Site of MAOFESW Office

Bromley map of Boston and Roxbury, 1895.

Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library

Quick Facts

Location:

687 Boylston Street

Significance:

Site of the MAOFESW Office

OPEN TO PUBLIC:

No

MANAGED BY:

Private Building

On May 21, 1895, the informal "Committee of Remonstrants" met in a Beacon Hill parlor to establish the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW).¹ MAOFESW aimed "to increase general interest in this subject, and to educate and stimulate public opinion to an opposition based on intelligent conviction."²

With support growing exponentially, MAOFESW stood as one of the leading anti-suffrage organizations in the country for the final decades of the women's suffrage movement. From the Boston office, anti-suffragists printed pamphlets, essays, and broadsides in opposition to women's suffrage, published the anti-suffrage journal The Remonstrance, and organized anti-suffrage lectures and events. MAOFESW led two successful campaigns against the 1895 and 1915 Massachusetts state referendums on women’s suffrage.³

"Shall the Tail Wag the Dog?" Broadside, Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women, 1915. (Credit: The Massachusetts Historical Society)

For more information about MAOFESW, please visit the article "Anti-Suffrage in Massachusetts."

Footnotes:

1. The Committee of Remonstrants held this 1895 meeting at Ruby Parlors at 62 Beacon Street. See Lois Bannister Merk, “Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement” (Phd diss., Radcliffe College, 1961).
2. "Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women," Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women Leaflets, Boston, 1884-1904, 60 nos. Boston Athenaeum, https://catalog.bostonathenaeum.org/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=204317.
3. James J. Kenneally, “Woman Suffrage and the Massachusetts ‘Referendum’ of 1895.” The Historian 30, no. 4 (1968): 617-633; Lois Bannister Merk, “Massachusetts and the Woman Suffrage Movement” (Phd diss., Radcliffe College, 1961); Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).