
Other research leads to Morris' friend, Melville C. Brown, who was president of the 1889 Constitutional Convention in Cheyenne, claimed that Morris presented the suffrage bill to the legislature. Subsequently, Morris' son, Archibald, began referring to his mother in the Cheyenne Sun newspaper as the "Mother of Suffrage."
The tea party story might have faded quietly were it not for H. G. Nickerson. Nickerson, who discovered and opened the Bullion Mine in 1868 and later served as territorial legislator, wrote a letter to the Lander
Lander, Wyoming
Lander is a city in, and the county seat of, Fremont County, Wyoming, United States. Named for transcontinental explorer Frederick W. Lander, Lander is located in central Wyoming, along the Middle Fork of the Popo Agie River. A tourism center with several dude ranches nearby, Lander is located just...
Wyoming State Journal. Nickerson's letter, published February 14, 1919, recounted the tea party and his attendance as a legislative candidate 50 years after the reported event. In a tip of the hat honoring Morris, Nickerson notes:
"To Mrs. Esther Morris is due the credit and honor of advocating and originating woman's suffrage in the United States."
Nickerson's story gained widespread prominence after his friend Wyoming historian Grace Raymond Hebard
Grace Raymond Hebard
Grace Raymond Hebard gained prominence as a Wyoming historian, suffragist, pioneering scholar, prolific writer, political economist and noted University of Wyoming educator. Hebard's standing as a historian in part rose from her years trekking Wyoming's high plains and mountains seeking first-hand...
(1861–1936) published the account in a 1920 pamphlet entitled "How Woman Suffrage Came to Wyoming (1869)". The pamphlet eventually became so widely distributed that students throughout the state's public schools read the story memorializing Morris's suffrage feats. Hebard spent many years advancing the claim, promoting Morris as an instigator and co-author of Wyoming's suffrage legislation.
This popular account of Morris' role in Wyoming's suffrage movement gained the permanence of stone after boosters placed a monument to Morris the suffragist in South Pass City.
In 1960, Wyoming further celebrated Morris as a key impetus of Wyoming suffrage by donating a life-sized bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
statue of her to the National Statuary Hall Collection
National Statuary Hall Collection
The National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol comprises statues donated by individual states to honor persons notable in their history...
in the rotunda
Rotunda (architecture)
A rotunda is any building with a circular ground plan, sometimes covered by a dome. It can also refer to a round room within a building . The Pantheon in Rome is a famous rotunda. A Band Rotunda is a circular bandstand, usually with a dome...
of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
Officiating at the Statuary Hall ceremony were Vice President
Vice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
Richard M. Nixon and Richard Arnold Mullens (1918–2010), the president at the time of the Wyoming State Society. Mullens was also a member of the first baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
team of the University of Wyoming
University of Wyoming
The University of Wyoming is a land-grant university located in Laramie, Wyoming, situated on Wyoming's high Laramie Plains, at an elevation of 7,200 feet , between the Laramie and Snowy Range mountains. It is known as UW to people close to the university...
Cowboys, a veteran of both World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, and a business partner with Leonard Silverstein of a District of Columbia law firm specializing in tax law.
In 1963, Wyoming officials placed a replica of the nine-foot sculpture at the state capitol building in Cheyenne. An inscription hails Morris as the "Mother of Woman Suffrage." Furthermore, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame
The National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame is a museum and association which honors women of the American West who have displayed courage or spirit and who have distinguished themselves while exemplifying the pioneer spirit...
in Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, inducted Morris in 2006, thus continuing the tale of the Wyoming justice as a suffrage pathbreaker. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame claims that her "influential efforts made it possible for women to vote in the Wyoming Territory in 1869."
Life after the mines
Wyoming's enactment of women's suffrage in 1869 prompted a surge forward for human rights, historical errors regarding its passage notwithstanding. Moreover the territory's appointment of Morris as justice of the peace for the South Pass District on February 17, 1870, the first woman to hold judicial office in the modern world, furthered the advance.Morris' involvement in women's causes punctuated her life after she left the gold mines in South Pass City.
- February 1872: participated in the American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in San Francisco
- August 1873: Nominated by the Woman's Party of Wyoming as a candidate to the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, a nomination that Morris declined
- 1876: served as vice president, National American Woman Suffrage AssociationNational American Woman Suffrage AssociationThe National American Woman Suffrage Association was an American women's rights organization formed in May 1890 as a unification of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association...
- July 1876: addressed the National Suffrage Convention in Philadelphia
- July 1890: presented the new state's flag to Governor Warren during statehood celebration
- 1896: attended as a delegate to the Republican National Convention1896 Republican National ConventionThe 1896 National Convention of the Republican Party of the United States was held in a temporary structure south of the St. Louis City Hall in Saint Louis, Missouri, from June 16 to June 18, 1896....
in St. LouisSt. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, MissouriMissouriMissouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, which nominated the William McKinleyWilliam McKinleyWilliam McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
-Garret A. Hobart ticket. She was not related to Vice President Hobart, who died in office in 1899.
The former justice died in [Cheyenne on April 2, 1902, four months shy of her 90th birthday. She is interred at Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne where a simple stone monument adorned only with her name marks her gravesite.
External links
- Esther Hobart Morris at www.aoc.gov
- Made In Wyoming: Our Legacy of Success at www.madeinwyoming.net
- Esther Morris at wyoarchives.state.wy.us
- Statue of Esther Hobart Morris at wyshs.org