Abigail Scott Duniway - Infinite Women

Born: 22 October 1834, United States
Died: 11 October 1915
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following is republished from HistoryLink.org, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Oregon suffragist Abigail Jane Scott Duniway was a nationally known pioneer leader for women’s suffrage who worked regionally in what became the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Born on an Illinois farm, she traveled the Oregon Trail with her family in 1853 and when married, experienced the hard life as a rancher’s wife. The mother of six children, Duniway was a persuasive speaker and prolific writer, authoring 22 novels that she serialized in the newspaper she founded and edited, the New Northwest, begun in 1871. That year Duniway convinced Susan B. Anthony to accompany her on a 2,400-mile speaking and organizing tour through Oregon and Washington. The two later helped establish the Washington Equal Suffrage Association (WESA). Duniway advocated persuasion and non-confrontational tactics to further the cause of women’s suffrage. She was an important figure in the passage of Idaho’s women suffrage bill in 1896 and a supportive voice for Washington state’s win in 1910. But she struggled in her own state of Oregon, where victory did not come until 1912, following five ballot defeats. In her autobiography, Pathbreaking, published in 1914, Duniway tells the story of her 40 years of service in the struggle for women’s rights. She died in Portland, Oregon in 1915 at the age of 81.

Farm Girl to Ranch Wife
Abigail Jane Scott was born October 22, 1834, on a farm in Tazewell County near Groveland, Illinois, the third of 12 children born to John Tucker Scott and Ann Roelofson Scott. In 1852 — when Abigail was 17 — the family made the grueling trek by oxen cart to Oregon country and Abigail was chosen by her father to keep a diary of their trip. Both her mother and youngest brother died on the Oregon Trail, possibly of cholera which reached epidemic levels that year. Abigail’s diaries reflect both the joys and sorrows experienced on the trip and she was soon to draw from these writings as substance for her first novel, Captain Gray’s Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon, published in 1859.
The Scotts settled in Cincinnati (Eola) Oregon and Abigail worked as a self-taught teacher. In 1853 she married Benjamin Charles Duniway, “a sober and provident husband” as Abigail called him (Duniway, New Citizen). The couple began the hard life of ranching in pioneer country. Six children — a daughter and five sons — each born less than two years apart, completed the family: Clara, Willis, Hubert, Wilkie, Clyde, and Ralph. As Abigail wrote in 1911:
“The making of new farms in the brush and timber in a pioneer community, away from civilization, though hard upon the men in building cabins, fences, barns and bridges, is doubly trying for the women folks who, with babes in arms, are never able to mobilize as men do at their hog killings, log rollings, political gatherings, barn raisings, bridge building, etc., but must remain in solitude, a prey to their own thoughts, their chief diversion, aside from the blessed companionship of their many little ones, being the extra labor that devolves upon them to provide the meals for the men’s frolics and labors that bring them together for the purposes just specified” (Duniway, New Citizen).
A ranch woman’s chores often extended to nursing sick neighbors where, in Duniway’s description, the women did most of the work while a physician, usually male, pocketed the payment. Women confided in Abigail, often telling of their intense hardships and Abigail kept notes. While never divulging their names, she later used them as characters in her novels.
“I suppose I might as well say here, as anywhere, that I would doubtless long ago have been dead because of the hardship of the rancher if my good husband had not met with a serious accident with a runaway team, which followed closely on the heels of a heavy security debt he had incurred against my protest” (Duniway, New Citizen).
The Duniways lost their ranch and Abigail became the family breadwinner. Turning first to teaching, she opened a private school in the village of La Fayette. The school was unsuccessful so she opened their family home to women boarders. The Duniways later moved to Albany and Abigail again tried teaching and then became a milliner, work that provided six years of income. During this time, and while also raising her children, she wrote her first novel Captain Gray’s Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon, published in 1859, based on her Oregon Trail diary. The novel gave her notoriety.

The New Northwest
Abigail’s involvement in the organized movement of women’s suffrage dates to 1870 and it is possible that this is why she and the Duniways moved to Portland the following year, Abigail joined the small but active women’s rights group in that city. The group evolved into the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association and Abigail would serve as its president for many years. Duniway decided to use her writing skills to support the suffrage cause, bought a printing office in Portland in 1871 and began the New Northwest, a weekly newspaper that covered women’s issues, including suffrage. The newspaper continued for 16 years under her editorship.
Thus also began Abigail’s partnership with Susan B. Anthony, vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Abigail soon carved out her own territory of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, a New Northwest where people were liberal and prosperous and open to the idea of women’s suffrage. Abigail traveled throughout this territory and gained the reputation for being a great lecturer.
When Susan B. Anthony spoke to the Washington Territorial Legislature in October 1871, Abigail was there to make her acquaintance. Anthony had come to speak in favor of a suffrage bill that had been introduced to the legislature but, despite Anthony’s support, the bill failed. Duniway convinced Anthony to travel with her on a 2,400-mile two-month lecture tour of Oregon and Washington. Although the trip was successful in building support for suffrage, it was physically difficult, the pair traveling by “jouncing coaches or dirty, crawling trains” in rainy weather (Farthest Frontier, 101). Abigail wrote of their journey, “the winter rains were deluging the earth. The stage carrying us from Olympia to the Columbia River at Kalama, led us through the blackness of darkness in the night time, giving Miss Anthony a taste of pioneering under difficulties that remained with her as a memory to her dying day” (Duniway, Farthest Frontier).

