1890s Danbury

Danbury News-Times, February 1893

August 1893

1893 voter list for women

Danbury’s Vanguard of Women Voters

In 1907, a national convention of unions that included women came out in support of women's suffrage.[*] The move signaled what must have been brewing for years among the hundreds of women who worked in Danbury's hat factories.

Saturday, August 19, 1893, 26 years before women had the right to vote in Connecticut state and national elections,  was the first day that Danbury allowed women to register as voters, though, in a very limited capacity.  Connecticut had just passed a law that allowed women to vote in school board elections and three women registered that August Saturday.  Emma Hadden Heath of 246 Main Street was first, followed by Achsah Dauchy Kerrigan and Susan Street. Two of the women who worked in hat factories - Heath and Kerrigan were hat trimmers, and it is reasonable to assume that Street also worked in the industry.  [1]

Emma Hadden Heath was born in 1825 in Massachusetts. She married her first husband, Charles Hadden, in Hartford, CT in 1847. Around 1885 she married her second husband, Alfred Heath, who died shortly after in 1886[2]. Emma Heath was active in the community. She was a founding member of the Hat Trimmer’s Union, president of the Hat Trimmer’s Mutual Aid Association, and president of the Fortnightly Columbian History Club.[3] Sometime after 1893, Heath moved to Schenectady, NY and where she died in 1902, 18 years prior to seeing the passage of the 19th Amendment - the amendment that would allow her to vote in local, state, and national elections.[4]  However, Achsah Dauchy Kerrigan and Susan Street remained in Danbury and were among the Danbury women who, as fully enfranchised voters, cast their ballot in the 1920 election.

As of 1890, women made up 79.4 percent of the workforce in the clothing industry (which included hatting). [5]