Although the pandemic dramatically slowed the creation of a Trail, NHWF staff applied to the Pomeroy Foundation, a national foundation honoring the 19th Amendment, and successfully secured three new roadside markers honoring suffrage work in New Hampshire. These three markers are part of the National Votes for Women Trail.

The most recent marker honors Armenia White, longtime Concord area philanthropist, for her work in starting and then leading the New Hampshire Women’s Suffrage Association in 1868, serving as its first president until 1895. 

This roadside marker is located at the entrance to White Farm in Concord and reminds us all of the important work done by Armenia White to gain women the right to vote.

A little history on Armenia, and her husband Nathaniel, also named on the plaque:

Believing in a woman’s right to participate in civil as well as religious affairs, Armenia was instrumental in founding and supporting numerous organizations including the Ladies’ Social Aid Society, Concord Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, the New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane, the Centennial Home for the Aged, the New Hampshire Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association.

In 1868, Armenia and her husband Nathaniel founded the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association, with Armenia serving as the first president until 1895.

In 1846, Nathaniel and Armenia established White Farm on Clinton Street in Concord. The historic farm is now owned by the state and is an agricultural surplus store. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. This marker, placed at White Farm, commemorates Nathaniel and Armenia White’s many years in works of philanthropy and reform, and their dedication to the fight for women’s suffrage.

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Ona Marie Judge Staines

(c. 1773-1848)

Ona Marie Judge Staines was the enslaved body servant of Martha Washington in what was then the United States capitol, Philadelphia. In 1796, Judge fled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There, she met and married a mariner, Jack Staines; they made their home in the adjacent rural town of Greenland with their three daughters. Jack was presumed to have died at sea when he did not return from a voyage. Each of the Staines’ children also predeceased Ona. She continued to live in the town with the freed family of a man formerly owned by a prominent New Hampshire merchant. Because President Washington had endorsed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1791, Ona Judge remained a fugitive for the rest of her life. The house itself no longer stands but her unmarked gravesite remains undisturbed on the property where she had chosen to live.

Dinah [Chase] Whipple

(1760-1846)

Dinah [Chase] Whipple ran the Ladies Charitable African Society School for African children in Portsmouth, the only school known to exist in the state of New Hampshire for former slaves or their children. Dinah was emancipated by her owner, Rev. Stephen Chase of New Castle, when she reached her 21st birthday. On that same day, she married Prince Whipple, the still-enslaved personal servant of Revolutionary War General William Whipple. Prince died in 1797, leaving Dinah and several young children living in the house they shared with another Black family in back of what is known today as the Moffatt-Ladd House. Dinah operated the school in her home from around 1807 until at least 1835. While little survives in her own words, public documents reveal much about Dinah Whipple’s accomplishments as a citizen.

Harriet Wilson

(1825-1900)

Harriet Wilson was born Harriet E. Adams in Milford, New Hampshire, to a White mother and a Black father. She is the author Our Nig (1859), believed to be the first novel by an African-American woman to be published in the United States. Wilson’s autobiographical novel describes the life of an abused mulatto child and her forced servitude at the hands of northerners, thus opening up questions of slavery in the North. Harriet married Thomas Wilson in 1851 and gave birth to a son, George, in 1852. Poverty stricken after her husband’s disappearance, Wilson wrote Our Nig to support herself and her child. George, however, died the next year and Wilson herself disappeared from record books. Researchers uncovered her life as a spiritualist and medium in Massachusetts, which lasted another thirty years. Harriet Wilson died in Quincy, Massachusetts, and is buried there in Mount Wollaston Cemetery.

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Invitations were sent to women all over New Hampshire from the National Association of Women’s Suffrage and President Hetzel of the New Hampshire College. This was a huge milestone for the women’s suffrage movement in New Hampshire because it was the first time the College agreed to work with women en masse on the movement. The Citizenship School brought together 200 women from all over New Hampshire and its success inspired state colleges in other suffrage states to host similar schools. 

The Citizenship School is one of three markers the Women’s Foundation and its partner, the New Hampshire Women’s Heritage Trail, have proposed as part of a nationwide suffrage trail being sponsored and supported by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation. The Pomeroy Foundation, based in Syracuse, New York, is committed to supporting the celebration and preservation of community history, and is working to establish plaques in every state in the country highlighting accomplishments of the Suffrage Movement.

In addition to the proposed marker at UNH for the Citizenship School, the other proposed markers are for Armenia S. White (1817-1916) and Mary N. Chase (1863-1959), both of whom were pivotal to the women’s suffrage movement in New Hampshire. The marker for Armenia S. White will be at White Farm in Concord, the farm she and her husband established in 1846; and the marker for Mary N. Chase will be at Proctor Academy in Andover, NH, where she began teaching in 1899. All three markers should be erected in the spring of 2021.

As we wrap a year of celebrations commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, we are reminded of our responsibility to continue to tell the stories and highlight the lives of the incredible women who have come before us. While our plans for the Women’s Heritage Trail have been slowed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are as committed as ever to the Trail’s mission “to give visible recognition to the historic women of New Hampshire and celebrate their significant contributions to the life and culture of the state since its founding.”

In 2021, the Women’s Foundation hopes to move forward with plans to work with the State of New Hampshire, local communities and property owners to erect markers for the 27 women inaugurated to the trail including Amy Cheney Beach, America’s first internationally celebrated female composer; Hannah Davis, an entrepreneur and one of the first documented women inventors; and Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe, NASA’s first Teacher in Space.

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This article appears in the 2020 Winter edition of the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation newsletter, hitting inboxes soon. Not on our mailing list? Sign up here.

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