Carla Occaso
Not everyone involved in the women’s suffrage movement entered it intentionally. A Vermont woman spoke to an interviewer a few decades ago about her accidental involvement in the movement, and how she developed an appreciation for the right she helped earn for an entire gender. Marjorie Townsend, of Plainfield, Vermont, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, spoke to Mary Kasamatsu (former director of the Waterbury Public Library) on May 19, 1987 about her time as a suffragette. Townsend began by saying one of the major players in the national women’s movement, Grace Johnson — later to become her first mother-in-law — took the then teenaged Townsend under her wing.
Townsend went with Johnson as a delegate to a big suffrage convention in Washington D.C. in 1913 at the age of 16. She remembered the abundance of “old ladies,” ice cream, and soda more than anything else. Townsend also recalled how excited the activists were. They were certain their problems would end as soon as they got the right to vote. “Everything would be perfect,” she said. Townsend then got invited to smaller conventions in Vermont because she had gone to the big one.
The first time she voted was in Plainfield, most likely at the town hall. She couldn’t say what was on the ballot, but she keenly remembered voting. “All I remember is that it was the first time women were voting, so I think to some people everything was controversial,” she said. She also recalled feeling proud to be able to vote.
“When women did get the right to vote, did you see changes?” asked Kasamatsu.
“Yes, a few,” Townsend said. For example, when women had the right to vote, they saw to it that children had better laws protecting them, such as custody laws. Before women got the right to vote in 1920, men automatically got custody of the children in a split, Townsend said, because women did not have any rights.
Kasamatsu asked Townsend what a woman’s right to vote meant for women and children, to which Townsend replied, “I thought it was really wonderful. Because although I didn’t think it was going to be the end of all wickedness … It made you feel as if women were important. More like a citizen. So that was good.”
