Steuben women started campaigning for the vote almost immediately after the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Here’s an overview of their actions and activities!

1852
Susan B. Anthony spoke in Corning (four years after the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls).

1855
Susan B. Anthony spoke in Bath on January 5 as part of a County Women’s Rights Convention — day one of a five-day visit that also included two speeches in Corning (1/7 and 1/9). The purpose of the meeting was to discuss “all the reasons that impel Woman to demand her right of Suffrage.” Miss Anthony is known to have spoken at some time in Caton and in Cohocton, but the dates are unknown.

1870
Susan B. Anthony spoke in Corning to an audience of 80.

1880
Partial voting rights! New York women could vote in school elections and serve as school trustees if they had children in school, or owned real property. Two women were immediately elected trustees in Cohocton Union Free School District.

1881
Suffrage leader Lillie Deveraux Blake spoke in Corning in November.

1894
On August 9 the W.C.T.U., or Women’s Christian Temperance Union, finished two nights of elaborately-staged performances at the Corning Opera House. Besides temperance, the W.C.T.U. also fought for social reform, protection for working girls, aid and Americanization for immigrants, world peace, and women’s suffrage.

1901
EXPANDED partial voting rights! New York women who owned property, and paid taxes on that property, could vote on village taxation issues. Hammondsport Herald publisher Lew Brown ran repeated pieces sympathetic to women’s suffrage. In one such piece, Ada Stoddard of M.I.T. predicted that once women had the vote, equal pay for equal work would quickly become a reality. Other voices claimed that women voters would end corruption and outlaw war.

1906
The Hornell directory showed an Equal Suffrage society.

1913
On the evening of June 19, two young New England women gave eloquent and persuasive speeches at the Corning clock tower square. They were campaigning on behalf of equal suffrage, or votes for women.

1914
A Corning appearance by Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch (daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) led to a formal organization. On April 6 a meeting in the interest of woman suffrage was held in the assembly hall at the Odd Fellows’ Temple. Mrs. Frank C. Payne of Corning presided. Speakers (all women) came from Syracuse, New York City, and Hornell. A suffrage tent was erected in Dickinson Square, open air meetings were held, and the Torch of Liberty was carried into Corning. Susan B. Anthony, who died in 1906, had predicted that New York women would vote by 1914, but her hopes were disappointed.

1915
Steuben voted 9740 to 7226 against the New York voter suffrage amendment. Chemung was the only local county that approved.

1917
On November 6, Corning voters (all men) cast 947 ballots to approve the women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution, and 660 against. Steuben as a whole voted it down, 6866 to 6760. Allegany was the only neighboring county to approve, but the amendment passed statewide.

1918
FULL VOTES AT LAST! Women could finally vote in New York, on exactly the same basis as men. Susannah Thompson of Erwin ran for Steuben County treasurer and came in third.

1920
FULL VOTES DOUBLY GUARANTEED! Women could vote nationwide, by U.S. constitutional amendment ratified the same year. Rather than just going out of business, women’s suffrage groups became the League of Women Voters.