The remarkable Marilla M. Ricker wanted nothing more than to
break glass ceilings. “Let come what will come, no man, be he priest, minister
or judge, shall sit upon the throne of my mind, and decide for me what is
right, true, or good,” she once said.
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| Marilla Ricker |
In 1897 Ricker applied to become ambassador to Colombia. No
woman had ever held an ambassadorship. Even if she wasn’t appointed, she wrote
in her application, she wanted to establish a precedent by asking for the job. The
new president, William McKinley, appointed the journalist Charles Burdett Hart instead.
That glass ceiling remained in place for more than a half
century longer. Eugenie Moore Anderson broke it when Harry Truman chose her to
head the U.S. mission in Denmark in 1949.
But Ricker was not without her supporters. One of them was
Henry W. Blair, a former congressman and U.S. senator from New Hampshire.
Blair’s letter to McKinley recommending Ricker went up for sale on eBay the
other day. That and Ricker’s New Hampshire roots are the reasons for this post.
There’s no way of knowing, but I hope the letter is a draft.
If not, Blair strove mightily for the record for the longest run-on sentence
fragments in the history of letter-writing. Certainly he had slept through
punctuation lessons in school.
But at least the letter asserts that appointing Ricker would be a memorable moment in McKinley’s presidency.
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| Henry W. Blair, a former U.S. senator from New Hampshire, was a Washington lawyer when he wrote his letter on Ricker's behalf. |
To introduce Ricker, my friend and former longtime colleague Felice
Belman, now an editor at the Boston Globe,
agreed to write a brief biographical essay. Fifteen years ago, she and I edited
The New Hampshire Century, a book of profiles
of leading New Hampshire figures of the 20th century. The subjects ran from
Steven Tyler to David Souter, from Christa McAuliffe to Grace Metalious. Belman wrote the profile of Ricker.
So we begin with her primer on Ricker, followed by Frank W.
Blair’s letter:
Here in 2014, electing women to positions of power has become
routine in New Hampshire. The state’s two U.S. senators and two U.S.
representatives are women. So is the governor. So is the speaker of the New
Hampshire House.
They were elected on the basis of their experience, their
political ideas, their campaign savvy. But they owe their positions in part to
Marilla Ricker, a pioneering feminist who, more than a century ago, helped
convince the state’s leaders and voters that women deserved a role in New
Hampshire’s political life.
Ricker was born in New Durham, N.H., in 1840 and graduated
from what was then Colby Academy in New London. She was a widow before she was
30. Her husband’s death left her money and independence – and she devoted
the next 50 years to advocating for women’s rights. She was the first woman
admitted to practice law in the state. She was the first woman to apply for a
foreign ambassadorship. She was an outspoken atheist who believed organized
religion was responsible for subjugating women.
Perhaps most important, Ricker was the first woman in the
state to try to vote. She argued that her willingness to pay her property taxes
afforded her the right. She argued that women deserved the same rights as
blacks. She argued that without the vote, women would never have equal economic
power. She argued that female voters would bring attention to issues men
ignored.
Election officials were unmoved.
Ricker gave speeches all over the state. She hounded
lawmakers and newspaper editors – but most were slow to come around.
In 1910 Ricker attempted to challenge Robert Bass for the
Republican nomination for governor. To her thinking, she met the
qualifications: She had lived in the state more than seven years and was more
than 30 years old – in fact, she was 70. The secretary of state, however, ruled
otherwise: Ricker wasn’t a voter and thus couldn’t be governor.
Nine years later, the state finally caught up to Ricker,
ratifying the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right
to vote.
Ricker never held elected office herself, but she nonetheless
took satisfaction in the change. The decision, she said, “placed the state of
New Hampshire on the right side of one of the great questions of the day.”
*
And here is Blair’s letter:
Washington, D.C.
May 3d 1897
To the President:
In addition to the numerous memorials and other
manifestations of strong desire now on file for the recognition of the rights
of women to a fair share of the responsibilities and emoluments of public
office in a free government by the appointment of Mrs. Marilla M. Ricker to an
important diplomatic position on the part of many influential able and
influential persons and organizations from various parts of the country. I have
the honor herewith to enclose a strong letter from Mrs. Lillie Devereaux Blake,
President of the New York City Woman Suffrage League and who was one of the
principal representatives of her sex before the Committees of the St. Louis
convention and has long been a leader in the great movement which has already
given the suffrage to women in several states and undoubtedly will in all in
the next quarter of a century and in Great Britain made almost equally
significant progress; unsolicited, able and generous, (because justice has hitherto been generosity to
women); Editorial by Dr. Ridpath in the ‘Arena’ of the current month.
Conscious
that there are strong influences adverse to the appointment of Mrs. Ricker
because, and only because, of her sex. I beg of you, Mr. President, not to
neglect this pressing & fortunate opportunity to perform a great, just, and
I may well say, conspicuous and immortal act, which, if done now, will be sure to rank hereafter
among the most illustrious deeds of any American President.
Very respectfully,
Yr. Obt. Servant
Henry W. Blair
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