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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.

Eleanor Boylan voted when she was about 51 years old and a widow. She lived until 1846 when she died at about the age of 97.

Amy Cheston owned 20 acres of land and some livestock when she voted as a widow in Montgomery Township. She lived until 1841 when she died at the age of 97.

Mary Norris lived in Princeton as a widow from 1789 to 1813. She was 55 when she voted. Norris is buried in Princeton Cemetery.

When Rebecca Venable voted in 1807, she was a widowed mother. She voted along with her son, daughter, father, brothers, and brother-in-law.

Born in 1776, Mary Kitts was a member of the Oldman’s Creek Moravian Church. She voted when she was a property-owning widow in 1802.

Hannah Lippincott was a widow when she voted in 1807. She died the same year she cast her ballot, leaving a personal estate valued at over $846.

Originally from Philadelphia, former tavern keeper Grace Little lived as a widow in Princeton when she voted. Her property included a farm, livestock, and three enslaved people named Judith, Phebe, and John.

In the core exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution, a scene of three life-size figures recreates what it might have looked like when women voted in a state election held on October 13-14, 1801 in Montgomery Township, Somerset County, New Jersey. You can read more about the tableau here and click the button below to explore the scene in detail!

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.