Journey to the voting booth: remembering one Bethany family’s story from 1920

In the last of her three books, Bethany Pebbles & Flowers, published in 1997, Hazel Lounsbury Hoppe (1918-2008) — my grandmother Dorothy's sister — describes small town life in the 1920s. She included an interesting story about our family that I can't help but think about as we prepare for Election Day in November 2024:

“The twenties were a progressive era in America. After World War I women moved toward new freedoms, beginning with bobbing their long hair and tossing aside their ankle-length skirts and high-laced shoes.

Perhaps the most important and far-reaching advance for women had been the passage of the nineteenth amendment: 'The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.' This amendment added to the Constitution of the United States brought to an end the long and difficult journey in women's quest for equality in the voting booth. Although some of the states had given women the vote prior to 1920, until the nineteenth amendment was ratified the privilege was not universal.

It had taken forty long years for the leaders in the movement—from Susan B. Anthony to Carrie Chapman Catt—to win this rightful privilege. Forty years of suffragettes marching in their demand for equal rights, forty years of amendments submitted to Congress for ratification, only to be defeated. At last, women's right to vote became a nationwide reality on August 26, 1920.

As I grew older I was amazed to find that the election privilege was first extended to women only during my lifetime. My great-grandmother, Alta Hotchkiss Downs, was a crusader, president of the New Haven Chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, staunch Methodist. Surely women's suffrage might have been one of her causes. How did the women of Bethany react to gaining the right to vote? I questioned my mother on the subject. 'How did Nonnie feel about women achieving the vote? I would think that would have pleased her.'”

Nonnie was indeed a crusader. And the story of her family goes a long way to inform her point of view when it came to political advocacy — let's go back in time to tell that story first before we answer Hazel's question about how the right to vote in the election of 1920 was remembered...

Nonnie was born June 25, 1850 to Leonard Larabee Hotchkiss (1812-1882) and his wife Louisa Mix Hubbard (1812-1903). Louisa's father, Ezekiel Hotchkiss (1785-1849) had been an alcoholic who died of this disease. Family tradition had it that Louisa's sister Sarah and her husband George H. Porter (1819-1905) had lost several babies. Leonard and Louisa's family was already quite large by 1850 — with seven children ranging in age from 16 to 5 years old — so when Alta was born she was given to her mother’s sister to be raised as a Porter. The baby was originally named Sarah Elizabeth, after her aunt, but then her adoptive parents changed her name to Alta to avoid confusion.

By 1868, the Porter family was living in Bethany in a house at 146 Wooding Hill Road. (According to Alice Bice Bunton's book Bethany's Old Houses and Community Buildings, George was a carpenter and built a new home on this property in 1891 to replace the old one. Alta later inherited this house.)

Alta Porter Downs (1850-1924) as she was later known, married Jerome Andrew Downs (1838-1904) in 1868. This couple had two children; a son Jerome A. Jr. and a daughter Alta H., and went on to also raise their grandchildren Nellie, Joe, and Faith. Their mother Florence Amelia Rathbun Downs (1871-1894), known as Flossie, was Jerome Jr's first wife who died from complications of childbirth at age 23 leaving her infant Florence Faith along with the 3 year-old Nellie Munn, and their 18 month-old brother, Jerome III, known as Joe.

So Alta was a mother figure for poor Flossie's little brood from the time they were small children. When Nellie started her own family at age 19 her five daughters, born between 1909 and 1918, considered Alta as the great-grandmother who helped raise them, affectionately calling her Nonnie. Alta's experience over several generations of turbulent family life, held together by strong women, no doubt shaped her views during this time of an emerging women's rights movement.

By the late 1890s, the women's movement had made significant strides in advocating for gender equality, focusing on securing basic rights such as property ownership, education, and legal autonomy. The fight for women's suffrage gained momentum through organizations like the National Woman Suffrage Association, as leaders such as Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) laid the groundwork for what would become a nationwide push for the right to vote. The suffrage movement and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) were intertwined, each supporting the other in their shared vision of improving the lives of women and families.

Viewed in this larger context, the WCTU, founded in the late 19th century, was more than an organization devoted to temperance and preaching about the evils of alcohol; it was a powerful force advocating for social reform, education, and the promotion of women's rights. Members of the WCTU saw suffrage as a means to an end — gaining the right to vote would empower women to influence laws that protected families and addressed societal ills.

