Washington and Summer Streets

Suffragists, including Claiborne Catlin, advertised suffrage events along these streets.

NPS Photo/Woods

Quick Facts

Location:

Washington and Summer Streets

Significance:

Suffrage Campaigning

In 1914, suffragist Claiborne Catlin rode along Washington and Summer Streets on horseback to advertise an upcoming suffrage event held at Tremont Temple that planned to feature suffragist Reverend Anna Howard Shaw. An unnamed newspaper noticed how “crowds gathered wherever Mrs. Catlin stopped and listened to her voice as it rose above the hum of traffic.”¹

Claiborne Catlin became known in Massachusetts for her publicity stunts on horseback as she advertised events in other towns nearby. Catlin went on a greater adventure the summer of 1914; she undertook a suffrage tour throughout Massachusetts entirely on horseback, relying on donations and the generosity of supporters to promote the cause.²

Claiborne Catlin advertising on horseback for an upcoming suffrage event. (Credit: Unknown newspaper, May 2, 1914, in Claiborne Grasty Catlin Elliman collection, Schlesinger Library.)

Footnotes:

1. “Claiborne Grasty Catlin Elliman correspondence and photographs from 1914 suffrage trip,” 1914, folder 002690-004-0372, Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Series 1: Woman's Suffrage, Part D: New England; “Claiborne Grasty Catlin Elliman Scrapbooks,” 1914-1919, folder 002690-004-0538. Women's Studies Manuscript Collections from The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Series 1: Woman's Suffrage, Part D: New England.
2. Ibid. Also see Susan Ware, Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2019).