Women’s Equality Day Held on Anniversary

LOCK HAVEN – The Clinton County Historical Society’s Poorman Gallery was filled to capacity Monday evening for a Women’s Equality Day reception and suffrage mini-exhibit to mark the 99th anniversary of women’s right to vote.

Loretta Coltrane from the Women’s History Coalition traced the history of Equality Day, commemorating the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment which guaranteed that American citizens would not be denied the right to vote on the basis of their sex.

Coltrane said the Monday kickoff begins a year-long journey to share the story about the women’s suffrage movement across the country and in Clinton County.

She told of Clinton County suffragists including Miss Dora Merrill, one of the founders of the Lock Haven Civic Club who campaigned for woman suffrage for over 30 years and lived to see the passage of the 19th Amendment and vote; Mrs. W. C. Kress who served as Clinton County Chairman of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association; Mrs. Charles Lose, wife of the principal of the then-Lock Haven Normal School who was a member of the PWSA; and Elizabeth Peale, daughter of Sen. Samuel Peale; she was a founder of the Lock Haven Civic Club and chairman of Suffrage Clubs in Clinton County.

The suffrage exhibit includes photographs and information about local suffragists; news clippings about prominent Suffragist speakers who spoke in Clinton County and the Pennsylvania Justice Bell tour stop in Lock Haven; 1914 Pennsylvania Laws that applied to women; and a copy of the Declaration of Sentiments issued by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

The coalition, led by Coltrane whose hobby is researching women’s history, is planning a year-long series of events leading up to the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 2020.