Alta Downs, who became a leader in the New Haven chapter of the WCTU, embodied this dedication. Her activism extended beyond meetings and speeches as she made her convictions known publicly through letters to the editor. One such letter, published in New Haven's Daily Morning Journal and Courier in 1903, captures her impassioned voice calling for responsibility and moral consistency among voters, and the news media of her day as well.

January 30, 1903

To the Editor of the Journal and Courier:

Mr. Walter Leigh in your issue of January 28th asks "who is responsible" for the sad sight that he witnessed on Crown Street Monday evening. I would like to answer him and let him and others know who I think is responsible. It is the legal voters of the city of New Haven who vote to keep open places where it is possible for the young girls and boys of our city (and the older ones), to obtain that which degrades and debases them. If the so-called Christian voter of New Haven and the other cities in our State would vote as they pray, (not pray "Thy Kingdom come," and then go out and vote for rum), Mr. Leigh’s eyes and no other father’s and mother’s would be saddened by the sight of girls and boys drunk on our streets. And, Mr. Editor, I think that you are personally responsible. In the same paper, with the piece entitled "A sad sight" you have an advertisement calling attention of the readers of your paper to five different kinds of intoxicants. Any and all of them would cause a person to become tipsy if they drank it. I wish you would clean your otherwise valuable paper from advertisements of intoxicating liquors, and have at least one clean paper published in our beautiful city.

MRS. JEROME A. DOWNS,
Bethany, Conn.

Notably, this letter pre-dates women's right to vote, highlighting that with her letter, Alta was addressing men — the only ones who held the power at the ballot box. Her words resonate as a call to action and a reflection of the strong beliefs that fueled both the temperance and suffrage movements. Her letter illustrates not only Alta's commitment to moral reform but also the broader drive of women like her who saw the right to vote as a tool to enact meaningful change.

So when Hazel is asking her mother Nellie how finally winning the right to vote was experienced by Alta and her in 1920, it's surprising to hear that Nellie didn't express strong emotions regarding this achievement when quizzed by her own daughter many years after the fact. What could have overshadowed her memory of this experience? There's indeed more to the story, as Hazel relates:

“My mother's answer was vague. She did not recall great-grandmother's feeling on the subject, one way or the other. One would think that women, in going to the polls for the first time, might have been proud to accomplish this great step forward.

Mama's memories were not quite so noble. She recalled the trip to the town hall to be made a voter with our friend and neighbor, Mrs. Ella Saxton...

Among the requirements in the ritual of becoming a voter at that time, one had to prove literacy by reading a selection from the Connecticut Statutes. This paragraph was usually chosen by whoever happened to be making voters at that time. As Mrs. Saxton began to read, both she and Mama were horrified to find that she was reading about the punishment for the crime of rape. Words cannot describe the embarrassment of vocalizing such ideas in the company of the opposite sex in 1920! By courtesy of the electronic media we hear these words every day in our homes today, but in those years this was shocking language!

Somehow that anecdote remained in Mama's memory more sharply than pride in a movement which may well have been, in retrospect, one of the first faint steps toward the future women's movements that blossomed during the decade of the 1960s. The passing days, the passing years have carried us along to these years leading to the end of the century. The world has changed in many ways since those youthful years of the twenties—and not always for the better. However, it is good to pause and reflect, now and then, on those golden yesterdays.”

In this passage about her mother’s experience, Alta’s great-granddaughter Hazel captured some of the nuanced reality of the journey to equality for women in America. It was not easy! But they persevered.

Knowing more about the lived experiences of those who came before us helps to ground us in the reality of how truly revolutionary that first election in 1920 was for women voters and our country, laying the foundation for the rights and opportunities of today. And as we look toward the 2024 election, we can be reminded of the courage it took to reach this point and how essential it is to remain engaged in the democratic process. Even before they could cast their own votes, women like Alta influenced society by advocating for families and driving change, with lasting impact.

Alta’s legacy feels especially meaningful now, as both the male and female members of her family, four, five, and six generations down from her, join the throngs heading to the ballot box to vote in an election featuring a woman on the presidential ballot. Just a new thread we can potentially weave into the fabric of American democracy with the same spirit of determination to take up the work of stitching as those who came before us.