The second Women’s Christian Temperance Union president shifted the organization’s focus from temperance to suffrage. When Francis Willard took office in 1879, she launched a “do everything” policy. She reasoned, “meet argument with argument, misjudgment with patience, denunciation with kindness, and all our difficulties and dangers with prayer.” She first wanted to win women the right to vote and then take on demon alcohol.
Willard graduated in 1859 from the Northwest Female College and taught school for a decade. She then toured the world and, in 1870, assumed the presidency of the Evanston College for Ladies. Northwestern University later hired her to be dean of women.
In July 1883, now head of the WCTU for four years, Willard was in Vancouver to give a lecture and organize a local chapter. She was a guest of Mrs. H. H. Gridley, whose husband owned a large Vancouver mercantile. The Vancouver Register called Willard “the most talented lady orator in the world.” Women from Vancouver churches were elected to WCTU offices.
Like Mrs. Gridley, who was elected as superintendent of Sunday School efforts, the first officers came from widely known upper-crust Vancouver families, including S.R. Whipple, president; Dana Wintler, treasurer; Dr. Ella Whipple, press relations (the first female physician in Clark County); Elizabeth Durgan, superintendent for soldiers efforts; and Rebecca Brown, correspondence secretary. (Brown was the daughter of Charles Slocum. Her deceased husband, Charles Brown, was once mayor of Vancouver.)
Willard lectured in Marsh’s Hall, causing the Methodists to cancel the Sunday evening service. The Register reported the hall was filled with “as large and intelligent an audience as ever assembled in Vancouver.” Army Gen. Nelson Miles (Columbia Barracks commandant) and Judge Columbian Lanchester (the Washington Territory’s first Congressional delegate) were in that audience. The Rev. L. A. Banks read the 146th Psalm. He offered a prayer and some hymns before introducing the speaker, Willard.
She forcefully and earnestly captivated the audience’s attention raptly for an hour with her “do everything” message. Her oration flowed quickly and gracefully, and her voice was clear and musical. The newspaper touted her Victorian womanly virtues, reporting that she used the best language and was well-educated and refined.
One newly elected officer, Ella Whipple, became a WCTU activist. She wrote articles and made presentations at conferences. While actively involved in her medical practice, Whipple ran for and was elected superintendent of Vancouver Public Schools in 1884, serving until 1887. During that time, she organized the Clark County Normal Institute. Forty-three teachers attended this first teachers’ conference held in the Washington Territory in 1885.
In the final decades of the 19th century, women’s suffrage and temperance merged. Riding on the momentum focused by Willard, the Washington Territory awarded women and mixed-race persons the vote in 1883. The Territorial Supreme Court reversed the statute in 1887. The territorial legislature proposed suffrage again in 1888 and 1889 but lacked sufficient votes to make it law. In 1910, the state constitution was permanently amended to give women the vote.
Martin Middlewood is editor of the Clark County Historical Society Annual. Reach him at ClarkCoHist@gmail.com.
