The 19th Amendment, which gave many (but not all) women the right to vote in the United States was ratified 100 years ago today and this anniversary has me thinking of the women in my family who won the vote. Six of my direct ancestors were of voting age when women’s suffrage became legal in August 1920–one grandmother, three great grandmothers, and two great great grandmothers. As my ancestors always were, these women were scattered around the country. Two were in Maryland; one was in Missouri; and three were in Kansas.

Elsie Mills (1899-1993) – Elsie Mills (later Oliver) was my maternal grandmother. In August 1920, she was 21 years old and living in Baltimore, Maryland. She was the eldest child of James Mills, an English-born physician who taught at Johns Hopkins Medical School, and his wife, Mary Carroll (Hill) Mills (more on her below). Elsie was a budding painter, studying at the Maryland Institute of Art. They lived at 853 Park Avenue, Ward 11.

Mary Carroll (Hill) Mills (1876-1937) – Mary Mills (known as “Dear” to her family), my great grandmother, was 44 years old when the 19th Amendment was ratified. She was born and raised in Baltimore City, and married her husband, James at the age of 23. In 1920, Dear and her family, Elsie (age 21), Audrey (age 17), Jimmy (age 15) and Mary Carroll (age 12), along with “Ma” Seaton, the 65 year old Irish cook, lived in a modest row house not far from the Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine, where James practiced and taught.

I don’t know when Elsie and her mother Mary may have actually first voted. There was a legal fight against allowing Maryland women to vote that was resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922. (Women won the vote!) But Maryland did not vote to ratify the 19th Amendment until 1941.

Alice Christine (Sheely) Stephenson (1878-1958) – When the 19th Amendment was ratified, my great grandmother, Alice, was 42 years old. She was born in Indiana, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and attended Western College and Seminary for Women in Oxford, Ohio before her 1899 marriage to R.W. (Richard) Stephenson. In 1920, she and R.W. lived at 250 Clark Street, Ward 4, Augusta, Kansas, with their three sons, Paul (age 17), William (my paternal grandfather, age 9), and Clark (age 8). She was a prolific water color painter.

Stella Lee (Owen) Miller (1881-1942) – Stella Miller, my great grandmother, was 39 in 1920. Born and raised on a farm in Webster County, Missouri, she had been married to her husband, Franklin Pierce Miller, a former school teacher and for 21 years. She had three living daughters at home–Marjorie (age 19), Thelma (age 16), and Esther Jane (my paternal grandmother, age 6) and had lost her third daughter, twelve-year-old Nellie, earlier that year. Stella’s mother, Clementine Esther (Bodenhamer) Owen (more below), was also living with the Millers in 1920. They lived at 112 West 2nd Street, Ward 2, Coffeyville, Kansas.

Clementine Esther (Bodenhamer) Owen (1854-1925) – In 1920, my great great grandmother Clemmie Owen was 66 years old. She was born in Marshfield, Missouri to parents who had both migrated there from North Carolina. Clemmie’s father appears to have abandoned his wife, Elizabeth and Clemmie when she was very young. Elizabeth remarried in 1860 and Clemmie was raised by her stepfather, a farmer in Ozark, Missouri. She married James Washington Owen (1848-1889) at 17. By the time she was 35, she was a widow and had given birth to seven children, lost two of them, and had lost her mother. When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, Clemmie was living in Coffeyville, Kansas with her youngest daughter, Stella.

While Kansas ratified the 19th Amendment, women were allowed to vote in local elections there starting in 1887, and in 1912 won universal voting rights. So perhaps Alice Stephenson and Stella Miller had already been voting for years. Clemmie Owen moved from Missouri, (where women did not have the right to vote until 1920), to Kansas between 1910 and 1920, and may have seen the 1920 ratification as a new opportunity.

Amanda Jane (Hahn) Miller (1849-1942) – My great great grandmother Amanda Jane Miller was 71 in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified. She was born in Columbiana County, Ohio, raised on her family’s farm, the fourth of sixth children. According to the 1940 Census, Amanda attended college for two years, presumably before 1870, when she married John Fremont Miller at age 21. For the first 15 years of their marriage they had a farm in Stark County, Ohio, where six sons were born, including my great grandfather, Franklin Pierce Miller. By 1885 they had moved the family to Webster County, Missouri, where the Miller family established a thriving farm and had two more children. A biographical sketch about John Miller indicates that he was active in Democratic Party politics, so perhaps Amanda joined him in casting her vote.

Of course, I don’t actually know when or where or even if any of these women cast their votes, but I love thinking of each of them hearing the news 100 years ago that they had the right: my Granny (the only one of these six I actually knew) as a very young woman; Mary, Alice, and Stella, each with a house full of kids; Clemmie, long a widow and grandmother, living her last years in her daughter’s home; and Amanda, at home on the farm with her husband John, having raised her large family. My next vote will be cast in memory of them all.