If you asked them, Americans could probably name one or two prominent suffragists off the top of their hand: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Both were certainly important advocates for women’s rights, the 19th amendment, and the Progressive Movement generally. There were, of course, many suffragists. Membership in groups like the National American Woman Suffrage Association probably exceeded several million. I’d like to focus on a suffragist who hasn’t been as fortunate to be in the spotlight as some of the others.

Martha Van Rensselaer was a member of the prominent Van Rensselaer family, a friend of Susan B. Anthony, and co-founder of the College of Human Ecology at Cornell. Martha Van Rensselaer Hall does use her namesake. She was not just an important advocate for a woman’s right to vote, but also their tertiary education. She helped create Home Economics classes on campus in 1903, and a department of Home Economics in CALS. She worked with both Flora Rose and Anna Comstock, naturalists at Cornell.

In 1923, when Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Commerce, Martha was chosen to lead several conservation and food commissions. As part of her leadership she led outreach efforts in women education in biology abroad in Belgium. That same year the League of Woman Voters stated that she was 1 of the 12 most important women in the country.

Throughout history there have been those who were recognized at the time but forgotten. It’s easy for people to fall through the cracks of time. Susan B. Anthony lauded Martha getting “the farmers’ wives to talk” in a 1905 letter addressed to her. Susan B. Anthony was certainly important for the suffragist movement, but she wasn’t the only suffragist. Without others like Martha, she could have only gotten so far spreading ideas and lobbying by herself. It was through Martha’s connections and cooperation with Eleanor Roosevelt, that she got FDR – when he was governor of New York – to help create the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.

The story of history is not the story of a “great man” or “woman”, but a convolution of sparks and wires. Without people and their ideas nothing happens. No President, No ruler, No person can rule alone.

Let’s keep Martha’s name in the spotlight.