Abigail Jane Scott Duniway (October 22, 1834 – October 11, 1915) was an American women's rights advocate, newspaper editor and writer, whose efforts were instrumental in gaining voting rights for women in the United States.

Personal life

thumb|Duniway (seated) with Governor [[Oswald West, signing the women's suffrage amendment]]

Duniway was born near Groveland, Illinois, to John Tucker Scott and Anne Roelofson Scott. Of the nine children in her family who survived infancy, she was the second. She grew up on the family farm and attended a local school intermittently. In March 1852, against the wishes of Anne Scott, who had concerns about her health, John organized a party of 30 people and 5 ox-drawn wagons to emigrate to Oregon, away by trail. Anne died of cholera near Fort Laramie, on the Oregon Trail, in June, and Willie, age 3, the youngest child in the family, died in August along the Burnt River in Oregon. In October, the emigrants reached their destination, Lafayette, in the Willamette Valley. After teaching school in Eola in early 1853, Abigail Scott Duniway married Benjamin Charles Duniway, a farmer from Illinois, on August 1. They had six children: Clara Belle (b. 1854), Willis Scott (1856), Hubert (1859), Wilkie Collins (1861), Clyde Augustus (1866), and Ralph Roelofson (1869).

The Duniways farmed in Clackamas County until 1857, when they moved to a farm near Lafayette. They lost this second farm after a friend defaulted on a note Benjamin had endorsed. Soon afterward, Benjamin was permanently disabled in an accident involving a runaway team, and Abigail had to support the family. At first, she opened and ran a small boarding school in Lafayette. In 1866, she moved to Albany where she taught in a private school for a year, then opened a millinery and notions shop, which she ran for five years.

Duniway toured the Pacific Northwest in the company of Susan B. Anthony, one of the leading voices in the women's suffrage movement. In 1872 she was invited to address Oregon's legislature to put forward the case for women's suffrage. She was appearing on behalf of the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association, but no one wanted to keep her company. Other women feared what their husbands and others might say. Finally she found Mary Sawtelle who agreed to also venture into this male-only preserve.

Duniway encountered personal setbacks such as poor health and money problems. Her brother Harvey W. Scott, who also edited The Oregonian and later contributed to The New Northwest, opposed woman suffrage in many editorials on the subject. She persisted despite political opposition in the form of local resistance, the consistent failure of women's suffrage referendums on state ballots, and divisions with Eastern suffrage organizations. She and her newspaper actively supported the Sole Trader Bill and the Married Women's Property Act which, when passed, gave Oregon women the right to own and control property.

Her persistence paid off in 1912 when Oregon became the seventh state in the U.S. to pass a women's suffrage amendment. Governor Oswald West asked her to write and sign the equal suffrage proclamation. She was the first woman to register to vote in Multnomah County. This and others that she wrote drew repeatedly on her experiences as a young woman on the Oregon Trail. She wrote a booklet called My Musings after attending a convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1872. Her last publication was Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States, in 1914.

thumb|An engraving of Duniway in the middle of her career. Her signature appears below the engraving.

Works written by Duniway and published by others:

  • Captain Gray's Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon. Portland, Oregon: S. J. McCormick, 1859.
  • David and Anna Matson. New York: S.R. Wells & Co., 1876.
  • From the West to the West: Across the Plains to Oregon. Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1905.
  • My Musings. Portland, Oregon: Duniway Publishing Co., 1875.
  • Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States, 2nd ed. Portland, Oregon: James, Kerns & Abbott, 1914.
  • Shack-Locks: A Story of the Times. October 3, 1895 – March 26, 1896.
  • Bijah's Surprises (later revised in manuscript form as Margaret Rudson, A Pioneer Story. Book one, April 2 – September 26, 1896; Book two, October 1 – December 31, 1896.
  • The Old and the New. January 7 – December 30, 1897.

References

Bibliography

  • Johnson, L. C.; James, Edward T., ed; (1971). "Duniway, Abigail Jane Scott" in Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 1, A–F. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. .
  • Moynihan, Ruth Barnes (1983). Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. .
  • Shein, Debra (2002). Abigail Scott Duniway (Western Writers Series No. 151). Boise, Idaho: Boise State University. .
  • "'She Flies with Her Own Wings': The Collected Speeches of Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915)"
  • University of Oregon Libraries Special Collections
  • Abigail Scott Duniway papers
  • Abigail Scott Duniway speech: "A Stirring Appeal"
  • Abigail Scott Duniway letters
  • Abigail Scott Duniway letter to Barbara M. Booth
  • 1912 Women's Suffrage Proclamation Transcription, Oregon Blue Book
  • Oregon Experience: Abigail Scott Duniway, OPB video, August 23, 2006. 26:41
  • Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States