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When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story

Explore the Museum's new When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story, 1776-1807 online exhibit to learn the little-known history of the nation’s first women voters.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: Tableau Interactive

Here, three women gather at the Rocky Hill Inn in Montgomery Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, for a state election held on October 13-14, 1801. Two white women hold ballots to vote, as was the right of property-owning women in New Jersey. A woman of African descent, possibly as a voter, or possibly as the enslaved property of one of the other women, clenches her hand in her pocket.

Scenes like this one were not uncommon at polling places in New Jersey from the 1790s until 1807. Though little known today, New Jersey Laws of 1790 and 1797 held that: “All free inhabitants of this State of full age, and who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money…shall be entitled to vote for all public officers.” This included women and free people of color.

The tableau figures were made by StudioEIS with contributions from Carrie Fellows, Kirsten Hammerstrom, Scott Lance, Paul McClintock, Gabriela Salvador, Jana Violante, Janeen Violante, and Kalela Williams.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: PLG - Bedminster Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, October 1800

Bedminster Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, October 1800

This poll list for an 1800 state election includes the names of three women voters: Sarah Eoff, Margaret McDonald, and Eleanor Boylan. This is the only known poll list from before 1807 that shows how women voted and who they voted for. The election included a referendum on revising the New Jersey State Constitution, which could have endangered the right to vote for women and free people of color. Two women voted against the referendum.

There are a number of voters on this list who have yet to be identified. As the Museum of the American Revolution continues its research, please contact us if you know more about any of the voters. Share your research with us.

Images of the 1800 Bedminster Poll List coming soon!

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: PLG - Chester Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, October 1807

Chester Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, October 1807

This is a transcription of a poll list from a state election held at a schoolhouse in Moorestown, Chester Township, in October 1807. This list of voters includes the names of 38 women that cast their ballots just one month before the New Jersey State Legislature passed a bill defining voters as white, male citizens. The closing of the electorate effectively stripped the vote from women and free people of color in New Jersey.

A number of voters on this list have yet to be identified. As the Museum of the American Revolution continues its research, please contact us if you know more about any of the voters. Share your research with us.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: PLG - Upper Penns Neck Township, Salem County, New Jersey Poll Lists

Upper Penns Neck Township, Salem County, New Jersey, 1800-1806

A book of historic poll lists at the Salem County Historical Society includes six lists that record women voting in state and congressional elections held in Upper Penns Neck Township between 1800 and 1806. There are at least 75 women voters included on these six lists, many voting year after year, proving that some New Jersey women voted in multiple elections.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: PLG - Montgomery Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, October 1801

Montgomery Township, Somerset County, New Jersey, October 1801

This poll list is for an 1801 state election held at the Rocky Hill Inn in Montgomery Township, Somerset County, New Jersey. The election determined annual officeholders for the New Jersey State Assembly and Legislative Council, and for the Somerset County Sheriff and Coroner. The poll list includes the names of 343 total voters. At least 46 of the voters are women (about 14 percent of the voters on the list). It also includes the names of at least four free Black male voters. One voter is identified as Black on the poll list with the word “negro” next to his name.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: How Did the Vote Expand?: New Jersey’s Revolutionary Decade

New Jersey became the first and only state to legally enfranchise women in 1790, when state legislatures reformed the New Jersey State Constitution’s election law to include the words “he or she.” It proclaimed what the New Jersey Constitution of 1776 had only implied: that propertied women could vote. This statute was neither accidental nor insignificant, and it changed the voting landscape in the state. Women voting was just one part of a growing national and international movement among some women to increase women’s rights, a movement inspired by Revolutionary-era ideology in both America and Europe. And while New Jersey blazed the trail in the new nation, it expressed a tide rising in other states as well, like Massachusetts, where Abigail Adams endorsed women voting in New Jersey.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: How Did Women Lose the Vote?: The Backlash

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?

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: How Was the Vote Regained?: Redemption?

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.

Virtual Exhibit

When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story: Discovering America’s First Women Voters, 1800 - 1807

In 2018 the Museum of the American Revolution discovered polling records that document for the first time a generation of women voters in early New Jersey. To date, we have discovered 163 women voters on nine poll lists who cast ballots across the state from 1800 to 1807. These lists introduce new stories of the first women voters in the United States – stories of the forgotten women who pioneered the vote.

The poll lists suggest women’s political significance and participation in local, state, and federal elections in early New Jersey. This first in-depth analysis of these nine poll lists from New Jersey refutes any presumption that women in the Early Republic were only passive witnesses and bystanders of the political processes that shaped the new nation.

Not only has the Museum discovered evidence of women voters in early New Jersey, we have also identified the names of at least four free Black male voters on one of the poll lists. While we have yet to confirm the identity of any free Black women voters, the presence of both women and free Black voters on these poll lists reveals the inclusive nature of the electoral system in New Jersey in the first few decades following American independence.

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