Anna Beulah Boyd Ritchie (March 24, 1864 – October 4, 1939) was a founding member of the Fairmont Woman Suffrage Club (later the Fairmont Political Equality Club), third president of the
West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association
The West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association (WVESA) was an organization formed on November 29, 1895, at a conference in Grafton, West Virginia. This conference and the subsequent annual conventions were an integral part of the National American Wo ...
, and officer in the West Virginia
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program th ...
.
Background
Born on March 24, 1864, Anna Beulah Boyd was the eldest child of suffragists Annie Boyd Caldwell and Judge George Edmund Boyd. She was raised in
Wheeling, West Virginia
Wheeling is a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located almost entirely in Ohio County, of which it is the county seat, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and also contains a tiny portion extending ...
. She graduated from Wooster University (now
Wooster College
The College of Wooster is a private liberal arts college in Wooster, Ohio. Founded in 1866 by the Presbyterian Church as the University of Wooster, it has been officially non-sectarian since 1969 when ownership ties with the Presbyterian Churc ...
) in Ohio with a bachelor's and master's degree. She was a member of the
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Kappa Kappa Gamma (), also known simply as Kappa or KKG, is a collegiate sorority founded at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, United States.
It has a membership of more than 260,000 women, with 140 collegiate chapters in the United States a ...
sorority there. She taught for two years at Carthage College in Missouri. She then moved back to Wheeling where she taught public school for two years. She then taught at the Fairmont State Normal School (now
Fairmont State University
Fairmont State University is a public university in Fairmont, West Virginia.
History
Fairmont State University’s roots reach back to the formation of public education in the state of West Virginia. The first private normal school in West Vir ...
) where for three years (1890-1893) she taught drawing, physical geography, botany, natural history, zoology and physiology.
She married Charles Marcene Ritchie (1869–1957) on June 3, 1893. The next year they had their one child: Jean Boyd Ritchie Hoagland (1894-1980).
Suffrage work
In late November 1895, the
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...
helped organize a convention at
Grafton, West Virginia
Grafton is a city in and the county seat of Taylor County, West Virginia, Taylor County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 4,729 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. It originally developed as a junction point for the Bal ...
, where the
West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association
The West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association (WVESA) was an organization formed on November 29, 1895, at a conference in Grafton, West Virginia. This conference and the subsequent annual conventions were an integral part of the National American Wo ...
was founded. Beulah Boyd Ritchie presented on the second day a presentation about woman suffrage entitled, "Does the Working Woman Need It?" The following evening, on November 28, 1895, NAWSA's Rev. Henrietta Moore presented a lecture in the Fairmont Normal School hall, and afterwards about fifty women formed the Fairmont Woman Suffrage Club (later the Fairmont Political Equality Club). Ritchie was elected the corresponding secretary of this local suffrage club.
Ritchie's leadership in the suffrage movement included a close connection with NAWSA's
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt (; January 9, 1859 Fowler, p. 3 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt ...
, who was the keynote speaker at the 1897 WVESA convention. Ritche was elected recording secretary of the state organization at that meeting. In the fall of 1899, Fairmont again hosted the state suffrage convention and again featuring
Carrie Chapman Catt
Carrie Chapman Catt (; January 9, 1859 Fowler, p. 3 – March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt ...
. Ritchie was elected president at that meeting. Catt wrote in the ''National Suffrage Bulletin'': “Mrs. Ritchie is young, enthusiastic and intelligent. The work in the State is in promising condition and the Association will undoubtedly increase in membership the coming year.”
Ritchie led campaigns to get a NAWSA representative (Rev. Anna Shaw) to speak before the legislature, collected nearly 600 signed membership cards, a partial suffrage bill that her father championed in the House of Delegates and another one for presidential suffrage(though both were defeated), publications in local newspapers and personal letters to each member of the legislature.
