The Martha Washingtonians (also known as the Ladies Washingtonian Society) were a group of working [1] class women of the early 19th century committed to the idea of encouraging temperance. [2] The organization was an outgrowth of the Washingtonian temperance movement. As an organization, it was composed of wives, sisters, aunts, daughters and other female relatives of drunken men.[ citation needed ]
These women saw their public work as extensions of a 19th-century ideology that insisted on the ability of women to preserve the moral integrity of the private household. [3] Historians such as Teresa Murphy insist on their relative subordination in the temperance movement. Murphy notes that many of these Martha Washingtonians were assigned rather traditional female roles: for example, collecting, making and selling clothing to the families of reformed drunks.[ citation needed ]
Women's rights were not prevalent nor wanted by most of these women – the movement was broadly conservative in outlook. They had no desire to vote, or to change America in any way besides alcohol consumption.[ citation needed ]