Abigail Scott Duniway led the drive for women’s suffrage in Oregon. Like many women activists of the time, she united the cause of women’s suffrage with temperance, the movement to prohibit the use of alcohol. Duniway also distinguished herself as a writer and newspaper editor. The following excerpt from her autobiography describes her first visit to the Oregon legislature, during which she spoke in favor of a bill to grant Oregon women the right to vote.

I went to Salem in September, 1872, to visit the Legislature, which met annually at that time in the autumn, in a little brick building, across the street from the Chemeketa, now known as the Willamette Hotel. As no woman prior to that time had visited the Legislature, except occasionally with others, on some social occasion in honor of the success of some political aspirant, I found it difficult to prevail upon a woman to accompany me. As the etiquette of those times demanded that I must have a chaperone, I spent two whole days in canvassing the city in quest of a friend who would dare to escort me. The first woman in Oregon to undertake a mission so far out of the ordinary, was Dr. Mary P. Sawtelle, who was being widely criticized at that time, as the first Oregon woman to dare to graduate from any medical institution, and receive her diploma as a regular physician. This doctor, who had failed to pass “exams” as a “regular” at home, had but recently returned from an Eastern Medical Institute, fully equipped with the accessories of a physician’s degree; and, being known as an active rebel against an early and most unfortunate domestic relation, which had married her off at the age of fifteen and compelled her to bear four children before she was twenty, was objected to, afterwards, as my chaperone, for the alleged reason that I should have selected a woman of whom their husbands, or a regular masculine doctor, had no cause to be jealous, or afraid. But Dr. Sawtelle’s sad domestic experiences appealed to me, from the first, as the principal reason why I should defend her openly. She was then happily remarried, and was the pioneer pathbreaker among the great army of divorced women—servants without wages—whom District Judges, good and true, are now rescuing from legalized prostitution, through the machinery of the divorce court. . . .

When Dr. Sawtelle and I entered the legislative hall my heart thumped audibly, as I realized that I was entering a domain considered sacred to the aristocracy of sex. We took our seats in the lobby of the House of Representatives, where for a full minute I felt in danger of fainting and creating a scene. But Hon. Joseph Engle, perceiving the situation and knowing me personally, arose to his feet, and, after a complimentary speech, in which he was pleased to recognize my position as a farmer’s wife, mother, home-maker, teacher and now as journalist, moved that I be invited to a seat within the bar and provided with table and stationery, as were the other members of the newspaper profession. The motion carried, with only two or three dissenting votes; and the way was open, from that time forward, for women to compete with men, on equal terms, for all minor positions in both branches of the Legislature—a privilege of which they have not been slow to take advantage. . . .

The late Hon. Samuel Corwin introduced a Woman Suffrage Bill in the House, early in the session; and while it was pending, I was invited to make an appeal in its behalf, of which I remember very little, so frightened and astonished was I, except that I once, inadvertently, alluded to a gentleman by his name, instead of his county, whereupon, being rapped to order, I blushed and begged pardon, but put myself at ease by informing the members that in all the bygone years, while they had been studying parliamentary rules, I had been rocking the cradle. One member who had made a vehement speech against the bill, in which he declared that no respectable woman in his county desired the elective franchise, became particularly incensed, as was natural, upon my exhibiting a woman suffrage petition from his county, signed by the women whom he had misrepresented, and headed by his own wife.

Source: Abigail Scott Duniway, Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in the Pacific Coast States (Portland, OR: James, Kerns & Abbott Co., 1914), 59–61.