By Leslie Blankenship

August 26, 1995 marks the 75th anniversary of woman's right to vote. In honor of this important milestone in the evolution of American democracy, volunteers from the Kelton House Museum will present a "parlor meeting" reenactment featuring early Columbus suffragists.

The scenario:
A group of Columbus women have gathered for a parlor meeting in the home of Sophia Stone Kelton one sultry August evening in 1863. Until only a month ago this had been a gloomy year for the North, but victories at Gettysburg and Vivksburg cheered Northern hearts that the tide was finally turning.

A devoted disciple of Abby Kelly Foster, Elizabeth Greer Coit has invited her mentor to address the meeting. Hoping to hear Mrs. Foster heatedly protest the condition of women, Elizabeth is sorely disappointed in her speech. Also invited to address the meeting by a friend of Sophia Stone Kelton is "The Bronze Muse" herself -- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

While the portrayal of this encounter is fictional, the beliefs and accomplishments of these women are not. They labored their entire lives for the promise of enfranchisement, yet did not live to see it happen.

The principal participants:
Born in Worthington in 1820, Elizabeth Greer was educated at the Female Seminary in Worthington where she later taught. In 1844, Elizabeth married Harvey Coit and moved to a house on 3rd street in Columbus where she eventually had eight children. An avid supporter of women's rights, Elizabeth Greer Coit became the first president of the Woman's Suffrage association in Columbus. For many years the suffrage Association met in her home once a month to plan the advancement of women. A friend of such luminaries as Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Frances Willard, and Mary Livermore, Elizabeth opened her home to suffragists. Her husband and children sympathized with her work. A delegate to a state convention for women's suffrage that met in Columbus in 1884, she was also treasurer of the state association, attended their meetings, and served as an effective speaker on the suffrage lecture circuit in Columbus and neighboring towns when this cause was singularly unpopular. As a reward for her hard work, Elizabeth received much public opprobrium, spiteful personal remarks, and hateful letters. She bore it all with great patience.

Once her eight-year-old daughter Belle ran home from school sobbing, "Mother, are you strong-minded and do you wear pants?" In response, Elizabeth calmly replied, "My dear, I hope I am strong-minded. I should be very sorry to have had children if I were feebly-minded."

Also living on 3rd Street in the 1840s and neighbors of the Coits was the Kelton family. Sophia Stone, born in 1819 in Worthington, Massachusetts, was the daughter of pioneer merchant John Stone who moved the family to Columbus. Her father had offered a job to young Fernando Cortez Kelton when he arrived in the frontier city in 1831. The Keltons were married in 1841 and had seven children. Sophia and Fernando were as devoted to their beliefs in the abolition of slavery as Elizabeth Greer Coit was to the enfranchisement of women. When they built a new home at 586 Town Street, the Keltons began operating it as a safe-house for the Underground Railroad.

Sophia Stone Kelton and Elizabeth Greer Coit were more than good friends. They were like-minded comrades in the reform impulse that was sweeping the nation in the 1830s and 1840s. Other Ohio women of similar bent whose reputations extended far beyond Columbus were Abby Kelly Foster and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

Frances Watkins was born in Maryland in 1825 of free parents. In 1850 she moved from Maryland to take a job in Ohio at the Union Seminary affiliated with an AME church north of Columbus (later became part of Wilberforce University). As the years passed, Frances Watkins became increasingly distraught over the atrocities of slavery, and she began to speak out against these evils. She soon became a favorite on the abolitionist circuit dazzling audiences with her eloquence and logic. She also began expressing her sorrow over slavery by writing poetry -- "A slave Auction," "Bury Me in a free Land," and "The Slave Mother: A Tale of Ohio" about Margaret Garner who killed her 3-year old daughter rather than surrender her back into bondage. In 1859, Frances Watkins became the first African-American to publish a short-story, "The Two Officers." When she accepted a proposal of marriage from a young widower Fenton Harper in 1863, Frances used earnings from her writing and speaking career to purchase a small farm south of Grove City, Ohio where she "retired" from public speaking. Frances and Fenton had one child Mary. Frances Watkins Harper became known as "The Bronze Muse" for her elegant turn of phase.

Born in Pelham, Massachusetts in 1811, Abby Kelly was raised in the Quaker faith where she acquired her redoubtable, uncompromising hatred of slavery. A nationally-known orator and fund-raiser for the causes of both abolition and woman's suffrage, Abby Kelly was a tireless firebrand. One of the first women to speak out publicly against slavery when society frowned on such activities for women, she endured hostility from male clergy, lawmakers, and multitudes of hecklers. In the 1840s she moved to the Western Reserve and founded the Western Antislavery Society. In 1845 she help to establish the influential newspaper, The Antislavery Bugle. Also that year she married Stephan Foster, another staunch abolitionist, in a Quaker-style wedding. They had one daughter Alla. On 12 April 1861, abby Kelly Foster was in Columbus lobbying the Ohio General assembly on behalf of a bill to enlarge rights of women when she hears the news about the firing on Fort Sumter. "Glory to God!" she exclaimed excitedly. She welcomed the war because she felt it would be the end of slavery.

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