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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.
Harriet Taylor Upton, one of the most active suffragettes for women's right to vote, lived on Market Street in Warren across from the City Hall during the early 1900s. Her impact on democracy continues to this day.
In adulthood, Harriet Taylor Upton addressed the suffrage movement with verve and courage. As a child, her talents revealed themselves early, as she led all kinds of escapades from baptizing her playmates in a nearby stream, to winning city-wide spelling bees, and even thinking she should sing out loud in church when her grandmother suggested she sing a hymn with the choir. As the choir's song finished, the preschool Harriet jumped up on the pew and began a strong rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel."
One of the stories of Harriet's childhood of particular interest was her starring role in a Christmas pageant.
Harriet, known in her young life as Hattie, liked to perform for friends and family and when a group of church women organized a community Christmas pageant, she tried out for nearly every part. She was a quick study, had a strong voice, and spoke and read with expression.
But she wasn't cast as even the lowliest angel. She asked the director why she had not been given even a small part. The director replied, "You really are too heavy for these parts, and we don't have a costume to fit you."
Harriet Taylor still loved being with her friends and continued to attend the rehearsals, enjoying the camaraderie.
The night before the Christmas performance, the lead angel became so sick she couldn't perform. Harriet knew the lines and staging, and somehow, a costume was built, and Hattie took the part.
Hattie acted as the lead angel beautifully when at a particularly quiet moment a loud stage whisper from the second row hissed through the hall. "Why do we have to have such a fat angel in this pageant?"
Harriet paused just a split second, and then gathered her costume around her, and moved to the front of the stage. She announced very firmly, "If it weren't for this fat angel, there would be no pageant tonight." Then she returned to her place and the pageant resumed.
We don't know whether her speech changed any adult's mind about how to behave in a live theatrical production, but Harriet Taylor Upton's confidence and abilities took her before many contentious audiences. Later in life, she and others spearheaded the "right-to-vote" movement, known as women's suffrage. Her home, and later the Trumbull County Courthouse, became the center of the enormous work to convince states to ratify the vote for women.
The last state, 37th, of the ratifying states needed before it could come to the U.S. Congress, Tennessee, could have failed since the legislators were evenly divided. Hubbub in the Nashville hotel where the Tennessee legislature met became loud and raucous.
The youngest Tennessee member voted "aye" after his mother sent a letter encouraging him to do so and Harriet arrived to support that decision. One other legislator voted for it, and the two were nearly chased out of Nashville by opponents of the women's right to vote.
Harriet remarks in her "Recollections" that it took 72 years to pass the 19th Amendment in 1920. Persistence, conviction, courage and stamina made it happen and Harriet Upton had all those.