Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Kansas: An Accidental Election with Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

In this solo episode, Sharon tells the story of Susanna Madora Salter, who accidentally became the first female mayor ever elected. What started as a ploy to throw off the mayoral election by a group of men in her small Kansas town quickly turned into a historical moment. At this time, candidates could create their own ballots and campaign for votes, so Susanna had no idea that she was even on the ballot during the election. In this episode, Sharon shares facts about voting during the latter half of the 1800s and how the first female mayor came to be, even though it was meant to be a joke. For more information on this episode including all resources and links discussed go to https://www.sharonmcmahon.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, friends, welcome. Always so happy to have you here. Today we are chatting about a story from the state of Kansas that I just find amusing and inspiring. And I really think you're going to as well. This is one of those stories where you're like, what? How did that happen? Well, I'm going to tell well. This is one of those stories where you're like, what? How did that happen? Well,

I'm going to tell you. So let's dive in to the story of the first female mayor ever elected, and she was elected by accident. This is the story of Susanna Salter. I'm Sharon McBann, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Susanna Medora Salter, she kind of went by the nickname Dora, was born in the 1860s, and when she was around 12, her family moved to Kansas near the Silver Lake area. Her family owned a large farm there and Dora was extremely bright. She went to high school. She took college classes in high school so that by the time she was done with high school, she was admitted to college as a sophomore. This is in the 1870s. So very, very, very bright woman. Sadly, six weeks before she was to graduate from college, she got very sick and had to leave college and was not able to graduate. But the good news is while she was there,

Good news is while she was there, she did obtain an MRS degree, which used to be sort of a joke of, you know, why would a woman go to college to get an MRS degree? To become a missus, to meet a husband. And she did meet a husband. She met somebody named Louis Salter and they got married and had a baby. And in the early 1880s, they moved to Argonia, Kansas, which was sort of a little bit more of an up and coming area and had not been incorporated as a city yet. But her husband, Louis, got a job managing a hardware store while he was simultaneously studying to become a lawyer. At the time, law school was not the ticket. If you wanted to be a lawyer, you apprenticed with a lawyer. For many people, this is how it worked. You apprenticed with a lawyer and when you had

learned enough, you could take the bar exam and you could hang a shingle and become a lawyer for yourself. So she starts having children. She's still in her early 20s. Her husband is managing this hardware store and studying to become a lawyer. And her parents say, you know what? We will move to Argonia as well. We'll help you manage the hardware store so Louis can really focus on becoming a lawyer. And then in 1885, after they had been living there for a few years, Argonia had around 500 people, and it became an incorporated city. Dora's father became the city's first mayor. Her husband became the city clerk.

Things went along swimmingly for a while. There had been several efforts, including an effort in the 1860s to allow women to vote in the state of Kansas. That failed. But in 1887, 20 years later, a different law passed the Kansas legislature that permitted women to vote in municipal elections, so city elections. Women could not vote for president yet, but they could vote for things like mayor. Also around this time, prohibition was really ramping up. People felt like there were so many bad things that alcohol was doing to the communities. And there were lots of women and some men who were working towards this notion of prohibition. They wanted to have dry communities, communities where alcohol was not permitted.

A large part of that work was done by the WCTU. I've mentioned them in a previous podcast, the Women's Christian Temperance Union. the Women's Christian Temperance Union. I've also mentioned before how deeply intertwined the women's temperance movement is with women's suffrage. They were basically one and the same movement. So the WCTU was very active in the community of Argonia, and some people were very much in favor of it, including Dora's family. And some people, as one can imagine, were not pleased with it. Some people very much enjoyed their ability to drink, very much did not see a problem with having alcohol around, and they wanted to oppose the actions of the WCTU. So here is what happened. One evening, a couple of gentlemen decided to attend a WCTU meeting. They wanted to see

what was up because they wanted to strategize about how to defeat this WCTU movement, this temperance movement, this women's suffrage movement. And they felt like, hey, we need some more insider information and that will help us strategize. So a couple of guys go to the meeting. Then later, about 20 men in the back of a saloon, they have a secret caucus meeting. This is the strategy that they landed on. If we make a ballot that has a woman on it, some of these people who are in favor of prohibition, in favor of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, they might vote for it. But almost no one will. And that will delegitimize their effort.

