Female Ancestors in NY Get the Vote in 1917

 

New York State granted women the right to vote on November 6, 1917. Women were soon allowed to show up in person to add their names to the list of voter registrations all around the state. 

Ancestry.com has released a new database of digitized voter registration ledgers from Manhattan. TY to the sharp-eyed folks on the New York City Genealogy FB page for pointing this out! 

For International Women's Day and Women's History Month, I prioritized looking for my female ancestors who lived in Manhattan during the period covered by this new database (1915-56).

Women registered in 1918

I was happy to see that some of my female ancestors in New York City showed up to register the first time they were legally permitted to do so. 

The image at top shows how many people in all were added to the registration ledger for a particular election district over a two-day period in February 1918, counting my female ancestors too. Yet the ledger was officially known as the 1917 voter registration list. Hold that thought.

Let me say that I'm very proud of the women who registered in February, 1918 so they could vote for the first time in a New York special election held during March, 1918. 

Check the source carefully

This is also a reminder to check into each source carefully. As I said, this particular voter registration ledger was titled 1917 and correctly transcribed that way by Ancestry.

However, as shown in the excerpt at the top and on individual pages of the scanned ledgers in database, women (including my female ancestors) who registered in 1918 were added to the 1917 listing. 

The lower part of the summary of registered voters notes that as of May 1918, 140 women registered to vote in this specific election district.

So I would indicate 1918 as the date of my female ancestors' voter registrations, despite the official name of the ledger being the 1917 voter registration list. 

Voter Records Reflect Tight-Knit Family

 

My Mahler ancestors (on my Dad's side) and in-law families often lived near each other, I can see from the 1900 US Census and 1905 New York Census and going forward in time. 

These ancestors (some immigrants, some the first generation born in America) were enthusiastic about exercising their right to vote. Since the voter lists are arranged by address, this is a great opportunity to explore the tight-knit connections between Mahler siblings and spouses in the 1920s.

At top, an excerpt from the 1924 Voter List for the apartment house at 2347 Morris Avenue in the Bronx, New York.

In the first blue oval is the name of my great uncle Joseph A. Markell, who was married to my great aunt Mary Mahler in 1921. Mary is on the voter list, but a bit further down. 

Also in the first oval is the name of my great uncle Morris Mahler, who for many years was the main support of his mother (my paternal grandma Henrietta Mahler Burk) and his younger sister Dora Mahler, who had a chronic health condition that limited her ability to work.

In the next blue oval is my great uncle Louis Volk, who married my great aunt Ida Mahler in 1920. Ida's name appears a bit further down on the list...in the third blue oval, where her sister Mary shows up.

In the final blue oval at bottom of the list is my great aunt Dora Mahler, who did NOT live at 2348 Morris Avenue. She actually lived in the same building as her Mahler siblings, specifically in the apartment with her older brother Morris. 

The 2348 address on this voter list is a typo, pure and simple. Dora never married, and a chronic health condition limited her ability to work--so she tended to live with her brother or her mother.

I can be certain that Dora's address was 2347 Morris Avenue because she was enumerated at that residence in the household of her brother Morris in 1925, when the New York Census was taken. In the next apartment at that address was Ida Mahler Volk and Louis Volk, along with their first-born child.

Family stories confirm that the Mahler sisters in particular were quite close, and their spouses got along famously. Even when they moved further away, they were in touch and their hearts remained close. 

"Exploration" is this week's #52Ancestors theme from Amy Johnson Crow.