Zerelda Sanders Wallace

Quick Facts

Significance:

Suffragist, Step-mother of Lew Wallace

Place of Birth:

Kentucky

Date of Birth:

August 6, 1817

Place of Death:

Cataract, Indiana

Date of Death:

March 19, 1901

Cemetery Name:

Crown Hill Cemetery

“In all the states of the Union…there are good people who know and speak of her as Mother Wallace, sweet-tongued apostle of temperance and reform.” – Major General Lew Wallace’s eulogy to his mother Zerelda Sanders Wallace

Born on August 6, 1817, Zerelda Grey Sanders had a keen interest in learning and reading from a young age. After attending grammar and boarding school, Zerelda was known to accompany her father, a physician on his house calls. She married David Wallace, the lieutenant governor of Indiana on December 25, 1836 and became the step-mother to his three sons, including nine year old Lewis “Lew” Wallace. Only 19 years old at the time of her marriage, Zerelda became the first lady of Indiana in her early twenties. David Wallace served as the governor of Indiana from 1837 – 1840 and in 1841 was elected to the United States Congress where he served one term. 

Zerelda raised not only her step-sons, but also eventually had six children of her own, three of whom survived to adulthood. During this period she also supported her husband’s political and legal career prior to his death in 1859. Having little in the way of funds following David Wallace’s death, Zerelda refused help from her extended family and instead was determined to make it herself. She opened the Wallace home up to boarders to support her family and in 1870 began to care for her four grandchildren following the death of her daughter Mary. 

Zerelda had always had an interest in politics and social reform, in 1873 she began her direct involvement in both the temperance and suffrage movements. In March 1874, she helped organize the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Indiana and was elected the union’s first president. In this roll she testified in 1875 before the Indiana General Assembly, presenting a temperance petition to the assembly with over 21,000 signatures. Zerelda later credited the contempt she received by from the General Assembly as the driving force behind her joining the suffrage movement. 

In 1878, Zerelda formed the Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis and was elected its first president. Now a suffragist, Zerelda testified before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1880. A year later she helped lobby the Indiana General Assembly to approve a women’s suffrage amendment to the Indiana State Constitution. Though two separate assemblies approved the suffrage amendment, in 1881 and 1883, the Indiana Senate refused to act on the amendment. No further suffrage action occurred in Indiana until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Following the failure to get a suffrage amendment passed in Indiana, Zerelda became convinced that the fastest, most efficient way to secure women’s suffrage was through a national constitutional amendment. Zerelda corresponded with famous members of the national suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony, and became a popular orator at suffrage conventions and meets. In 1887, Zerelda’s Equal Suffrage Society of Indiana became affiliated with the National Women Suffrage Society. In 1888, shortly before her stepping back from public life, Zerelda spoke at the International Conference of Women in Washington, D.C. 

Zerelda Wallace spent her twilight years living with her daughter, Agnes, in Cataract, Indiana before passing away in 1901. Though Zerelda never got to place a vote in a state or national election, her work with the suffrage movement bore fruit in the form of the 19th Amendment. At the time, 36 states were required to ratify the amendment before it could go into effect. Zerelda’s home state of Indiana was the 20th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, doing so on January 20, 1920. The 36th state ratified the amendment in August and women in the United States gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920.