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not need to declare your candidacy in advance. You could just show up on the day of the election and be like, hello, I'm running for this office. Number two, the government did not print the ballots in Kansas at that time. It was not like the city of Argonia was like, okay, please declare your candidacy, round it all up. Who's on the ballot? Your name, your name, your name, print them all on there. That's how it's done now. Then people would run for office. They would make a ballot with their name on it. They would pass them out. And then somebody who wanted to vote would take the ballot that they wanted that already had the stuff printed on it. They would take the ballot they wanted and drop it in the box. Okay. So both of those things made this event possible. This caucus of 20 gentlemen

get together, they make a ballot secretly, and they think to themselves, who can we put on this ballot that will delegitimize the women's suffrage movement, make it look like they do not have it going on, that nobody cares about them, and that this is not something that we should embrace in our community. And there was one woman who was eligible, and her name was Susanna Medora Salter. She was the only woman who lived inside the city limits. And it also helped that she came from the family that had the first mayor, her husband worked in city government. So they were like, perfect. She was from a Quaker family. They were also very into the temperance movement. They thought, perfect. We'll make a ballot with Dora Salter on it. We'll give those out and people will be like,

I am not taking that ballot with that woman on it. Heck no, I am not voting for that. Dora had absolutely no idea that any of this was going down. So they line up, they go outside the polling place, they start passing out the ballots. And people were surprised to see Dora's name on a ballot. They went to her house and there she is with her three children. She is literally hanging wash on the line. And they're like, did you know you're on the ballot? She's like, excuse me, say what now? And they were like, you're on the ballot. What would you do if you won? And she's like, well, I guess I would do my best. And they were like, okay. And so some other people from the Republican party came to visit her and they're like, would you really do this job? Would you really be the mayor? And she's like,

I guess so. Her husband wasn't home at the time. And then when he came home later and found out that she had agreed to be the mayor, if she was elected, he was like, um, we do have the three children and I am a little busy with my law practice. All of this coalesced into this perfect storm where the Republican Party came out and they were like, yeah, okay, actually she might be a great option. And so they stood outside the polling places and they campaigned for Dora Salter. And at the end of the day, she went down to the polling place and was like, hey, I can vote. I have the right to vote in Kansas. But at the time, it was considered improper, impolite, too arrogant to vote for yourself.

So she left that portion of the ballot, didn't want to vote for herself. It was too much. But at the end of the day, when they counted up all the ballots, they found that instead of her getting like 20 votes and the Women's Christian Temperance Union looking stupid, she had gotten two thirds of the votes for mayor. And they sent her this letter. and they sent her this letter it said madam you are hereby notified that an election held in the city of argonia on monday april 4th 1887 for the purpose of electing city officers you were duly elected to the office of mayor of said city. You will take due notice thereof and govern yourself accordingly.

It was from the other mayor, the current mayor. She was like, okay then, I guess I'm the mayor. Even though she had no ambition to become the mayor, right? Like she did not set out to be a political candidate. One could imagine it was a bit confusing, right? Wake up in the morning, hang out the wash, tend to your young children. End of the day, you're the mayor. That's not how most of our days go. This election of a female mayor in the United States in 1887, when women could not even vote for president, it made massive national and international news. She started getting telegrams from all over the world. She started getting letters in the mail from all over the country, some of them negative, like, give me a break.

