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[continued from first page] on July
10, 1890 by president Benjamin Harrison.
To this day, historians
are not entirely decided as to why Wyoming was the first state
to give women the right to vote. Many proponents of suffrage,
including Anthony and Stanton, expected the far more progressive
east coast states to back suffrage first, but it was the western
states that early endorsed this fundamental right (Wyoming,
Colorado, Utah, and Idaho were the first four). One plausible
reason suffrage gained traction in the west is because there
was a great shortage of women in the early frontier days.
Suffrage may have been seen as a way to attract women to a
disproportionately male area.
Whatever the reason,
suffrage in the United States soon caught on, culminating
in the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Four years
later, Wyoming made history again when its voters elected
the nation’s first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross.
Sources: Women of the West Museum, This
Day In History.
Nellie
Tayloe Ross
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ETYMOLOGY
101
The
origin of: Gretna Green
Gretna Green is a Scottish town just north of the English
border, and its location has long made it a popular place
for eloping couples to marry. It was not always so: prior
to 1753, common law marriages in England were an accepted
part of life. In fact, all that was required was the free
consent of both parties, provided they were of the age of
consent (14 for boys and 12 for girls), and were free of any
other marriage. No formal ceremony was required, nor was a
stigma attached to one not “regularly” married
in a parish church or by a minister.
This all changed
with the Marriage Act 1753 (also known as Lord Hardwicke’s
Marriage Act), which enumerated a number of formal requirements
for a marriage to be legally binding. Among these were: (1)
unless both parties were 21 years of age, parental consent
had to be given; (2) marriage had to be solemnized by formal
religious ceremony in a church; and (3) marriages had to be
officially recorded. Children born of marriages that did not
meet these requirements were considered “base”
and could not inherit property.
Passage of the act
was precipitated by a legal dispute that arose after the “irregularly”
married widow (a Mrs. Magdalen Cochran) of a certain Captain
John Campbell came forth to claim a pension upon his death.
However, Campbell had irregularly wed another woman some time
earlier, a Mrs. Jean Campbell. The legal headaches of trying
to figure out who was entitled to the rights of the widow
made a system of formalizing marriage more pragmatic.
Not all were in
favor of Lord Hardwicke’s Act, since it disadvantaged
those who were unable or unwilling to solemnize their marriages
or gain parental consent. The Act exempted Scotland, and so
couples wishing to evade the requirements of the English system
traveled across the Scottish border. The first village they
often came to was Gretna Green, and this town soon became
a matrimonial mecca. Ceremonies were often performed in the
blacksmith shops by “anvil priests,” local blacksmiths
who witnessed a declaration of marriage and thus made it binding.
Today, Gretna Green is one of the most popular places in the
world to tie the knot.
Sources: Wikipedia, History
Cooperative
WELL
I'LL BE!
THE
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS YOU NEVER ASKED
What on earth is haggis?
Haggis is one of those things that simultaneously delights
and horrifies people unfamiliar with it, since all anyone
seems to know about it is that it contains some mixture of
minced up organs. It is often an object of curiosity for those
unfamiliar with regularly eating offal (i.e., many |
