Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association

In 1870, suffragist Anna Whitehead Bodeker invited National Woman Suffrage Association organizer Matilda Joslyn Gage to Richmond, Virginia. Gage and Bodeker addressed a small group of suffrage supporters at a public meeting at Bosher's Hall in Richmond on May 5, 1870.{{Cite web |title=Anna Whitehead Bodeker |url=https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/changemakers/items/show/209 |access-date=April 18, 2025 |website=Virginia Changemakers}}{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Elna C. |url=https://archive.org/details/southernstrategi0000gree/page/153 |title=Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0807846414 |location=Chapel Hill |pages=[https://archive.org/details/southernstrategi0000gree/page/153 153–155] |via=Internet Archive}} Gage's speech was about "Opportunities for Women". At the meeting's conclusion, judge John C. Underwood announced an organizational meeting for a state association, to be held the following evening at the United States Courtroom.{{Cite news |date=1870-05-17 |title=Parliament of Petticoat--Women's Rights |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/staunton-spectator-parliament-of-pettico/170611174/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |work=Staunton Spectator |pages=2 |via=Newspapers.com}}

Underwood presided over the founding meeting of the Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association (VSWSA) on May 6, 1870.{{Cite web |title=Anna Whitehead Bodeker (1826–1904) {{!}} Shaping the Constitution |url=http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/people/anna_whitehead_bodeker |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191002072151/http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/people/anna_whitehead_bodeker |archive-date=October 2, 2019 |access-date=April 18, 2025 |website=Education @ Library of Virginia}}{{Cite web |last=Treadway |first=Sandra Gioia |title=Anna Whitehead Bodeker (ca. 1826–1904) |url=http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Bodeker_Anna_Whitehead |access-date=April 18, 2025 |website=Dictionary of Virginia Biography |publisher=Library of Virginia}} It was the first women's suffrage association in Virginia.{{Cite news |date=2020-10-03 |title=Week's End |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/richmond-times-dispatch-weeks-end/170601856/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |work=Richmond Times-Dispatch |pages=A14 |via=Newspapers.com}} At this initial meeting, the founders adopted a constitution, and elected officers. Bodeker was elected the first president of VSWSA. Its other founding officers included:{{Cite book |last=Stanton |first=Elizabeth Cady |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofwomansu03stanuoft |title=History of Woman Suffrage, Volume 3 |publisher=Charles Mann |year=1886 |editor-last=Anthony |editor-first=Susan B. |location=Rochester, New York |pages=823-824 |editor-last2=Gage |editor-first2=Matilda Joselyn |via=Internet Archive}}{{Cite book |last=Varon |first=Elizabeth R. |title=We Mean to be Counted: White Women & Politics in Antebellum Virginia |publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0807846964 |pages=174–176}}

• Vice president: Martha Haines Butt, writer and novelist{{Cite web |last=Zelm |first=Antoinette G. van |title=Martha Haines Butt (1833–1871) |url=https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/butt-martha-haines-1833-1871/#start_entry |access-date=2025-04-19 |website=Encyclopedia Virginia |language=en-US}}
• Vice president: William Emmette Coleman, Orientalist and spiritualist
• Vice president: Ralza M. Manly, minister, Richmond city councilman, and superintendent of education for the Freedman's Bureau in Virginia
• Vice president: John C. Underwood, United States District Court Judge{{Cite news |date=2019-12-10 |title=Three Men Who Figured in Women's Suffrage |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-roanoke-times-three-men-who-figured/170601703/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |work=The Roanoke Times |pages=C5 |via=Newspapers.com}}
• Vice president: Maria Underwood, wife of judge Underwood{{Cite news |date=1870-12-14 |title=Woman Suffrage. Susan B. Anthony in Richmond |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/new-york-herald-woman-suffrage-susan-b/170612299/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |work=New York Herald |pages=2 |via=Newspapers.com}}
• Vice president: Andrew Washburne, the first superintendent of Richmond Public Schools{{Cite book |last=Nuckols |first=Robert R. |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_the_Government_of_the_City/UkkUAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 |title=A History of the Government of the City of Richmond, Virginia and a Sketch of Those who Administer Its Affairs |publisher=Williams Printing Company |year=1889 |location=Richmond |pages=119 |via=Google Books}}
• Vice president: Westel Willoughby, lawyer and Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia during Congressional Reconstruction{{Cite web |last=Looney |first=J. Jefferson |title=Westel Willoughby (1830–1897) |url=https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/willoughby-westel-1830-1897/#start_entry |access-date=2025-04-18 |website=Encyclopedia Virginia |language=en-US}}
• Vice president: Jennie Rebecca Woodbury, wife of Willoughby
• Secretary: Sue L. F. Smith, daughter of Dr. Rev. William A. Smith, who was president of Randolph-Macon College
• Lysander Hill, attorney in Alexandria, Virginia
• Mrs. Lysander Hill
• Georgianna Smith, wife of Richmond physician E. H. Smith
• Elisa Washburne, wife of Andrew Washburne

