Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People, Site

Location

1798 NY-73, Keene Valley, NY 12943, USA

Lat/Long

44.1905556, -73.786388888889

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Suffragist Katharine Notman (1859-1946) was the leader of the Essex County Society of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (NYSWSA) and led a suffrage campaign throughout the Adirondacks from 1914 to 1917, advocating for women’s right to vote. Notman lived in Brooklyn, but used her summer home located in Keene Valley, Essex County, New York as headquarters for the Essex County Society.

From her Keene Valley summer home, Notman hosted regular suffrage meetings. Notman also traveled by automobile through the Adirondacks stopping at summer resorts to speak on women’s suffrage. Notman was placed in charge of the NYSWSA campaign work in Essex, Warren, Washington, Saratoga, and Rensselaer Counties. She led a team of suffragists in attempts “to canvass every election district in the Adirondack resort region” (Brooklyn Life, July 10, 1915, 16).

Thanks to the efforts of the NYSWSA, suffragists saw victory when the state constitution was amended in 1917, securing New York women’s right to vote. Victory in New York helped to influence public support for women’s suffrage on a national scale, and on June 4, 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment which 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.” By August 1920, the necessary 36 states had ratified the amendment, securing women’s right to vote across the United States.