Woman's Century Club in Seattle holds first meeting on July 31, 1891.

  • By HistoryLink Staff
  • Posted 7/30/2001
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 3365
See Additional Media

On July 31, 1891, the founders of the Woman's Century Club hold their first meeting. The club is founded by suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) and several other prominent women for the cultural and intellectual development of its members and for social service. The purpose is to "civilize" their rapidly developing city and to promote "intellectual culture, original research and the solution of the altruistic problems" of the era, which the founders consider the "woman's century" because of the many advances for women since the early 1800s ("An Illustrated History").

The founders, according to the club's current (2011) website, were:

  • Alice Jordan Blake (first woman to graduate in law from Yale)
  • Annie M. Brown (came from New York around Cape Horn in 1866)
  • Mary B. Cochrane
  • Alsora Hayner Fry
  • Sarah Kendall, M.D. (one of Seattle's first woman physicians)
  • Julia E. Kennedy (Seattle's first woman superintendent of schools, who hosted the club's first meeting at her home)
  • Elizabeth Mackintosh (arrived in Washington in 1866; served as enrolling clerk in the Washington Territorial Legislature in 1869, the first woman to occupy such a position in the country)
  • Harriet E. Parkhurst, pioneer and humanitarian
  • Celeste Langley Slauson (founder and director of the Seattle Conservatory of Arts)

Sources:

HistoryLink.org, The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History, "Women's Century Club" (by Mildred Andrews), www.historylink.org (accessed November 20, 2011); "The Woman's Century Club: An Illustrated History," Woman's Century Club website accessed April 24, 2014 (http://www.womanscenturyclub.org/history/history/#_edn5).
Note: This essay was corrected on July 17, 2005, expanded on November 20, 2011, and corrected on April 24, 2014.


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You