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In November 1807, the New Jersey State Legislature stripped the vote from women, people of color, and recent immigrants. They redefined the property qualification to include all white male taxpayers. The preamble of the new act on election regulations justified the change by citing “doubts” that “have been raised, and great diversities in practices obtained throughout the state in regard to the admission of aliens, persons of color, or negroes, to vote in elections” as well as “the mode of ascertaining” voter qualifications. What did this mean? What had happened?

By exercising the right to vote, early New Jersey women influenced the woman suffrage movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. These later suffragists used the memory of the Revolution and the nation’s first women voters to ground their position in America’s founding and assert their right to equal citizenship.  The story of early New Jersey’s women voters reminds us that progress is not necessarily linear and unending, but that rights and liberties require constant vigilance to preserve and protect. The suffragists of the 19th and 20th centuries fought to regain a right that had been taken from New Jersey women in 1807. This later activism vindicated the first generation of women voters and became part of these women voters’ legacy.