Women Who Shaped Southeastern Minnesota History

SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA – On a warm spring day–May 17, 1914–the sun peeked through factory smoke on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, Minn. American women were still not allowed to vote.

Two thousand women suffragists from across the state gathered for a parade to protest for the rights of women to vote as full citizens. Scandinavian-American suffragists lined up at the front of the parade proudly wearing the costumes or bunads of their own Nordic country. Six-foot flags from each Nordic country led their section of the parade. 

The Scandinavian group was filled with immigrants; indeed, membership was restricted to first- and second-generation immigrants.

They gained membership rapidly in strongly Norwegian southeast Minnesota. They were the only suffrage group to not charge dues to these hard-working immigrant women. They actively called for voting rights like Norway, Sweden and Finland had recently approved. The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association was influential in finally moving Minnesota citizens and legislators to approve its women as full citizens in 1919.  

Nancy Mattson Jaeger, President of the Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association (SWSA) from Red Wing, Minnesota. (Photo provided by Library of Congress)

President of the Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association (SWSA) Nanny Mattson Jaeger was from Red Wing. From a Swedish family already active in the suffrage movement in the old country, Nanny was fortunate that her American Swedish husband was equally supportive. She was an inspiring leader and good friend of Clara Ueland who led the largest suffrage group in the state.

Nanny and Clara, like most suffrage leaders, were also involved in other humanitarian projects in their communities. Together these two led the movement to add kindergarten to schools in Minnesota.

After suffrage was approved in the US in 1920, they worked to end child labor in Minnesota’s mines, farms and factories.

Julia Bullard Nelson also came from Red Wing. She was both a strong suffragist and fighter for the rights of black freedmen and their families.

After the Civil War Julia went south to teach and create schools for recently freed black families to learn to read. She was one of the few women graduates of the early Hamline University, which was started in Red Wing. She was a proponent of temperance: abolishing alcohol to stop the abuse of wives and children. 

Immigrants. Abolitionists. Suffragists.

Fifty years before this huge parade of suffragists, there were already women arriving in the area, intent on gaining rights for women and furthering humanitarian causes.

In Minnesota’s earliest days, the southeast was the most prosperous and cosmopolitan area of the state due to it being closest to Chicago via the Mississippi River. Married women were usually prevented from working at the time, and women seldom were allowed into college and professional schools. That highlights how remarkable these women’s achievements really are. 

Harriet Stevens of Rushford was an avid abolitionist who is thought to have assisted in a Rushford leg of the Underground Railroad. This is reflected in the structure of a few local homes. After the war, Harriet became an educator of freed black families in Florida and a sponsor of migrating freedmen to Rushford.  

Bella French was a very active journalist who worked for Brownsville, La Crosse and St. Paul papers. She wrote about the early days of Minnesota and later moved to Texas where she became Bella Swisher. 

Sarah Burger Stearns, founder of the first Minnesota unit of the National Woman Suffrage Association. (Photo provided by the Minnesota Reflections/MN Digital Library)

From doctors to dressmakers, women fought for other women

Forestville had a woman doctor, Dr. Albro, who was trained in the one school for doctors in New York City. She tended women in our region. 

Lanesboro had two businesswomen just after the Civil War. Henrietta Turner Henry was a dressmaker and milliner matriarch of the Drake family; and Eliza Bergey-Baker, matriarch of the Bergey family. They were both married and their husbands surprisingly approved of their business ventures.

Between Rushford and Winona, at Hart, there was Betsy Jeffrey. Betsy was a black, Mohawk and white matriarch of a strong New York black abolitionist and Underground Railroad family. She and her husband, Asa, moved to Hart to farm around 1860.

Betsy and Asa raised their family there for twenty years and several sons owned farmland in Hart. She was from a prominent Mohawk tribal family of Long Island, New York (then Connecticut) and is buried somewhere in the Winona area. They may have been part of the possible Underground Railroad in the Rushford-Hart area.

Sarah Burger Stearns lived in Rochester at that time. She was devoted to bringing the vote and rights to women.

The famous Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Seneca Falls came to visit Sarah and help her start the first Minnesota unit of the National Woman Suffrage Association in Rochester. The two were very involved in getting a woman suffrage bill through the St. Paul legislature, and almost succeeded!  They helped pass the right of women to vote and run for school boards.

Both Sarah Stearns and Julia Nelson worked tirelessly for women’s rights and the vote during the next fifty years. They influenced many of the suffragists marching in that huge women’s 1914 parade in Minneapolis. By then the cultural and business center of Minnesota had moved to St. Paul, and many professional women and suffragists did as well.

All these strong, regional women pushed through great obstacles to fight for freedom and prosperity for themselves and others. Without their work our state and country would not be as equal or as prosperous.

These and other notable women were included in the 2024 touring play, Time for Women, produced by History Alive Lanesboro (written and directed by the author). 

Southeast Minnesota notable women as portrayed by actors in the 2024 “Time for Women” show by History Alive. (Photo by Barb Jeffers)