Famous New Hampshirites, Both Living and Otherwise

Today is the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so I thought we'd delve a bit into New Hampshire's role in that. The 19th Amendment reads:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

In other words, the U.S. decided to finally give half its adult population the right to vote. The odd thing is that this was the second time in New Hampshire's history that women could vote. In colonial New Hampshire, voting requirements were generally tied to land ownership in the community, and these "freeholder" (meaning a free person who owns a minimum amount of land) requirements restricted the vote quite a bit. Among many others, it largely excluded most women from the vote -- but not all. Some women did manage to legitimately acquire property despite the tough restrictions put on them by colonial society, sometimes through inheritance (i.e., the hubby who bought the farm buys the farm) but sometimes by other means as well. These propertied women were often allowed to vote right alongside property-owning men as they were seen as having a stake in the community's affairs and taxes. This was actually true in many colonies in New England and the northeast. Strangely, after the American Revolution as the voting franchise was widening and more Americans could vote, many of the new liberty-loving states realized to their horror that this may result in more women voting, so a wave of legislation washed over the new land in the 1770s and 80s, specifically and categorically denying women the right to vote in any circumstances -- property owners or nay. New Hampshire joined this sad club in 1784. (New York state was among the first to do so in 1777, while New Jersey was the last in 1807.)

New Hampshire produced its share of women suffragists in the 19th century, among them Marilla Ricker (pictured above). Born in 1840, Marilla studied law and became a practicing lawyer in the nation's capital in the 1870s, though her home state would only let her join the state bar association in 1890. Having inherited her deceased husband's farm in coastal New Hampshire, she tried to register to vote (as a property owner) every year for decades in New Hampshire, and was denied every year until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. Marilla was reportedly the first woman to cast a vote in New Hampshire in 1920, only months before she died.