Madeline McDowell Breckinridge to be Honored with Historic Women’s Suffrage Trail Marker in Lexington at Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate

The League of Women Voters of Lexington is delighted to announce that a historic women’s suffrage marker for Madeline McDowell Breckinridge will be unveiled at Ashland – The Henry Clay Estate located at 120 Sycamore Road Lexington, KY on June 10, 2022 at 5 p.m. The project is sponsored by the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites/National Votes for Women Trail and funded by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation. (www.wgpfoundation.org/) It is free and open to the public.

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge served as President of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) from 1912-1915 and 1919-1920 and Vice-President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1913 -1915. Breckinridge along with her cousin Laura Clay were the first women to address a joint session of the Kentucky Legislature where they asked them to pass legislation giving women the right to vote. On January 6, 1920 Kentucky became the 23rd state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Breckinridge then turned her efforts on forming the League of Women Voters of Kentucky.

According to Lowell Harrison and James Klotter in their book, A New History of Kentucky Madeline Breckinridge was “The most influential woman in the state, she used new tactics, such as suffrage marches, as well as her speaking ability and humor, to gain more support. In a strong voice coming from a slim and often weak body, she told audiences to look at Kentucky, with its poor schools, violence, and corrupt politics, and asked if the question should not be whether women were fit for suffrage but whether men were.”