My Family and the Ratification of the 19th Amendment

Great-grandma Minnie Ruston in the glasses, center.

On August 18, 1920 it was written into law that voting rights could not be denied based on sex. Suffragettes had been protesting for the right to vote for decades. An early Women’s Rights convention was held in Seneca Falls in 1848, seventy-two years before the amendment was ratified.

This photo is of an unknown group of women from around the 1920s. My 1x great-grandmother Minnie Ruston is facing the camera in the glasses in the center. She was the daughter of a prominent business owner, fire chief, and Mason, Hiram Wicker. I have not yet been able to identify these women. There are other photos of the white-haired woman in the back row with the black robes on, but I am uncertain who she is.

Suffragette white in 1917?

[It’s important to note, considering how long women had to fight for it, that many states responded by passing laws to limit the freedoms of black citizens, including voting rights. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that black women (and men) had the full and legal right to vote. That’s forty-five years after the Amendment.]

It made me wonder where my ancestors were in their lives in 1920. It was only 100 years ago and my female ancestors could not vote. I’ll never know what they thought about women’s rights to vote—I know that not all women were in support of it, though I have learned enough about some families to make some educated guesses. So I searched our archives for photos of my ancestors who were alive at the time, within a few years, and here they are:

My 1x great-grandparents Royal Levant Eaton and Hattie Eva Smith-Eaton were 47 and 38 years old with three children. My grandfather Mark Dutcher Eaton was 5 years old, the youngest in the second photograph. They were living in Auburn, NY where Roy was working as a prison guard.

Royal’s mother Theresa Cordelia Tenney-Eaton was 70 years old, living in Somerset, NY with her son Hubert and his family.

Hattie’s grandmother, my 3x great-grandmother Eliza Marsh Bird-Dutcher was 83 years old living in Somerset with her daughter Carrie and her family. Here she is, on the left, with her son-in-law's mother, Sophia Sears-Smith. Sophia died soon after this was taken, a decade before ratification.

Frank Ruston tucking his head. Either with his wife Minnie, or Minnie took the photo.

Minnie Wicker-Ruston and son Dickie and daughter Ruth, my grandma, around 1922.

Emma Whitcher-Wicker, front right, with sisters Ellen, Harriet, and Frances, l-r.

My grandmother Ruth Emma Ruston was 4 years old, living with my 1x great-grandparents Frank William Ruston and Minnie Estelle Wicker-Ruston in Lockport, NY. Frank and Minnie were 32 and 30 years old and he was employed as an accountant. Minnie’s mother Emma Angeline Whitcher-Wicker, 75, lived with them.

Frank’s parents Charles Evan Ruston and Ruth Ireland-Ruston, 73 and 59 years old, were both first generation immigrants living at their own home in Lockport.  He was still employed by the Harrison Manufacturing factory. (In my childhood it was the Harrison-Radiator factory.)

Robert George Art and Margaret Loretta Burke-Art were both 28 years old, living in Lockport, with two young daughters. He was working as a blacksmith.

Robert’s parents, my 2x great-grandparents, George Art and Katherine Pils-Art, 50 and 49 years old, were both employed by the wealthy Kenan family as their private gardener and housekeeper. Here Katherine is with other housekeepers, second one in from the right.

Margaret’s father, my 2x great-grandfather Frank Burke was 57, worked as the watchman for a city building in Lockport. He’s listed as married, not widowed, living with five of his children, though his wife Eliza Conners-Burke is not included on the census report. She would have been 54 at the time. I don't have any photos of them.

My 1x great-grandfather Harold Riddle, in the light suit, was 17 years old, living at home with my 2x great-grandparents Lafayette Riddle and Frances Ann Gillette-Riddle, 47 and 43 years old. With five of their six children in Newfane, NY.

Harold and Elsie in 1924 when they married.

My 1x great-grandmother Elsie Elizabeth Durant was 16, the last Durant child still at home. My 2x great-grandparents George Durant and Emma Louise Burnah-Durant, 51 and 53, lived in Lockport, NY where he worked at a Block Company. His father Albert died earlier that year in Vermont. His mother Rosella Lavalley-Durant, my 3x great-grandmother, 82 years old, was working as a housekeeper in Vermont.

Rosella Lavalley-Durant

I do not know what they thought but I know where they were and who their descendants became. I know my great-grandma Minnie was an avid photographer and these photos of this group of women survived all these decades later so they must have been important to her, and so they are important to me.

Same group of women with Minnie behind the camera.