Projects

Emily Burton Ketcham - (1838-1907)

Grand Rapids Suffrage Centennial '99

JoEllyn Clarey

That virtually no one knows Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony's National American Woman Suffrage Association overwhelmed Grand Rapids for five days during its annual convention in 1899 is fresh evidence that women's history is hardly yet in order on the local and state levels. Taking one step toward historical correction, Grand Rapids will celebrate the centennial of the convention's opening day, April 27th, 1999, which Mayor John H. Logie has declared Emily Burton Ketcham Day. Why have you not heard of this suffrage dynamo and why is she not yet in the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame? Fraught questions, but partial explanation is that most of our knowledge about the suffrage movement is non-local and twentieth century--we recognize parades of white dresses with purple-white-and-gold sashes, all from after 1910, but know little about the earlier movement on which the later depends.

Less than a year after Susan B. Anthony's death in 1906, her long-time friend Emily Burton Ketcham also died before universal suffrage had been achieved. Anna Howard Shaw, then president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, eulogized Ketcham: "Her loss to the state is a great one, and there does not seem to be anybody to take her place. To my mind she was the greatest worker that Michigan ever produced." Early and ardent Michigan suffragist, Emily Burton Ketcham's work began in 1873 during the initial effort to strike gender as a qualification for voting in Michigan. During that campaign she developed lasting friendships with Stanton and Anthony, who on the strength of Ketcham's organizational prowess brought NAWSA to Grand Rapids for its annual convention in 1899.

Foremost among the founders of Grand Rapids suffrage groups, Ketcham was a charter member of the state organization, served as its president four times, and travelled nationally for the cause. Lucy Stone's houseguest at a Boston suffrage bazaar, Ketcham later provided Stone's famous WOMAN'S JOURNAL reports from the Midwest. For her tactical skills, Ketcham was repeatedly elected president of the state suffrage society and Michigan representative to the national executive council. For her eloquence, she frequently represented her societies on legislative committees and at national meetings. By special invitation, Emily Burton Ketcham spoke in the Woman's Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and in 1894 addressed the congressional Judiciary Committee, her presence in Washington recorded in a Matthew Brady photograph.

Upon her death, Ketcham's colleagues in reform published a memorial booklet. One paragraph begins: "Mrs. Ketcham's public work was not entirely absorbed by the effort to gain the rights of citizenship for women. Every charitable, benevolent, and educational project for her home city claimed and received her assistance as shown by the loving tributes paid to her memory by many societies." The groups contributing range from Oregon to Washington D.C., but most importantly they are from her home, Grand Rapids, and its Ladies Literary Club, then Michigan's largest women's group. A child born to the earliest European-American settlers in Grand Rapids, Ketcham had deep roots there.

A former teacher herself, Ketcham often spent energy on education and family issues. She worked continually for the passage of municipal suffrage in Michigan; and after Grand Rapids women could vote in school board elections, one form of partial suffrage, Ketcham was a force in the elections of women to the board beginning in 1888. She organized and was president of the Women's Civic League and the Woman's and Children's Protective League. But perhaps most eloquent testimonial comes from her personal life. Husband Smith G. Ketcham fully supported Emily and "the good work." From Idaho he wrote: "One delight of the trip was passing through 3 states where Equal Suffrage is a reality. I will try to shine by the reflected glory credited by your acquaintance."

For thirty years Emily Burton Ketcham was instrumental in suffrage and reform movements on every stage--local, state, and national. She and her nineteenth-century Michigan colleagues, notably Mary L. Doe and May Stocking Knaggs, underwrote the later important work of the now more-honored Clara Arthur and Lucia Voorhees Grimes. Women's suffrage simply would not have been achieved in 1920 except for the long fight by earlier women, and we would not today be taking polls about whether we are ready for a woman president. Emily Burton Ketcham does not need us to "give" her voice--she did that for herself. For ourselves, we need to recover what we have lost: foremothers like this woman.

Sources: HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE, eds, Stanton, Anthony, Gage; Congressional Record (February 1894); CONGRESS OF WOMEN, ed Mary K.O. Eagle (1893); articles from Lucy's Stone's WOMAN'S JOURNAL; 1907 obituaries from newspapers around the country; three decades of clippings from Grand Rapids' newspapers: the EAGLE, the MORNING DEMOCRAT, the PRESS, and the HERALD; and family-held correspondence and scrapbooks.

