Middling Folk: Three Seas, Three Centuries, One Scots-Irish Family by Linda H. Matthews

Abstract

 Reviews to commemorate the centennial of woman suffrage in Washington in 2010. This book summarizes these results in an attractive and readable format, supplemented by numerous images,timelines,short biographies,footnotes, and a bibliography. In addition to its appeal for general readers, it will be a great resource for teachers who wish to incorporate women’s history into their curricula. The first three chapters focus on the woman suffrage movement in Washington. Chapter 1 discusses initial efforts to win suffrage from the territorial legislature, the speaking tour of Abigail Scott Duniway and Susan B. Anthony through the region, the foundation of the first suffrage organizations, and changes in the legal status of women, primarily relating to married women’s rights. Chapter 2 traces the developments that resulted in the enfranchisement of Washington women by the territorial legislature in 1883, the subsequent legal challenges that led to disfranchisement in 1888, the connection between suffrage and statehood, and the growing influence of Populism, which culminated in an unsuccessful referendum in 1898. Chapter 3 examines the crucial 1910 victory by describing socioeconomic changes in the status of women, the new suffrage leadership , and their campaign strategies, including vital associations with labor, farmer, and other progressive groups. Chapter 4 outlines many of the state legislative accomplishments supported by Washington women; their contributions to the national suffrage movement, including a new organization of enfranchised women, the National Council of Women Voters; and expanding roles for women during and after World War I. The fifth chapter skips to more recent times to discuss the role of Washington women in modern feminist campaigns,especially the Equal RightsAmendment and reproductive rights, and highlights the unusually large number of female elected officials, especially in recent years. The last chapter provides short individual biographies of prominentWashington women.The author has made a good effort to include information relating to racial-ethnic and working-class women,although this is still largely an account of white, middle-class women’s activity. One of the strengths of this book is that it addresses the question of what women did with their votes once achieved. Until recently, analysts have concluded that the suffragists splintered according to their different interests and affiliations, failed to form a distinct female voting bloc,and thus won few concrete achievements.These conclusions,based largely on national studies of the conservative decade of the 1920s, overlook important activities on the state level during the 1910s, as the Washington example makes clear. The book is not particularly strong on events between 1920 and the emergence of the feminist movement in the 1960s, nor does it provide an extensive discussion of that development, but that is because its primary focus is on the early historical period. In summary, this is not a deeply analytical book, but that is not its purpose. It is an effective synthesis of recent secondary research as well as extensive primary source material, and it should be of considerable interest to popular readers as well as an excellent educational supplement. Rebecca J. Mead Northern Michigan University Middling Folk: Three Seas, Three Centuries, One Scots-Irish Family by Linda H. Matthews Chicago Review Press, Chicago, 2009. Illustrations, notes, index. 384 pages. $24.95 cloth. Linda H. Matthews has written an interesting and impressive book about the course of a family — her family — from the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. Matthews has recreated the Hammill family as it  OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 lived in Scotland and Ireland and traveled from there to,first,the colonial Chesapeake and then on to the Pacific Northwest. She tells the story of the Hammills with verve and imagination. She also well serves a larger purpose, which is to restore to our accounts of the past the experiences of middling folk. While Matthews does not trumpet her own intellectual significance, this larger purpose is actually the book’s most important scholarly contribution. Matthews is quite correct that scholars have always focused on the high and mighty — and, over the past forty years, with the rise of social history, also the lowly and powerless. Presidents, and now slaves, have received their due,but people whom we might consider“middle class,”such as...