Duniway, Abigail Scott, 1834-1915

Abigail S. Duniway was born Abigail Jane Scott near Groveland, Illinois, to John Tucker Scott and Anne Roelofson Scott. Of the nine children in her family who survived infancy, she was the second. She grew up on the family farm and attended a local school intermittently. In March 1852, against the wishes of Anne Scott, who had concerns about her health, John organized a party of 30 people and 5 ox-drawn wagons to emigrate to Oregon, 2,400 miles (3,900 km) away by trail. Anne died of cholera near Fort Laramie, on the Oregon Trail, in June, and Willie, age 3, the youngest child in the family, died in August along the Burnt River in Oregon. In October, the emigrants reached their destination, Lafayette, in the Willamette Valley. After teaching school in Eola in early 1853, Abigail Scott Duniway married Benjamin Charles Duniway, a farmer from Illinois, on August 1. They had six children: Clara Belle (b. 1854), Willis Scott (1856), Hubert (1859), Wilkie Collins (1861), Clyde Augustus (1866), and Ralph Roelofson (1869).[2]

The Duniways farmed in Clackamas County until 1857, when they moved to a farm near Lafayette. They lost this second farm after a friend defaulted on a note Benjamin had endorsed. Soon afterward, Benjamin was permanently disabled in an accident involving a runaway team, and Abigail had to support the family.[3] At first, she opened and ran a small boarding school in Lafayette. In 1866, she moved to Albany where she taught in a private school for a year, then opened a millinery and notions shop, which she ran for five years. Angered by stories of injustice and mistreatment relayed to her by married patrons of her shop, and encouraged by Benjamin, she moved to Portland in 1871 to found The New Northwest, a weekly newspaper devoted to women's rights, including suffrage. She published the first issue on May 5, 1871, and continued The New Northwest for 16 years.[2]

In 1872 she was invited to address Oregon's legislature to put forward the case for women's suffrage. She was appearing on behalf of the Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association but no one wanted to keep her company. Other women feared what their husband's and others might say. Finally she found Dr Mary Sawtelle who agreed to also venture into this male only preserve.[4] Duniway encountered personal setbacks such as poor health, money problems, and opposition from her brother Harvey W. Scott, who also edited a Portland paper, The Oregonian. He thought women didn't want to vote, writing many articles on this subject. She persisted despite political opposition in the form of local resistance, the consistent failure of women's suffrage referendums on state ballots, and divisions with Eastern suffrage organizations. She and her newspaper actively supported the Sole Trader Bill and the Married Women's Property Act which, when passed, gave Oregon women the right to own and control property.

Her persistence paid off in 1912 when Oregon became the seventh state in the U.S. to pass a women's suffrage amendment.[5] Governor Oswald West asked her to write and sign the equal suffrage proclamation.[6] She was the first woman to register to vote in Multnomah County.[6]

Duniway is buried at River View Cemetery in Portland.[2]

A writer, newspaper publisher, and promoter for women's rights, Abigail Scott Duniway was Oregon's strongest voice for the cause of woman's suffrage. Born Abigail Jane Scott in 1839, she left Illinois for Oregon with her family in 1852, where she met her husband Ben Duniway. The couple settled in Yamhill County, but because of financial difficulties and Ben's permanent injury in a wagon accident, they had to sell their land. The couple moved to nearby Lafayette, where Abigail taught school and, in 1859, authored Captain Gray's Company, or Crossing the Plains and Living in Oregon, the first commercially published novel in Oregon. In 1865, the family moved to Albany and Abigail opened a millinery shop where her exposure to the inequalities facing women motivated her to campaign for equal rights.

In 1871, the family moved to Portland and with the help of her numerous children she began publishing the New Northwest. The weekly newspaper, according to her 1985 biographer Dorothy Morrison, "supported women's rights without making them a bore." The paper was financially self-sustaining within a few years and was published until 1887. Her other writings include two novels, an autobiography titled Path Breaking, and a collection of poems, all of which highlight the plight of women in the West.

From 1870 to the late 1890s Duniway traveled throughout the Northwest promoting women's rights and campaigned with national suffragist Susan B. Anthony. As a result of her hard work and that of countless other suffragists, women "got the vote" in Idaho in 1896 and in Washington in 1910; however, Oregonians waited until 1912. The state's male electorate denied woman suffrage in 1883, 1900, 1908, and 1910. Abigail maintained that the close election in 1900 failed because her brother Harvey W. Scott, longtime editor of the Oregonian, opposed her efforts. This resulted in a bitter public feud between the two siblings. In 1912 the suffrage amendment passed and Governor Oswald West asked Duniway, who was then 78, to write the Equal Suffrage Proclamation.

Duniway died three years later on October 11, 1915, in Portland.