Other VSWSA participants were Reverend W. F. Hemenway, Florence Percey, Dr. F. H. Langstedt, and his wife. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Reconstruction-era postmistress and former Union spy, was also a leading member of the association.

The board appointed Sue L. F. Smith as Virginia's delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Association meeting to be held in New York City in May 1870. The association also adopted a resolution noting "that woman is a human being and had all the right and responsibilities of human beings—that marriage does not take from her responsibilities and that she has as much right to vote as a man and that we demand of Congress the Sixteenth Amendment granting the ballot to women."

Matilda Joslyn Gage, who also attended the association's organizational meeting, made a successful motion that VSWSA become to become an auxiliary of the National Women Suffrage Association. The meeting concluded with an speech by Gage.

With the help of the NWSA, Bodeker and the VSWSA arranged for nationally known suffragists to speak in Richmond. The association's guest speakers included Susan B. Anthony who made two orations in December 1870, one at the Virginia House of Delegates, and Lillie Devereux Blake who spoke in January 1871. They were followed by Paulina Wright Davis, Josephine Griffing, and Isabella Beecher Hooker who spoke at the United States courtroom on March 7 and 9, 1871, while the Virginia House of Delegates was in session.{{Cite news |date=1871-03-08 |title=Woman's Suffrage. What the Ladies at the Custom House Said |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/richmond-dispatch-womans-suffrage-what/170612882/ |access-date=2025-04-18 |work=Richmond Dispatch |pages=1 |via=Newspapers.com}} The VSWSA hosted speakers Matilda Joslyn Gage and Laura de Force Gordon during the 1872 House of Delegates session. Despite their name-recognition, these speakers failed to attract audiences large enough to create lasting support for the suffrage movement in Richmond. However, the speakers did stimulate discussion, with local newspapers publishing many letters to the editor.

Despite Bodeker's organizational skills, the women's suffrage movement failed to gain traction in Virginia. The VSWSA was viewed publicly as being heavily associated with carpetbaggers and black Republicans, making it difficult to convince Virginia's white population to support its cause.{{Cite web |last=McDaid |first=Jennifer Davis |date=October 26, 2018 |title=Woman Suffrage in Virginia |url=https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/woman_suffrage_in_virginia |access-date=July 16, 2019 |website=Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Foundation for the Humanitie}} When Bodeker stopped her advocacy for women's suffrage in 1872, she was replaced as the VSWSA president by Caroline F. Putnam, a Massachusetts-born abolitionist who had became a school teacher in Northumberland County, Virginia. The Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association ceased operations by 1880.

• List of suffragists and suffragettes
• List of Virginia suffragists
• List of women's rights activists
• Timeline of women's suffrage
• Timeline of women's suffrage in the United States
• Women's suffrage organizations

{{Reflist}}

Category:1870 establishments in Virginia

Category:Suffrage organisations in the United States

Category:Feminist organizations in the United States

Category:First-wave feminism in the United States

Category:Organizations established in 1870

Category:Women's suffrage advocacy groups in the United States