On November 2, 1920, several women in my family entered a voting booth for the first time.
For modern Americans, it is difficult to imagine reaching adulthood, marrying, raising children, paying taxes, and helping build a community without ever having the right to vote. Yet that was the reality for generations of American women before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Among those newly enfranchised voters was my second great-grandmother, Martha Tarr Ferguson.
She was sixty-two years old.
Born in 1858, Martha lived through a period of rapid transformation that boggles the mind:
- A bloody Civil War and Reconstruction
- A technological and industrial revolution
- The emergence of the United States as a world power
She also witnessed the administrations of eleven presidents, yet never had the opportunity to vote for one.
When Republican Warren G. Harding faced Democrat James M. Cox in the presidential election of 1920, Martha would have entered the polling place as a voter for the first time.
She was not alone.
Other women in my family shared the same historic experience.
In 1920, my great-grandmother Ida Mae Davis Fenstermaker was fifty-one years old and her daughter Lola Mae Fenstermaker Chapman was twenty-eight. Both lived in Toledo, Ohio.
In rural southern Indiana were my great-grandmothers Eliza Denton Young (51) and Sebia Ferguson Hancock (39).
Although these women belonged to different generations and lived in very different communities, they all shared something their mothers and grandmothers never possessed:
They had a voice in choosing the President of the United States.
America in 1920
The election occurred during one of the most turbulent periods in American history.
The First World War had ended only two years earlier. The devastating influenza pandemic had recently swept through the country. Labor strikes erupted in major cities. Political leaders warned of radicalism and revolution in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
Americans were exhausted.
Harding’s campaign promised a “return to normalcy,” a phrase that captured the national mood. After years of war, disease, and social upheaval, millions of voters simply wanted stability.
Two Different Americas
The women of Toledo and Orange County inhabited remarkably different worlds.
In Toledo, Ida and Lola lived in a booming industrial city shaped by factories, railroads, and manufacturing. Automobile production helped drive economic growth, and the city’s fortunes were increasingly tied to industry.
Only a year before the election, Toledo was a flashpoint in several labor conflicts, including the massive, violent Willys Overland Jeep strike. Also in that same year, Thousands of Toledo supporters of socialist leader Eugene Debs rioted after city officials banned his speech. The clash ended with 75 protesters going to jail. The strike formed part of a broader national wave of labor conflict that many Americans viewed with alarm. Across the country, concerns about strikes, radical politics, and economic instability dominated public discussion.
For families connected to business and manufacturing, calls for order and stability often carried tremendous appeal.
Lola’s husband was a staunchly conservative Republican businessman. While no record survives of how Lola voted, it is reasonable to assume that the political atmosphere surrounding her household favored Republican appeals to stability, business growth, and economic security.
Harding possessed another advantage in Ohio.
He was one of their own.
A former Ohio lieutenant governor, United States senator, and newspaper publisher from Marion, Harding was a familiar figure to many Ohioans. State pride mattered in an era when regional identity often played a stronger role in politics than it does today. For many voters, supporting Harding meant sending another Ohioan to the White House.
That local connection likely reinforced Republican support already strengthened by concerns about labor unrest and postwar uncertainty.
Southern Indiana
The experience of my Indiana ancestors was quite different.
Eliza Etta Denton Young, Sebia Ferguson Hancock, and Martha Tarr Ferguson lived in rural Orange County, a landscape of hills, hollers, and small communities.
Unlike Toledo, Orange County was not defined by factories and labor disputes. Daily life revolved around agriculture, church gatherings, schools, and family networks. National issues certainly mattered, but they were often viewed through the lens of a rural Protestant culture rooted in the traditions of southern Indiana.
Sebia’s husband was a Primitive Baptist minister. Martha was a Quaker. Both religious traditions emphasized community responsibility, moral conduct, and civic engagement.
For these women, concerns such as agricultural prosperity, roads, education, Prohibition, and local community values may have carried more weight than industrial labor disputes hundreds of miles away.
Yet despite their different circumstances, they shared the same historic moment as their Ohio relatives.
For the first time, they could participate directly in American democracy.
More Than Politics
Today it is tempting to ask how these women voted.
Were they Republicans? Democrats?
Did they support Harding or Cox?
The truth is that we do not know.
The secret ballot protects their choices from history.
Perhaps the more important question is not whom they supported, but what their participation represented.
For generations, the women of my family raised children, managed households, worked farms, supported churches, and strengthened communities without representation at the ballot box.
In 1920, that changed.
Martha, Ida, Eliza, Sebia, and Lola belonged to the first generation of women in my family who could help choose the nation’s leaders.
Their individual votes have been lost to history.
Their participation has not.
When they stepped into the voting booth in November 1920, they joined millions of other American women in reshaping the nation’s democracy.
Reflection
A century has passed since Martha, Ida, Eliza, Sebia, and Lola cast their first presidential ballots.
Today, women serve as governors, senators, cabinet members, judges, military officers, business leaders, and candidates for the nation’s highest office. Women vote at rates equal to or greater than men and participate in every level of American political life. Much of what seems ordinary today would have been almost unimaginable when these women entered the polling place in 1920.
That progress makes their first vote all the more remarkable.
These women did not march in national parades or leave speeches for future historians to study. They raised families, worked farms, supported churches, managed households, and helped sustain their communities. Yet in 1920 they participated in one of the most important expansions of democratic rights in American history.
We do not know how they voted (or even if they did).
What matters is that they finally could.
For the first time, the women of my family had a voice. And more than a century later, that voice continues to be heard through the generations of women in my family that followed.
The Outcome of the 1920 Election
Historians and contemporary political data confirm that women overwhelmingly favored Republican Waren Harding over Democrat James Cox, mirroring the broader electorate to deliver a historic Republican landslide. Only 35% to 45% of eligible women voted nationwide, compared to roughly 68% of men (that would change dramatically in subsequent elections). Harding’s administration was plagued by scandals and he died in office after 3 years. On the Democrat side, James Cox’s running mate was a man by the name of Franklin Roosevelt. He would fall victim to polio the folowing year and would eventually rise to win the 1932 presidential election and be re-elected 3 more times.
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