Painesville Equal Rights Association

Painesville Equal Rights Association. . , Foundation: 1883 , The Painesville Equal Rights Association (ERA) was founded on November 30, 1883 at the home of Mrs. Cornelia Sweezey on Erie Street. The purpose of the organization was "to inform ourselves in all that pertains to the rights and duties of citizenship and upon the leading questions of the day. And that we combine our efforts for securing to women the rights and privileges to which as citizens in a free country we are entitled." The organization started with twenty- one charter members who elected Frances Jennings Casement as their first president, Eliza Chesney and Lydia Wilcox as vice presidents, Connie Sweezey as secretary, and Cornelia Greer as corresponding secretary., The ERA was named to express the group's purpose, but not exclude those who disagreed with the women's suffrage campaign. Some of the most articulated anti-suffrage leaders were a part of the Painesville community, and Casement realized that extending membership to those who disagreed with equal suffrage and refuting critics was an effective way of converting new people to the cause. This strategy pulled in women from the temperance movement, which was rarely discussed at meetings but was well represented., The ERA hosted parlor talks on social and political issues of the day, starting with a cultural lecture and ending with suffrage discussions and recruitment at various private residences, City Hall, and Lake Erie Female Seminary (now Lake Erie College.) The first meeting was held at the home of Thomas W. Harvey (1821-1892), a notable educator and author in the region, who served as an Ohio State Commissioner of Public Schools and later a trustee of Lake Erie Female Seminary., Frances Jennings Casement 1840-1928 , Frances Jennings Casement was born in 1840 to Charles Jennings and Mehitabel (Park) Jennings, one of the founding families of the Western Reserve, and spent her upbringing on a 400-acre farm referred to as the "Jennings Place." Jennings was an agriculturalist who served his district in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1854- 1856, a staunch opponent of slavery., Casement graduated from the Painesville Academy in 1852 and attended Willoughby Female Seminary (the predecessor institution to Lake Erie Female Seminary, now Lake Erie College). She married John S. "Jack" Casement in 1857. The support and influence of her father and husband encouraged her convictions, and afforded her an early source of respectability in the community., The Painesville ERA differed from many other state suffrage organizations that abstained from interaction with national suffrage groups, like the National Woman Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association, and it can be speculated that Casement played a role in the unification of the two into the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890. She was elected President of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association in 1885-1888, when she developed a close connection with local suffrage figure, Harriet Taylor Upton of Warren., Casement is one example of the several leading suffrage figures across Northeast Ohio that organized locally and expanded their efforts to effect change in the suffrage movement at the state and national levels. Her strong conviction for universal rights proved to be essential for her role in the reform movements.