Portrait of Abigail Scott Duniway.
Abigail Scott Duniway 1834-1915
American Women’s Rights Advocate
Remembered as Oregon’s “Mother of Equal Suffrage” and “the pioneer Woman Suffragist of the great Northwest,” Abigail Scott Duniway devoted more than forty years to the cause of human rights.
Abigail Scott was born in Illinois, but her family migrated to Oregon in 1852. Still a teenager when she made the overland journey, she kept a daily journal of the crossing that is now held in the UO Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives. This journal would serve as the basis of her 1859 book, Captain Gray’s Company, the first novel to be commercially printed in Oregon.
In 1862 an accident permanently disabled Abigail’s husband, Benjamin Duniway, and her writing became the young family’s main source of income. She would go on to author 22 novels while also founding and editing several progressive newspapers including The New Northwest, published in Portland from 1871 to 1887. Guided by the motto of “Free Speech, Free Press, Free People,” this paper provided a vital platform for alternative voices to address the legal status of women, policies related to Native Americans and Chinese immigrants, the Temperance movement, and other controversial issues of the day.
Encouraged by her mentor, Susan B. Anthony, Duniway began speaking at national women’s rights conventions. In 1872, she was invited to address Oregon’s legislature and make the case for women’s suffrage, and in 1890, she was named one of five National Woman Suffrage Association vice-presidents-at-large. Despite her growing prominence on the national scene, however, Duniway’s cause faced an uphill battle in Oregon, where suffrage laws were defeated five times between 1884 and 1910.
Her lifetime of effort was finally rewarded in 1912, when Oregon became the seventh state to extend voting rights to its women citizens. Duniway was honored with Governor Oswald West’s invitation to write the official Oregon Woman Suffrage Proclamation.
“The young women of today, free to study, to speak, to write, to choose their occupation, should remember that every inch of this freedom was bought for them at a great price. It is for them to show their gratitude by helping onward the reforms of their own times, by spreading the light of freedom and of truth still wider. The debt that each generation owes to the past it must pay to the future.” – Abigail Scott Duniway
Abigail Scott Duniway signing first Equal Suffrage Proclamation ever made by a woman, taken in 1912.
Abigail Scott Duniway Diary.
Abigail Scott Duniway Diary.