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Women's Equality Day: Remembering Marilla Ricker

NEW DURHAM -- Few people know that Women's Equality Day is celebrated in the United States on Aug. 26, but perhaps fewer know about Marilla Ricker, a pivotal soldier in the battle for women's equality.

Did you know, for instance, that in 1870, the New Durham-born activist was the first woman in the United States to attempt to vote? She argued that the right was afforded her as a landowner and taxpayer under the 14th Amendment. In 1910, she was also the first woman to attempt to run for governor. Both were denied her.

Ricker is reputed to have been modest and informal with a "lively sense of humor." She was born in 1840, the oldest daughter and second of four children of Jonathan B. and Hannah (Stevens) Young of New Durham. Her father was a Freethinker and her mother a devout Freewill Baptist. Ricker took after her father, eventually not only becoming a Freethinker, but also a suffragist and lawyer.

The Business Folio, a five-cent magazine, quoted Ricker in 1895 as saying her father told her, "It is no matter what you believe, as long as you do right."

His influence might have cost her some political clout later in life, as she was staunchly non-religious. As a child, Ricker refused to pray at home and at 16, while still in school, she became a teacher. During her tenure, she refused to lead her students in Bible readings as was customary at that time.

The Boston Sunday Herald quoted her in a Sept. 9, 1906, article as saying, "Do I believe in God? No, I do not."

Freelance writer Ronald Bruce Meyer also quotes from one of her books written later in life, "The greatest danger which confronts our nation today is not political, but religious, and the preservation of our free institutions does not depend upon our army and navy, but upon the emancipation of the human mind from ecclesiastical slavery. ...You cannot have free schools, free speech and a free press where the mind is not free."

When the Civil War broke out, Ricker attempted to join the Union as a nurse, but she did not meet the requirements of maturity and experience with the sick and returned to teaching. At 23, she married 56-year-old John Ricker, a wealthy farmer, who shared her father's views on equality, regardless of sex. He died five years later, leaving her $50,000.

At this point, Marilla Ricker was financially independent and secure in being able to stand her ground.

She was quoted in the 1906 Sunday Herald article as saying, "I don't care what people think of me. They can disagree as much as they like. I am financially independent of them. They can't hurt me."

She traveled to Europe for four years, beginning in 1872, where she learned several languages, becoming fluent in German. She also studied concepts of free thought, birth control and political equality. During these years, she settled on a life as a lawyer before returning to Washington, D.C.

In New Hampshire in 1870, it was legal for a widow to own land, which meant that she also paid taxes on it.

Her response was, "In the eyes of the law, it is better to be a widow than a wife."

But she used her position as landowner and taxpayer in an attempt to vote during that year.

Ricker noted that she was a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen when she handed a letter to then Dover selectmen John R. Varney, William Vickery and Charles Shepard. The letter stated, "I come before you to declare that my sex is entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... I ask the right to pursue happiness by having a voice in that government to which I am accountable ... so long as women are hanged under the laws, they should have a voice in making them."

According to the Folio article, the men were "astounded and somewhat amused."

They denied her, but Ricker continued in her struggle for women's equality. On May 12, 1882, she was admitted to the District of Columbia bar and in 1891, was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court. Through her position as attorney, Ricker completed some of her most important work, bringing an end to the District of Columbia's "poor convict's law," which held criminals indefinitely for fines they were unable to pay.

In 1884, Marilla Ricker was appointed a United States Commissioner and examiner in chancery by the judges of the District's Supreme Court, becoming the first woman in the District of Columbia to perform quasi-judicial functions.

She fought for prisoner's rights, waiving her fee for those who couldn't afford it. She also instigated legislation giving prisoners the right to send sealed letters to the governor and council without interference from the warden. Her battles for the imprisoned garnered her the name "the prisoners' friend."

Although Marilla Ricker lived in Washington, D.C., for decades, she returned to New Hampshire in the summers. In 1890, she secured the right for women to practice law in New Hampshire, although there is no record of her being admitted.

Ricker was a staunch Republican and suffragist. During President McKinley's administration, she requested an appointment as Minister to Colombia, but although she had considerable support, it was not to be.

She encouraged the suffragists' movement to try to reach the common woman rather than men in charge. She said that her experience taught her that men could be better affected at home.

"I have found," she said, during the 1906 Herald article, "that men will listen to all of your arguments readily and then will go home and forget everything you have said."

She drew on her teaching experience in New Durham when she added, "I once taught school in the country, you know -- up in (New) Durham -- and there among those country people I learned human nature as city-bred people never learn it. I learned to know how much influence women had in their homes and how much influence common action among them had. There's no standing against that, mark me."

In New Hampshire, in 1910, Marilla Ricker became the first woman to announce her candidacy for governor. Despite the fact that the candidacy was treated with respect, the attorney general denied her request on the grounds that she could not vote.

Her waning years were engaged in writing, including essays attacking clergy, missionaries and religious reverence. She referred to the practices as "mental suicide."

And drawing together her anti-religion and equal rights philosophies, Ricker once wrote, "the church claims that woman owes her advancement to the Bible. She owes it much more to the dictionary."

The last two years of her life were spent in the home of Dover Tribune Editor John W. Hogan, in Dover, succumbing to a stroke at 80.

Her life was the focus of a film made by Presto! Productions of Hampton Falls entitled True Light: The Life of Marilla Ricker. The half-hour film was made possible through the UNH Women's Studies Program and is available for viewing at the New Durham Public Library.

Ricker's ashes were scattered around an apple tree, no longer standing, at her childhood home in New Durham.

For 50 years, Ricker tried to vote in every election. In 1920, the year Ricker died, women received that right.

Historians are unsure whether or not she was able to cast a ballot.

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Thanks for this article is given to Eloise Bickford, New Durham Town Historian.

Information for this article was collected from Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary; www.stanford.edu/group/WLHP/articles/mricker.pdf

www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0318almanac.htm

The Persistancy of Mrs. Ricker, The Sunday Herald, Sept. 9, 1906; The Business Folio, Vol. 1, No. 9, Sept. 1895; Ricker's Fight to vote still honored in NH, Norma Love, Associated Press, Aug. 27, 1995.

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By CONOR MAKEM
Rochester [N.H.] Times

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at August 26, 2004 03:19 PM