This is ridiculous. Women's place is in the home. Women should be seen and not heard. You don't have any business being a mayor. But a lot of it was very, very positive. She received one letter that said, dear madam, I write you this letter to you feeling interested in the equality of man and woman, and as your state, Kansas, stands first to open the double door for a higher civilization to the whole world. The dreams of my childhood have bloomed and ripened into a rich fruitage in the person of Mrs. Salter. Allow me to congratulate you as I feel proud of my sister woman in her manifest ability as mayor of Argonia. Most respectfully, Mrs. Mary Knight. So a lot of women were like, it has happened. By the way, Mary lived in New York. Mary wrote her this letter saying, you being the mayor is a realization of my

childhood dream that somebody opened the double doors of equality. How did that have to make Dora feel? Wow, this might have actually been worth it. People sent reporters to Argonia, Kansas. Newspaper reporters from all over the country came to see, what's it like to have a lady mayor? Can a lady mayor do this job? Do the members of the city council just run right over her? Do they ignore her? Does she act like their mom? What's it like? This is what one of the articles in the newspaper said about the job she was doing. They said she's intelligent, capable, conscientious, and fully equal to all the requirements of her position. Another person said she is discharging her duties of office in the most acceptable manner. And another one said

she is having a very successful administration. When she was elected to her present office, her enemies predicted that she would make a failure of her effort. Up until the present, she has made no plunders. So then imagine, imagine how mind blown all of these haters were when during her year as mayor, she had a baby. Not only was she the first female mayor in U.S. history, not only was she elected via a joke, but she also had the audacity to give birth in office. the audacity to give birth in office. You know, like back then, being pregnant in public wasn't something that you really like were meant to do. Like you tried to conceal your condition. There were a lot of euphemisms surrounding pregnancy, even just saying, I'm expecting. That's a euphemism, a softer way to say something. In addition to the fact that

it was not socially acceptable for a female to be the mayor of a city, then to go ahead and give birth and to be a mother of four young children while apparently doing a very good job as mayor? Unheard of. That's not even an exaggeration. That was unheard of. So she declined to seek re-election, even though she ostensibly did a very good job. She had never set out to be the mayor and she was like, I care about my community. I'm going to do the best job that I can while I'm here, but I'm not interested in being a politician. So she only served the one term as mayor and eventually she and her husband and their children moved away. She was described by everyone throughout her life as being so bright,

so interested, so curious that she wasia made a plaque for her on November 10th, 1933. They had this big ceremony. They were like, we need to acknowledge that Argonia had the first female mayor in the entire country. mayor in the entire country. And the plaque that the Women's Kansas Day Club had made said, in honor of Mrs. Susanna Medora Salter, first woman mayor in the United States, she served as mayor of Argonia, Kansas in 1887. Dora passed away when she was 101 and again was described as so bright, independent, and with it until the very end. She was ultimately buried next to her husband in Argonia.

The home that she lived in when she was the mayor is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's now a museum. You can go to the Salter House and see memorabilia. Interestingly enough, Argonia, Kansas still has around 500 people in it, the same as when she was elected mayor. Isn't that amusing and also a little bit shocking? And so it was a joke, and yet she did a fantastic job. One other thing that I thought was really interesting about this story is that she received all of this fan mail, right? She received all of these letters, telegrams, et cetera, from all over the country. One was from a minister in Iowa,

grams, et cetera, from all over the country. One was from a minister in Iowa and the minister wrote and was like, I read about this in the newspaper and I am writing to see if it is true. Like he was like, I don't know what to believe. That doesn't even seem possible. And so he took it upon himself to write her a letter to see, is this real? Her salary for being the mayor was $1 a year. And she did not have any budget. And so she spent her own money, her family's own money on postage, letterhead, et cetera, writing back to everyone who congratulated her. She also, by the way, was invited to a bunch of national women's suffrage events with people like Susan B. Anthony, etc. She was very recognized during that time period as a significant

individual because she had so much attention surrounding her mayorship. She remained interested but never sought public office again. And I just love that story. I love that she did her best. She did a great job, even though it was just kind of thrust upon her as a joke. She showed them. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the story of America's first female mayor, Susanna Medora Salter. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend?

All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.