August 17: Suffragist Catherine Flanagan Arrested for Picketing

  On this day in 1917, 28-year-old Connecticut activist and women’s suffrage advocate Catharine Flanagan was arrested for picketing in front of the White House in Washington, D.C.   Flanagan and a small group of fellow suffragists had been picketing for twelve days in the same location, carrying a variety of banners bedecked in purple and…

August 16: Mary Hall, Connecticut’s First Female Lawyer

  On this day in 1843, Mary Hall was born in Marlborough, Connecticut.  Growing up on a farm in antebellum America, when high Victorian culture placed an increasingly stringent emphasis on female domesticity, made her perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates to defy gender norms and become the first woman in Connecticut to be…

July 13: Connecticut Suffragists Appeal to Woodrow Wilson

  On July 13, 1918, the morning edition of the Hartford Courant featured a rousing account of rallies held throughout the state by women demanding action on the proposed nineteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution — the amendment that would guarantee women the right to vote. In Hartford, speeches were given at City Hall and…