Abigail Scott Duniway: A Woman's Suffrage In The Pacific West

Abigail Scott Duniway Woman’s suffrage in the Pacific Northwest is something taken for granted these days. Women were not always able to vote; at least, not before a select group of women stood up for what they thought was right. Abigail Scott Duniway was one of those women. She was a suffragette for the West, specifically Oregon State. She gained Oregon the right for women to vote but also was a writer and an American pioneer of the West.

On October twenty-second, eighteen thirty-four, Abigail Jane Scott was born in Groveland Illinois. Growing up, Abigail has many family hardships. Her father was upset when she was born, as he had hoped his first born would be a son, her mother was overworked and had almost no time for family, Abigail had

Benjamin died later that year. Abigail moved back to Oregon, and dived into her work, and even became the editor of The Pacific Empire, yet another newspaper about women’s rights. A common misconception of the time was that prohibition would solve women’s rights, but Abigail believed that prohibition would make her cause worse, and opted for temperance instead. Still working hard at the age of seventy-eight, Abigail was confined to a wheelchair in the nineteen twelve Oregon suffrage campaign. The referendum granted women the right to vote and Abigail got to sign the proclamation, it is also rumored that she was the first woman in the state to

She devoted four decades of her life to women’s causes, even though she had little education, a disabled husband for most of that time, six children, and worked, with jobs including being an author and a schoolteacher. She fought for the right for women to vote, which she believed would improve all women’s lives. She viewed the way women were treated as, more or less, slaves. Which at the time, would have been quite close to what women really were, they slaved over kitchens and homes all day, only to do the same thing the next day. Abigail is remembered as one of the nation’s leading suffragettes, even though he only worked primarily in the West. Abigail realized the problems in society, from the way women were treated to how the biases toward women affected all women’s