Carrie Chapman Catt

Carrie Chapman Catt.

In the adjustment of the New order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less.

, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton launched the women's suffrage movement, but it was Carrie Chapman Catt who spearheaded the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. She served as president of the National American Women Suffrage Association from 1900 to 1904 and from 1915 to 1920. She was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. Carrie espoused the causes of world peace and child labor and, in 1925, founded the National Committee on the Cause and Cure of War. During her 40 years of continuous office holding she never received a salary from any source at any time., Born Carrie Clinton Lane in Ripon, Wisconsin, and raised in Iowa, she trained as a teacher, briefly studied law, and was appointed high school principal a year after graduating from Iowa State College. Her first husband, editor and publisher Leo Chapman, died in 1885. In 1890, she married wealthy engineer George W. Catt. They signed a prenuptial agreement that guaranteed her two months in the spring and two in the fall for her Suffrage work. He supported her in these efforts, believing that his role in the marriage was to earn their living and hers was to reform society., Carrie Chapman Catt settled in New Rochelle in 1928. She purchased a large gracious home on Paine Avenue that could accommodate up to 200 people for the teas she gave to promote her various causes. Carrie was active in the New Rochelle Chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Society, a supporter of the public library as well as a member of the Garden Club of New Rochelle. She died in her New Rochelle home at the age of 88 and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.