Augusta Cheney and the Women’s Suffrage Movement

“Home is not the place for every woman. If a woman can do more for her fellows by a public life, (and many can), then her duty is to live her life for the public; If she can do more at home, then her duty is there and the same will apply to men today who would do the country immeasurable good if they would sink into oblivion …”

- Augusta Cheney, 1891

Olive Augusta Alger Cheney (she preferred “Augusta”) was well known 150 years ago in Natick, and she became known statewide and nationwide as a champion of the temperance movement and women’s suffrage. She was one of the most active social reformers in Natick’s history, beginning her 40-year career as an activist when she founded the Natick branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) around 1876. In 1877, she also founded the Natick Women’s Suffrage League to join the fight for a woman’s right to vote. Augusta was president of her League chapter for almost 15 years and was recording secretary of the New England Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1879, Massachusetts passed a state law allowing women to vote in school committee elections. Augusta and other League members were encouraged by this development and pushed the town government to welcome women in all local elections. After years of petitioning, in 1881, the women could present a proposed article to the Natick town meeting, allowing women the right to hold public office and vote in local elections. The all-male town meeting dismissed their article. 1882, the article was presented again, only to be refused a second time. Again, they presented the article in 1883, only to be dismissed for the third and final time.

Nevertheless, Augusta was not deterred. As a gifted writer, Augusta edited a column in The Natick Bulletin called “The Women’s Interest” that ran for fifteen years, pushing for the expansion of suffrage to include women. Augusta also edited her publication, The Woman’s Voice, which focused on the temperance movement and acted as an offshoot of the Natick WCTU. In one issue of The Woman’s Voice from 1887, Cheney and the WCTU wrote a piece calling for residents to vote against a measure allowing an alcohol license to be bought for rum shops to open in town. They wrote, “If you desire better business for your local merchants, vote to close the saloons.”

Supporters of the temperance movement viewed alcohol as a substance that transformed husbands and fathers into dangerous people, prone to domestic violence and financial malfeasance. Temperance seemed to promise more excellent safety and security for women and children. Partly because so many temperance advocates were women, the cause was often conflated with the women's suffrage movement. And many women, like Augusta Cheney, led or joined temperance and suffrage organizations. For male voters who opposed temperance, its connection with suffrage became an obstacle to widespread support for women’s right to vote.

A wide range of interests characterized Cheney’s public and private life. She published several books during her lifetime, the first of which was The Sunday School Speaker (1869), containing several poems and dialogues “comprising pieces suitable for Sunday School Concerts and Festivals”—it included three entries from her brother, Horatio Alger, Jr., a famous writer of rags-to-riches stories popular among young boys. Cheney also submitted accounts of her European travels with her family to The Natick Bulletin and, in 1909, assembled a listing of “Important Articles in the Museum of the Historical and Natural History Society of South Natick,” including details of old deeds and the society’s collection of manuscripts and books.

Augusta passed away in her home on Christmas Day, 1916. On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified by the states, giving women the right to vote in national elections. That right, however, did not extend to all the women of the United States. Although the 19th Amendment outlawed discrimination based on sex, it was not until the Voting Rights Act in 1965 that racial discrimination in voting was prohibited.

Updated by Rachel Speyer Besancon, August 2020

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Selected sources and additional reading:

Natick Historical Society Collections.
She Resisted, “Not All Women Gained the Right to Vote in 1920,” American Experience, Public Broadcasting Service, (2020).
“The Vote,” American Experience, Public Broadcasting Service, (2020).