The Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association (IWSA) began on October 15, 1851, in Dublin, Wayne County, Indiana. [2] IWSA was created for men and women to fight for women's right to vote. The association held annual conventions for 26 years. [3] People traveled from all over the state to find resolutions for the political, social, and financial inequalities for women. The ISWA was first referred to as American Woman Suffrage Association.
Source: [2]
This society shall be known by the name of the Indiana Woman's Rights Suffrage Association.
The officers of this society shall consist of a president, vice president, corresponding and recording secretaries and treasurer, whose duties shall be such as devolve upon such stations, and they shall be elected annually.
The Secretary, further, shall be requested to report annually upon the general condition of woman and the efforts made for her elevation.
Persons shall be appointed at each annual meeting to report upon each of the following subjects: Woman's Labor and Remuneration, Woman's Legal Condition; Woman's Social Position, and Woman's education.
This society shall meet annually at such time and place as shall hereafter be determined upon.
This society does advise the organization of District societies throughout the State.
The constitution may be altered or amended at any regular meeting of the society.
Source: [2]
The meeting started off by elected a president, vice president, and secretary. Hannah Hiatt was the first president, Amanda Way was the first vice president, and Henry Hiatt was the first secretary. Hannah Hiatt requested that the new vice president make the opening address of the meeting. During that speech, Amanda M. Way stated that the "object of the meeting, and declaring that unless women demand their rights politically, socially and financially, they will continue in the future as in the past, to be classed with negroes, criminals, insane person, idiots, and infants." Henry B. Wright, who was a great antislavery lecturer, was called for and made a radical, striving speech, after which the convention closed until the next day.
Hannah Hiatt called the convention to order. After preliminary business was discussed, Hiatt introduced H. C. Wright. Wright showed the injustice in property laws, inequality of wages, and the insulting cruelty of shutting the doors of the high school and colleges against women.
Amanda Way started the meeting by reading a letter from Dr. Mary F. Thomas of North Manchester and Elizabeth Matchett of Goshen. They read all of the resolutions for the amendments and after some discussion, there were all adopted. The members of the convention took the position that all class legislation is unjust and that all who are governed by laws should help make those laws. H. C. Wright gave another speech.
There were speeches given by Joel P. Garris, M. R. Hiatt, H. C. Wright, Henry Hiatt, and others. The members of the association decided to hold another convention in a year. They selected Richmond as the place.
Notable women who were President
Notable women who were vice president of IWHA
Notable people who were Secretary of IWHA
Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
The Declaration of Sentiments, also known as the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men—100 out of some 300 attendees at the first women's rights convention to be organized by women. Held in Seneca Falls, New York, the convention is now known as the Seneca Falls Convention. The principal author of the Declaration was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who modeled it upon the United States Declaration of Independence. She was a key organizer of the convention along with Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Martha Coffin Wright.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an American writer and activist who was a leader of the women's rights movement in the U.S. during the mid- to late-19th century. She was the main force behind the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first convention to be called for the sole purpose of discussing women's rights, and was the primary author of its Declaration of Sentiments. Her demand for women's right to vote generated a controversy at the convention but quickly became a central tenet of the women's movement. She was also active in other social reform activities, especially abolitionism.
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The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was a single-issue national organization formed in 1869 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. The AWSA lobbied state governments to enact laws granting or expanding women's right to vote in the United States. Lucy Stone, its most prominent leader, began publishing a newspaper in 1870 called the Woman's Journal. It was designed as the voice of the AWSA, and it eventually became a voice of the women's movement as a whole.
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Hannah Maria Conant Tracy Cutler was an American abolitionist as well as a leader of the temperance and women's suffrage movements in the United States. Cutler served as president of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Cutler helped to shape the merger of two feminist factions into the combined National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
Helen Bright Clark (1840–1927) was a British women's rights activist and suffragist. The daughter of a radical Member of Parliament, Clark was a prominent speaker for women's voting rights and at times a political realist who served as a mainstay of the 19th century suffrage movement in South West England. A liberal in all senses, Clark aided progress toward universal human brotherhood through her activities in organisations which assisted former slaves and aboriginal peoples.
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Amanda M. Way was a pioneer in the temperance and women's equal rights movements, an American Civil War nurse, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1870s, and a Society of Friends (Quaker) minister by the mid-1880s. Way, a founding member of the Indiana Woman's Rights Association, called for the state's first women's rights convention in 1851 and served as vice president of the proceedings. Way remained active in the Association, including service as its president in 1855, and helped reactivate it in 1869, renamed as the Indiana Woman's Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony dubbed her the "mother of 'The Woman Suffrage Association' in Indiana" for her early leadership and efforts in initiating the first women's rights convention in the state.
Mary Adelle Hazlett was a women's suffrage leader from Hillsdale, Michigan. From the late 1860s to the 1870s, Hazlett was said to be involved in secret societies in the Michigan area. Aligning herself with the Republican Party, she traveled through the United States, giving speeches advocating for women's rights and republican candidates. In 1870, Hazlett was elected the president of the North Western Women's Suffrage Association. She appeared at several women's rights conventions during the 1870s, such as the Second Decade Meeting for the national women's rights movement, the Allen County Suffrage Society Convention, and the Michigan Convention, appearing alongside other women's suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton. During 1886, she was an orator for Republican presidential candidate James Blaine and vice-presidential candidate John Logan. She was appointed postmistress in the Michigan Legislature in 1893 and continued to make speeches throughout the early 1890s. In 1911, Hazlett died at her niece's house in Addison, Michigan.
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