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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region's history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.
In 1893, married women could legally be named as guardians, and in 1897, the law allowed them to serve as executors of wills.
By the end of the century, the law allowed the state to appoint women physicians at all state insane asylums and required all cities to employ police matrons. In 1898 however, the Ohio Supreme Court declared a law allowing women to be notary publics unconstitutional because women were not electors.
By the end of the 19th century, many state legislatures had passed laws allowing women to vote in school board elections. Society had long considered women to be the primary educators of children. Now that most children's education occurred outside the home, it was considered necessary for women to continue to be involved in the education of their children.
Harriet Taylor Upton, president of the Ohio Woman's Suffrage Association, won election to the Warren School Board in 1898 and served on the board until 1913. She also edited a suffrage paper called PROGRESS.
At the start of the constitutional convention, it was determined that 56 of the 119 delegates favored suffrage. Registered lobbyists for suffrage included Elizabeth J. Houser of Girard, who worked closely with Upton. Hauser was a writer for the Warren Daily Tribune newspaper, a precursor to the Tribune Chronicle.
The real battle was now underway. With only $23 in its treasury, the Ohio Woman's Suffrage Association began a fundraising campaign with limited success.
On Sept. 13, 1912, only one congressional district passed the amendment. The suffrage supporters were disappointed but not disheartened. Upton, who led the struggle, said, "It was the most remarkable campaign I have ever had anything to do with and I have financed a goodly number for the National Association and know the workings of the same."
Suffrage supporters, in Ohio and across the nation, would not be stopped. Work for a federal amendment was moving forward. Suffrage was now a nonpartisan political issue. Both major parties had declared themselves in favor of suffrage in 1916.
The senate vote was scheduled for Oct. 1, 1918. President Woodrow Wilson addressed the Senate on Sept. 30, asking the senators to pass the amendment. The vote fell short of the needed two-thirds majority by only two votes.
On Aug. 26, 1920 -- the day the 19th Amendment was passed -- Harriet Taylor Upton was an observer in the senate on that memorable day and years later she recalled, "As I rose to go with my companions, I thought how strange it is that my life battle is over and I am not moved. I walked up the stairs leading to the hallway when someone said 'well, well, you were here to see it.' I burst into tears and had to go stand by the window, look out at the Potomac and the trees and flowers before I could trust myself to join the others. My later thought was my best thought and it was a thought of joy. Joy that at last men and women together would fight on together and never again be separated as they had been separated in the past."
Conklin is vice president of the Upton Association.