A voice for all women
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
WARREN -- If Kay Fisher had been alive during Harriet Taylor Upton's time, the two would probably have been good friends.
Fisher, 76, seems to have the same sense of humor and strong convictions Upton was known and remembered for.
Fisher, like Upton, is quick to stand up for women and women's rights.
And, like the suffragist, Fisher has been part of a group fighting for a cause.
Harriet Taylor Upton, 1854-1945, may be one of the most influential women in Warren's history. The suffragist was a leader in the fight for women's rights, working beside Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt.
Fisher's cause, with other members of the Upton Association, has been to preserve the home where Upton lived on Mahoning Avenue, and where Upton once housed the headquarters of the National Women's Suffragist Association. The Upton Association saved the home from being razed for an office building and parking lot in 1988.
"The women of Warren united and we decided we had to save it," Fisher said. "... It was an important part of Warren's history that had somehow disappeared from the record. No one knew about it."
Former opponent: Upton, in the late part of the 19th century, had been opposed to women's suffrage. But by 1890, she had joined the National Women's Suffragist Association and was an officer of the group when the battle for women's rights was won with the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Upton, with Catt, is credited with helping push the amendment to ratification by two-thirds of the states. By August 1920, approval of only one more state was needed to pass the amendment. Upton and Catt went to Tennessee to garner that final vote.
She was a politician who knew many presidents, senators and congressmen. She got along well with men and knew "how to handle" men; she was intelligent and "not a whiner," Fisher said.
"She had a great sense of humor and was very jolly ... and could get everybody to laugh," Fisher said. "... She was a tomboy. She was an affable woman. She was no pushover.
"... She was independent, strong-willed, had great determination. ... She was one of those people that was able to focus on a cause and stay with it for 30 years."
First woman: In 1918, Upton was appointed the first Republican committeewoman from Ohio, once running for Congress. In 1920, she was named vice chairman of the Republican National Executive Committee, the first woman to hold such a political position. In 1928, she was named assistant state campaign manager for the Republican party.
As Fisher shows off Upton's renovated home, she wears a black dress and flower-bedecked hat that might have been worn by women in the early 20th century.
She pauses in the dining room, brightly decorated with pink-and-green-flowered wallpaper.
Important guests: "A lot of important people ate here: Susan B. Anthony, President Garfield and his wife, President McKinley, President Harding," Fisher said. "They were all good friends of hers and she was active in politics with them."
The Upton Association began as a group of women who met in the basement of the YWCA, Fisher said. They renovated the dilapidated home, obtaining donations to bring it back to its former glory. Now, 400 schoolchildren tour the building each year.
"It's a beautiful part of downtown Warren, and the women did it," Fisher said. "Men were opposed to it. They didn't think the women could make a go of it."
Today, the group is made up of women and men who wish to preserve Upton's memory and collect and preserve items related to the suffrage movement.Long fight: The fight for women's right to vote "went on for 72 years and took four generations of women," Fisher points out. And the fight was for more than the vote.
"They had all these other things involved in their battle," Fisher said.
Women could not write or sign contracts, own anything or choose their own mates, Fisher said. Their children were under the dominion of their fathers, often sent to work in factories or sold as indentured servants.
Women who fought were spit upon, pelted with eggs and vegetables, jailed and force-fed if they attempted a hunger strike. Others were beaten by their husbands for their beliefs.
"The women today think there's a glass ceiling, they don't like this or that," Fisher said. "That's nothing compared to what these women went through."
Political upbringing: Upton was born in Ravenna in 1853. Her father, Judge Ezra B. Taylor, was appointed to Congress in 1880 to succeed James A. Garfield and served until 1893. Upton had accompanied him to Washington where she got her foot in the political door. In 1884, Upton married George W. Upton, a Trumbull County prosecutor and patent attorney.
Besides her work for women's rights, Upton was an author, penning books on presidents and their families, Ohio women and Trumbull County history. She also wrote columns for the Warren Daily Tribune.
A Vindicator editorial upon her death in November 1945, called Upton "intelligent and energetic -- a woman of ability and strength of character."
"Nowadays," the editorial reads, "women in politics are common, but not often do we see uncommon women in politics. Mrs. Upton was an uncommon woman, and she used her power, unique in her times, as well as the times would let her."