Emily Burton Ketcham's descendants have artifacts: gawdy, gold 1899 NAWSA and other delegate badge. One features the Columbian Exposition Woman's Building, in which Ketcham delivered an invited address during the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Her descendants have spoons engraved "1892," a 25th-wedding anniversary gift from Susan B. Anthony, and newspaper clippings detailing the party and Anthony's visit on that occasion. They have the carpet bag which accompanied Ketcham on suffrage campaigns through western states as well as a variety of other documents and pictures. They also have an 1894 Matthew Brady photograph of both Emily Burton Ketcham and Susan B. Anthony in Washington D.C. with the NAWSA executive board.

Reported in Lucy Stone's WOMAN'S JOURNAL: when the Grand Rapids city attorney "advised the Board of Education to nullify the [municipal suffrage] law of 1893 and refuse to allow women to register and vote," we read that the women of Grand Rapids "have no intention of submitting to this gross injustice."

From Emily Burton Ketcham's 1894 address to the congressional Judiciary Committee: "I come here to represent a State whose honored Senator made the first speech in Congress in favor of enfranchising the wives and the mothers and sisters of the Nation. I come to represent a State which was the first to open its universities to women [not accurate, by the way, but often claimed then]. I come here to represent a State whose shores are cleanly washed by many inland seas, and which is within a stone's throw of that great city of Chicago, where the World's Fair was held this last summer. I come to represent a State which has been the second one to grant municipal suffrage to its women; and so you may have some conception of the kind of women there are in Michigan."

Parties at the Ketchams' were famous. One newspaper reports on an 1894 celebration when municipal suffrage passed: "Especially conspicuous on the lawn was a large flag with but one gilt star, in honor or Wyoming, the first, and for a time the only state, to permit women to vote."

To grand-daughter Edith, from California in 1905: "Edith, when you write me, tell about your studies--you must study the things that will make you the most self-reliant and prepare you to be self-supporting . . . With much love I am yours, Grandma"

To Christabel Pankhurst, Dec. 10th, 1906, one month before Ketcham's death: "The report which comes to America of your fearless devotion to principle, the consequent stirring events in parliament, and the underserved suffering of reputable and honored English women who asked only for what President Theodore Roosevelt calls a 'square deal' has touched our sympathy, awakened our admiration for your courage and thrilled us with the possibilites of a common cause."

Induction of Grand Rapids Women into the 1999 Michigan Women's Hall of Fame

On October 21st, 1999, Grand Rapids' Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907) will be among five state women inducted into the historical division of the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame; and Ardeth Platte is among four to be inducted into the contemporary division. A personal friend of Susan B. Anthony, Ketcham led local and state suffrage groups for over 30 years. An invited speaker at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and in front of the 1894 US Congressional Judiciary Committee, Ketcham represented Michigan several times on the national executive council and brought the group to Grand Rapids in April 1899 for its annual convention. Sister Ardeth Platte, from the Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters at Marywood, helped organize the successful Michigan Faith and Resistance group to remove nuclear weapons from the state. The recipient of numerous awards, most recently the 1995 Pax Christi Conference Purple Ribbon for Peace, Platte is committed to education and action that publicizes the need to eliminate war, arms races, arms bazaars, weapons of mass destruction, and violence as a means to solve conflict. Research she did as part of the 1990-91 Nuremburg Campaign is now used by the International Court of Justice, Hague, Netherlands. Sponsored by the Michigan Women's Studies Association's Historical Center, the October 21st dinner at the Radisson Hotel in Lansing (111 N. Grand Avenue) serves as the major fund-raiser underwriting costs of Hall of Fame displays and other exhibits on Michigan women's history at the Center's museum, 213 W. Main Street, in Lansing. For a $100 per seat, the public is invited to a 5:30PM cash bar and silent auction, 6:30PM dinner, program, and dessert reception. Information can be had from the Michigan Women's Studies Assn, (517) 484-1880, or locally at 454-7457.

West Michigan is currently under-represented in the Hall of Fame because not enough people know about it or submit nominations. The dinner commemorates the significant achievements of several Michigan women and one man each year. City Historian Gordon Olson was honored in 1996, the same year Joan Wolfe was inducted into the Hall of Fame, contemporary division. The Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council hopes for significant representation from this area at the 1999 dinner, but also simply asks that news of its annual occurence be spread. Please consider nominations you might sponsor for the year 2000 as well as attendance at the 1999 celebration. Jo Ellyn Clarey will coordinate "tables" for Grand Rapidians attending the event as well as carpooling, if necessary. To report your plans to her, for general information on nominating procedure, or for specific data about other local women inducted in the past, please call 454-7457.