Born: 1845, United States
Died: 1921
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Mathilda Cecelia Bateman
The following is republished from HistoryLink.org, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Born in Indiana in 1845 and educated at the University of Michigan Law School, John Beard Allen moved to Olympia in his mid-20s. He served as U.S. Attorney for Washington Territory for 10 years, and then as a territorial delegate. After Washington achieved statehood in 1889, the state legislature elected Allen to serve as one of the state’s first U.S. Senators. Meanwhile, Mathilda Allen, his wife, helped lead a drawn-out women’s suffrage campaign in Washington, culminating in 1910 with ratification of a right-to-vote amendment in the Washington State Constitution.
Mathilda Allen’s Fight for Equal Rights
Mathilda Cecelia Bateman (1848-1921), a teacher from Michigan, married Allen in 1871, and they were living in Olympia that year, according to census records. Almost immediately, she became involved in the women’s suffrage campaign in Washington Territory. In 1871, she was among the 16 women who called for the first Washington Territorial Woman Suffrage Association convention in the New Northwest newspaper. When the Association gathered in November in Olympia, Mathilda Allen was called to be President to officiate at the convention (which included Susan B. Anthony and Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway). She presided for a time but then deferred to another Olympian, Amelia Giddings. Allen later recalled that she became interested in women’s voting rights because of her interest in equal pay for teachers. She also recalled that she was not sure her husband supported the cause, but found that he did and that he continued to do so throughout his life.
During the November 1871 convention, the Allens dined at the house of fellow Olympia suffragists Daniel R. and Ann Elizabeth White Bigelow (the house still stands in Olympia). Anthony and Duniway also were present at the dinner. Allen continued to be active in Olympia as a member of the Thurston County Women’s Suffrage Association in the 1870s. In 1892, she was elected as the delegate from the Washington State Equal Suffrage Association to represent the state at the National American Women Suffrage Association convention in 1893. She and many other Washington women never forgave George Turner for his role in overturning women’s voting rights in 1884 as a member of the Territorial Supreme Court, and also for his role as counsel in the 1888 Bloomer Case, which again invalidated women’s voting rights in Washington Territory. Ironically, Turner was also the opposition candidate during John B. Allen’s re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1893 in the Washington State Legislature.
Mrs. Allen renewed her acquaintance with Susan B. Anthony when Anthony visited Seattle in 1896. Allen was involved in the creation of the Washington State Red Cross and served as its statewide president at the turn of the twentieth century. A club woman, she was a member of the Seattle Century Club and the Women’s Educational Club.
In November 1910, just prior to the vote to ratify the women’s suffrage amendment to the Washington State Constitution, Allen wrote extensive editorials in both The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer in favor of the ratification. Allen kept an eye on women voting after their enfranchisement, writing in Seattle newspapers about the use of the vote and urging for the federal women’s suffrage constitutional amendment, which passed in 1920.
She also was part of a Seattle group that hosted members of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU) in Seattle in April 1916. The CU sent national organizers to enfranchised states on a “Suffrage Special” train to garner support from voting women to pressure Congress for a federal suffrage amendment. CU representative Harriet Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter, gave a speech in Seattle and was part of a procession of 150 cars that toured the city decked out in purple, white, and gold banners. CU delegate Lucy Burns scattered leaflets over the city from a plane. Envoys went on to Bellingham and later to Spokane, where they planted a tree in honor of May Arkwright Hutton.
As a follow up, Allen represented the voting women of Washington at a CU Convention in Salt Lake City in 1916. Delegates from that meeting and the CU were then poised to go on to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress via the “Suffrage Special.” Later in 1916, Allen ran for U.S. Senator from Washington as a prohibition and women’s-rights advocate, but was defeated in the primary. She died in 1921. Both she and her husband are interred at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle.