From 1776 to 1807, New Jersey allowed “inhabitants” with sufficient money to vote, regardless of citizenship, sex, or race. This virtual talk – held on Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 205th birthday – will examine how historical memory of those years, when women in the state could vote, was transmitted across generations, embraced by a women’s rights movement, and incorporated into a political culture shared by the state’s suffragists.
Ann D. Gordon is research professor emerita of history, retired from Rutgers University. A graduate of Smith College, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Early American history. From 1982 until her retirement, she edited the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, published first as a 45-reel microfilm edition; she completed a six-volume Selected Papers from the collection in 2013. She has written numerous articles in women’s history and biography, and edited a collection of essays by scholars of black history, African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965 (1997). Gordon served on a panel of historians advising the National Archives Museum on its exhibition, Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote.
This event was recorded on November 12, 2020.