Ritchie stepped down as WVESA president at the state convention in August 1904 at
Moundsville, West Virginia
Moundsville is a city in Marshall County, West Virginia, United States, along the Ohio River. It is part of the Wheeling, West Virginia metropolitan area. The population was 8,122 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Marshall County. Th ...
, but was retained on the executive board as vice-president at-large.
She remained as president of the Fairmont Political Equality Club (PEC), and she also began her leadership role in the Fairmont
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization, originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program th ...
(WCTU) chapter, taking on the chairmanship of the Franchise Department in 1903. By 1907 she became corresponding secretary for the state WCTU.
In 1911, at the WVESA state suffrage convention hosted by Ritchie and the Fairmont PEC, Richie was elected to serve as a delegate to the NAWSA convention. She was re-elected to this position for several years thereafter, attending the NAWSA conventions regularly.
For several weeks in 1913, as the West Virginia legislature prepared to meet, Richie organized public speakers to support a women's suffrage bill. This attempt gained a majority in both houses of the legislature but not the required two-thirds to send it to the state voters as a referendum to change the state constitution. Ritchie also attended the march in Washington D.C. As she told the story to a reporter several years later, she remembered that when the men in the crowds saw the West Virginia women's banner, they started calling them “'coal diggers,' and 'snake hunters' as well as other names."
In fall 1916, Ritchie again took the lead in Fairmont to try to push a suffrage bill through the legislature, but by then the anti-suffragist contingent was in full force. A referendum to change the state constitution went to the voters, and the suffrage amendment was defeated in a landslide.
In February 1920 Governor
John J. Cornwell
John Jacob Cornwell (July 11, 1867 – September 8, 1953) was a Democratic politician from Romney in Hampshire County, West Virginia. Cornwell served as the 15th Governor of the US state of West Virginia. Cornwell also served in the West Vir ...
called a special session of the legislature, ostensibly to debate a new tax bill but included on the agenda ratification of the new federal amendment for woman suffrage recently passed by Congress. Ritchie, serving as an officer in the Fairmont Woman's Club, signed up as a member of the WVESA's State Advisory Committee to support
Lenna Lowe Yost
Lenna Lowe Yost (January 25, 1878 – May 6, 1972), president of the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association (WVESA) during the state woman suffrage referendum campaign of 1916 and chairman of the WVESA Ratification Committee during the national a ...
's Ratification Committee as they lobbied the legislators one-on-one to vote to ratify the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. On March 10 both houses had approved the ratification bill, and
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...
became the thirty-fourth of the thirty-six states needed for ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Illness and death
By the fall of 1918, Ritchie was working as a librarian at the Fairmont City Library. She stopped working in 1920 when the library shut down, and for the 1930 Census she identified herself as keeping house, as her husband was by then working as the county assessor.
She died in the Warren State Hospital in
Conewango, Pennsylvania, from complications of cancer on October 4, 1939.
See also
*
Lenna Lowe Yost
Lenna Lowe Yost (January 25, 1878 – May 6, 1972), president of the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association (WVESA) during the state woman suffrage referendum campaign of 1916 and chairman of the WVESA Ratification Committee during the national a ...
*
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...
*
West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association
The West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association (WVESA) was an organization formed on November 29, 1895, at a conference in Grafton, West Virginia. This conference and the subsequent annual conventions were an integral part of the National American Wo ...
References
Resources
*
*Effland, Anne Wallace. “The Woman Suffrage Movement in West Virginia, 1867-1920,” M.A. thesis, West Virginia University, 1983. Available via The Research Repository@WVU at https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7361.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritchie, Beulah Boyd
1864 births
1939 deaths
American suffragists
Activists from West Virginia
American political activists
American temperance activists
Woman's Christian Temperance Union people
Educators from Wheeling, West Virginia
College of Wooster alumni
Fairmont State University faculty
American women academics
People from Fairmont, West Virginia
West Virginia suffrage
Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Fairmont, West Virginia)