Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [81]
19. The mention of any Spokane connection has been discovered in only two newspapers in Indiana, and only one mentions a “wealthy Spokane suffragette”; all other newspaper accounts refer to a New York or eastern sponsor or “parties.” Women in the Washington Territory received the right to vote in 1883, but lost this when Washington became a state in 1888. Interest in women’s suffrage came in waves after this, with very limited interest before 1898 and a great surge beginning in 1907, which Helga supported. However, prior to 1896, some women committed to the temperance movement also met occasionally on the suffrage issue. One potential contact in Spokane was Dr. Mary Latham who testified in the lawsuit against the city during Helga’s illness. As early as 1890, Dr. Latham wrote a letter to the editor of the Spokesman-Review that referred to a request to promote suffrage in Spokane from a national leader of suffrage, Matilda Joslyn Gage. A prominent physician, married to another physician, she could have qualified as “wealthy” in Helga’s eyes. She had professional contacts in the East and could have connected Helga to the New York sponsor, however, no records indicate she continued as an active suffragette. Often women committed to women’s suffrage before 1898 waged their battles in the fashion of a “Still Hunt,” a private campaign that was not easily visible to outsiders. This tactic, advocated openly by prominent Pacific Northwest suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway, provided a discreet method of promoting women’s rights to the ballot. But it also leads to an incomplete record of local suffragettes. Nancy Engle’s excellent doctoral research on Spokane suffragettes speaks to this issue (“Debating Suffrage? The ‘Still Hunt’ in Spokane, 1898” in an April 27, 2001, paper). The most famous wealthy suffragette from Spokane, May Arkwright Hutton, gained enormous riches from her silver mining claims, but in 1896 she still lived in Wallace, Idaho, and had not yet struck it rich. The reference to Spokane may have been a reporting error, although it is conceivable that a woman in Spokane connected her to an Eastern party.
18 | LOST AND FOUND
1. Arlene Coulson, “Research Notes on Helga Estby’s Family,” Whitworth College History Project, 1986, Death Certificates.
2. Nels Siverson interview, 1986. See also the work of A. Anastasio, “Port Haven: A Changing Northwestern Community,” Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Bulletin 616, Washington State University (1960), 1–44. As late as the 1950s, in research on a Scandinavian community of Poulsbo, Washington, the key importance of family life was cited and there was disapproval of any wife not fulfilling perceived responsibilities. The Norwegian-American literature of the period presented a consistent theme of the patriarchal nature of the husband’s authority in the home (see J.N. Buckely, “Martha Ostenso: A Norwegian-American Immigrant Novelist,” Norwegian-American Studies and Records 28 (1979): 69–81). As one writer noted, “The Scandinavian husband’s authority in both Old- and New-World settings … was dominated by the father, whose authority over both wife and children in the home country was nearly absolute” (79). Ole’s inability to stop his wife’s action could be construed by his neighboring community as “abdicating his headship.”
3. “Walk to New York,” Spokesman-Review, May 5, 1896, p. 5.
4. J.J. Lorence, Enduring Visions Readings (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1993), 83.
5. Darillyn Bahr, “Coast to Coast,” School Research Report, Wilbur, Wash., 1977, 14.
6. Thelma Portch, first and second interview by author, Almira, Wash., 1984, 1986.
7. D.C. Jack, Silencing the Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).
8. A. Coulson, “Research Notes,” 1986, Mortgage Book.
9. T. Portch, second interview.
10. D. Bahr, “Coast to Coast,” 16.
11. H. Portch, interview with grandson-in-law by author, Spokane, Wash., 1994.
12. T. Portch, first