Suffragette Research Leads to a Challenge

My two Research Assistants at the Pioneer Room and I quickly went to work researching womens suffrage activity in Hastings and did we ever hit paydirt!  This research was especially relevant as the 100th anniversary of American women receiving the vote was coming up.

It turns out that the Minnesota Womens Suffrage Association was formed in Hastings in Septemer 1881 at a Womens Christian Temperance Union meeting held at the First Presbyterian Church.  Of the original thirteen members forming the MWSA, three of them were from Hastings, including Maria Van Hoesen.

Hastings is the County Seat for Dakota County, Minnesota.  The Dakota County Historical Society had discovered that the very first election in the nation after the 19th Amendment went into effect was held in Dakota County in the City of South St. Paul.  Some ninety women lined up to vote in that municipal election.

Every year the Dakota County Historical Museum (located in South St. Paul) hosts a month-long quilt show in their auditorium featuring quilts from the Dakota County Star Quilters.  I thought all these local links to womens suffrage should be celebrated so I approached the Board of the Dakota County Star Quilters with a proposition:  would they help organize and host a display of small quilts (24″ square) celebrating womens suffrage at their 2020 quilt show?

Again, I hit paydirt!  These women not only embraced the idea they were extremely organized.  Soon we were sending out challenge invitations to 450 quilt guilds across the country.  We didn’t know if we’d get 20 small quilts being sent in or 200, but we were asking.  From the beginning we planned on sending this small quilt display around the country after it was displayed in South St. Paul.

Not only was the Board of the Dakota County Star Quilters enthusiastically participating, but Cherrywood Fabrics, located in Minnesota, was extremely helpful in giving us information about how they organized and displayed their Cherrywood Challenges.  So now all we had to do was wait to see how many small suffrage quilts were submitted.