November 2019

9. Meet the First Woman Ever to Vote in Maine

Augusta Merrill Barstow Hunt

By Anne B. Gass

“Learning about the life and devotion to freedom and equality that Augusta had has filled me with a sort of pride I have no right to, and inspiration to keep her work and dreams alive. Even, especially, in these troubled times.” —Helen Hunt

“A great humanitarian”—that’s how the Portland Sunday Telegram described Augusta Hunt on her 90th birthday. Throughout her long life, she championed many causes, using her wealth and privilege to improve the lives of those less fortunate.

Augusta Merrill Barstow was born in Portland on 6 June 1842. At the age of 21, she married George S. Hunt, a prosperous merchant with West Indies shipping interests, including sugar importing. They set up housekeeping in the stately brick townhouse at 165 State Street (now the home of Portland Monthly Magazine) and raised two sons.

With a lively mind, a keen interest in history, and her husband’s support, Hunt soon found ways to be active in the community. She had a particular interest in improving the lives of women and children. Once, she heard a story of a husband who sent his young children to live with relatives in Canada. His wife objected but had no legal way to stop him. Hunt went to work, and in 1895, the Maine legislature passed an equal guardianship law.

In 1876 Hunt helped found the Maine branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and served for many years as its president. This sparked her interest in voting rights for women, which the WCTU saw as vital for protecting the home and children. For decades, Hunt and others campaigned for full voting rights through the Maine legislature. When the all-male legislature turned them down (repeatedly), they tried for the right to vote in municipal elections or simply for the U.S. President. All of these efforts failed.

Oil & Water

“I’ve always been struck by the great success of both my great-grandparents. The George S. Hunt & Company was composed of 21 ships and two sugar refining companies. The ships sailed to Cuba and returned with sugar cane which was refined and used in the distilling of rum.
Augusta, on the other hand, was a leader in the local Christian Temperance Union, advocating sobriety. One can only imagine the heated conversations between them! George only lived to the age of 67. Augusta was left financially well-off. She had the time and means to pursue her other interest—achieving equal rights for women to vote. She was quite a force and lived into her nineties—also an achievement in those times.” —George S. Hunt III (great-grandson, age 93)

Maine Woman Suffrage Association

In 1916, Maine suffragists finally had sufficient votes in the legislature to send the suffrage question to voters in a referendum. Now 75 and retired, Hunt agreed to serve as interim president of the MWSA during a short-term leadership crisis. In October 1916, she hosted MWSA’s annual meeting at her State Street home to choose a new president and decide whether to pursue the referendum.

Opposing the idea was none other than Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). This was odd because, for decades, NAWSA had been all about state campaigns. But Maine wasn’t ready, she counseled. MWSA had only $160 in its bank account, a tiny fraction of the war chest it would need—especially because it lacked experienced suffrage organizers. A campaign would require outside help. Catt wanted to use NAWSA’s scarce resources to support campaigns in states where success was more likely.

Hunt served coffee rather than the customary tea, and perhaps the extra infusion of caffeine emboldened the almost 100 women gathered there. Insisting that the “good old state of Maine” wouldn’t let them down, they voted to pursue a suffrage referendum.

While no longer its president, Hunt worked hard on MWSA’s campaign. She went door-to-door collecting signatures from women on a voting rights petition. She found office space for the Suffrage Referendum League of Maine at 662 Congress Street, in the storefront of the Queen Anne style building her husband built in 1886.

Working for rights denied by society requires sacrifice, courage, and the ability to take the long view. Hunt demonstrated these in abundance throughout her career. So, when the referendum met with resounding defeat, she just looked ahead to the next campaign.

The 19th Amendment that gave most women the right to vote was ratified in August of 1920. In recognition of her many contributions, Hunt was given the distinction of being the first woman to cast a ballot. “It was indeed fitting that…when woman suffrage was at last granted the first woman’s ballot to be passed was that of Augusta Hunt,” said Maude Wood Park, Ex-President, National League of Women Voters, to the Portland Sunday Telegram on 5 June 1932, in “Mrs. George S. Hunt About to Pass her 90th Milestone.”

For 50 years, Augusta Hunt supported or led every movement in Maine to improve the lives of women and children. Highlights include equal guardianship, free kindergartens and day nurseries, Portland’s first-ever police matron, a women’s reformatory, a rest home for aging women, and, of course, voting rights.

This Spring, 2020, a roadside marker that recognizes Hunt’s suffrage work, donated by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, will be installed outside 165 State Street.

As her 90th news article concluded, “Her name will live long and her work will live always.”

Book Worm

Augusta Hunt had two hobbies—bridge and Charles Dickens. She devoted a corner of her suite at the Eastland to prints of Dickens characters and held a Dickens Club meeting twice a month from November through May. One morning while Dickens was in Portland, George Hunt spotted the author leaving the Preble House. When he started to walk up Cumberland Avenue, George hurried home to tell his wife the news that Dickens was likely to walk past the Hunt mansion. Before long, Augusta spotted him passing their home. “I would have liked to shake his hand and tell him what his books meant to me,” Augusta said, “but I recalled what he had said about ladies gushing, and I made up my mind I was not going to gush.”

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—Anne B. Gass is the author of Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage, a book about her great-grandmother. She serves on the steering committee for the Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaborative and speaks frequently on suffrage history.