Frances Ellen Burr (June 4, 1831 - February 9, 1923) was an American

suffragist Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vo ...

and writer from

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

. In 1869, she was a co-founder of the

Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association The Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA) was founded on October 28, 1869, by Isabella Beecher Hooker and Frances Ellen Burr at Connecticut's first suffrage convention. Its main goal was to persuade the Connecticut General Assembly to rat ...

Early life

Burr was born on June 4, 1831, in

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...

, and was the youngest of fourteen children born to James Burr and Lucretia Olcott Burr. Her brother Alfred E. Burr was publisher of the progressive newspaper, the ''

Hartford Times ''The Hartford Times'' was a daily afternoon newspaper serving the Hartford, Connecticut, community from 1817 to 1976. It was owned for decades by the Gannett Company which sold the financially struggling paper in 1973 to the owners of the ''New ...

''.

Suffrage work

Burr attended the 4th

National Women's Rights Convention The National Women's Rights Convention was an annual series of meetings that increased the visibility of the early women's rights movement in the United States. First held in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the National Women's Rights Conventio ...

held in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

in 1853. After getting enough

petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to an officia ...

s, she introduced a suffrage bill in the

Connecticut General Assembly The Connecticut General Assembly (CGA) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is a bicameral body composed of the 151-member House of Representatives and the 36-member Senate. It meets in the state capital, Hartford. The ...

in 1867 that was defeated by a fairly narrow vote, giving her hope for women's suffrage in the state. In 1869, she was one of several suffragists to call for the first suffrage convention held in Connecticut. At the convention, she and Isabella Beecher Hooker founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA). Over the next 41 years, Burr would serve as the recording secretary of CWSA. She was also active in suffrage work on the national level. Later, Burr and Emily Parmely Collins started the Hartford Equal Rights League in 1885. Burr was a contributor to ''

The Woman's Bible ''The Woman's Bible'' is a two-part non-fiction book, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 women, published in 1895 and 1898 to challenge the traditional position of religious orthodoxy that woman should be subservient to man. ...

'', and one of eight women who wrote "special commentaries" for the book.

Personal life

Unlike many feminist activists of her generation, Burr lived to see women's suffrage won in 1920, when she was in her late eighties. She died in her Hartford home on February 9, 1923, at the age of 91. Her body was placed in a vault in

Spring Grove Cemetery Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum is a nonprofit rural cemetery and arboretum located at 4521 Spring Grove Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio. At a size of 733 acres (2.97 km2), it is the third largest cemetery in the United States, after the Calverto ...

. In 2020, she was inducted into the

Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame The Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame (CWHF) recognizes women natives or residents of the U.S. state of Connecticut for their significant achievements or statewide contributions. The CWHF had its beginnings in 1993 when a group of volunteers part ...

in 2020.

Early life

Suffrage work

Personal life

References

Further reading