Strategies and Difficulties
Abigail Scott Duniway kept her distance from the temperance movement, strongly believing that their zealotry was bad for the suffrage cause. She was particularly effective in Idaho where she spoke on this issue July 16, 1889, to the state’s constitutional convention in Boise. Her analysis of the prohibition problem and suffrage resulted in solid backing of many leading state officials and business men to place a suffrage issue on the ballot. When the Oregon State Constitutional Convention met in Boise in 1889, Abigail received a message from Idaho suffragists: “The Women’s Christian Temperance Union is spoiling everything. They have arranged for a hearing before the convention in advance of ours, asking for a clause in the new Constitution to prohibit the liquor traffic. They won’t get it, of course, but they will prohibit us from getting a Woman Suffrage plank, if you don’t come” (Farthest Frontier, 102).
Duniway held to the “still hunt” approach that advocated non-confrontation as the best approach for gaining women’s suffrage and she also felt that the issue needed to be directed to men, since they were the voters and held the power. The way to convince them was through gentle persuasion and humor. In Abigail’s words, “Women can’t enfranchise women. They may lead a man to the ballot booth but they can’t make him vote for us after we get him there. If we are too insistent they are likely to get stubborn and the advantage is all on their side. Men like to be coaxed. They will not be driven” (Duniway, New Citizen). Duniway’s speeches were often accompanied by songs she had written, sung to popular tunes of the day by her daughter Clara.
Parades, mass rallies and promotional tactics were too sensational, she felt, and would not help win the cause. Duniway was also convinced that grassroots, local suffrage clubs were of little value, placing instead greater importance on good speaking and influence from national and regional leaders. This began putting her at odds with younger women in the suffrage movement.
Although Abigail Scott Duniway was undoubtedly a powerful speaker and an effective writer, she lacked organizational skills and preferred to lead with a strong hand. While she and Susan B. Anthony remained lifetime friends, their strong-spirited approaches and tactics often put them at odds. When NAWSA deferred to Duniway’s leadership during the 1900 Oregon suffrage campaign — another failed attempt — Anthony declared the defeat predictable stating “Duniway’s head is so full of crotchets that it is impossible for her to cooperate with anybody, she must simply control” (Edwards).
No doubt Abigail Scott Duniway was a suffrage pathbreaker, laying the foundation for women’s suffrage in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, but it took the efforts and new strategies of younger leaders such as Emma Smith DeVoe (1848-1927) and May Arkwright Hutton (1860-1915) to finalize its passage. Duniway is considered an important figure in the success of Idaho women’s suffrage bill in 1896 and was a strong and supportive voice for the 1910 win in Washington state. But, in her own home state of Oregon, she faced repeated defeats — 1884, 1900, 1906, 1908, and 1910 — before final passage in 1912. Some faulted Abigail for the many defeats but she blamed them on her brother Harvey W. Scott, editor of the influential newspaper Oregonian, which had strongly and consistently opposed the suffrage cause.
In 1912 Abigail Scott Duniway joined the editorial staff as Oregon Editor of the New Citizen (originally Votes For Women, the official organ of the Washington state suffrage movement) and contributed writings about her early life. In her autobiography Pathbreaking, published in 1914, Abigail Scott Duniway left an account of her 40-year struggle for women’s rights. She died on October 11, 1915, and is buried in River View Cemetery in Portland.

The following is excerpted from A Woman of the Century, edited by Frances E. Willard and Mary A Livermore, published in 1893 by Charles Wells Moulton.

DUNIWAY, Mrs. Abigail Scott, editor, born in Pleasant Grove, Tazewell county. III., 22nd October, 1834. There she grew to girlhood. Her father removed to Oregon in 1852. Of a family noted for sturdy independence in word and deed, it is not strange that these inherent qualities, united with keen mental powers, have made her one of the most widely known women on the Pacific slope. She began her public career many years ago through necessity, an invalid husband and a large family leaving her no alternative. Nobly has she fulfilled the double trust of wife and mother. While Mrs. Duniway has been engaged in every sort of reputable literary toil, her life-work has been in the direction of the enfranchisement of women. While advocating woman suffrage she has undoubtedly traveled more miles by stage, rail, river and wagon, made more public speeches, endured more hardships, persecution and ridicule, and scored more victories than any of her distinguished contemporaries of the East and middle West. The enfranchisement of the women of Washington Territory was the result of her efforts, and, had they listened to her counsel and kept aloof from the Prohibition fight of 1886, they would not have lost afterwards, when the Territory became a State, the heritage of the ballot which she had secured for them at the cost of the best years of her life. As an extemporaneous speaker she is logical, sarcastic, witty, poetic and often eloquent. As a writer she is forceful and argumentative. Mrs. Duniway now fills the editorial Chair of the “Pacific Empire,” a new literary and progressive monthly magazine published in Portland, Ore., where she resides in a spacious home, the product of her own genius and industry.