Beech Tree News Network

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, Butler County Judge-Executive Tim Flener declared August 26 Women's Equality Day in Butler County. The declaration was signed on Judge Flener's courthouse steps with several of the Butler County NSDAR members present and other women from the community. The chapter would like to thank Judge Flener for this declaration to honor all women.

Butler County Clerk Sherry Johnson, Judge Flener, and Suzanne Brosnan, PVA

The proclamation states: this is an opportunity to honor women for their leadership in service to their families, communities, and the nation.

Kentucky was the 23rd state to ratify the Amendment on January 6, 1920, one of only four southern states to ratify.

Susan B. Anthony is one of the first people that we think of when talking about women's rights.

Kentucky had many prominent women that spent years fighting for equality one hundred years ago.

Judge Flener and Deborah Rose Worley, Chairperson for Women's Issues for DAR

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge was born in Woodlake, Kentucky. She was a powerful rights advocate, only getting to vote for the president one time before her death in November of 1920. Her portrait is on permanent display in the State Capitol. Melba Porter Hays has written many books on Kentucky, and one describes the struggles that Madeline went through to earn the right to Vote.

 Virginia Penny was a suffragette and economist from Louisville; she wrote a book about "The Employments of Women, a Cyclopedia of Women's Work ."

Mary Barr Clay from Lexington was a leader for over forty years before dying in Richmond, Kentucky in 1924.

Dr. Mary Ellen Britton was born in Lexington in 1855; she was only ten years old when the Civil War ended, she studied hard in school and became the "First African American Female Doctor in Lexington ."

Born in Richmond, Kentucky, in 1849, Laura Clay attended the Democratic National Convention in California in 1920. The first woman to be nominated for President of the United States, as history notes she only received one vote from the delegates, but you have to start somewhere.

Cora Wilson Stewart from Rowan county was also at the 1920 convention. She started the Moonlight Schools nationwide; these were for illiterate adults and used School classrooms at night to educate adults.

Cornelia Beach, a Louisville teacher, was arrested for picketing in front of the White House in 1917. Her fine in today's money would be twelve hundred dollars for picketing for women's rights.

These are just a few examples of women from Kentucky that paved the way so women today could vote.

Get Registered, and November 3 VOTE.