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Sara MacCormack Algeo

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Sara MacCormack Algeo
A white woman with dark hair in a simple updo. She is wearing a light colored dress.
Sarah MacCormack Algeo, from the George Grantham Bain collection, Library of Congress.
Born
Sara Louisa MacCormack

June 13, 1876
Cohasset, Massachusetts
Died1953
Barrington, Rhode Island
Occupation(s)Suffragist, educator

Sara MacCormack Algeo (June 13, 1876 – 1953), born Sara Louisa MacCormack, was an American suffragist and educator.

Early life and education

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Sara Louisa MacCormack was born in Cohasset, Massachusetts, the daughter of James MacCormack and Sara Clements MacCormack. She earned a bachelor's degree at Boston University in 1899,[1] and a master's degree at Brown University in 1911.[2]

Career

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MacCormack taught school in Cranston, Rhode Island, from 1899 to 1907. She was chair of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association, co-founder and chair of the Providence Woman Suffrage Party,[3][4] and a member of the Rhode Island League of Working Women's Clubs and the College Equal Suffrage League. In 1914 and 1918 she was a speaker at suffrage events in Newport, chaired by Maud Howe Elliott.[5][6]

Algeo wrote a memoir of her suffrage work, The Story of a Sub-Pioneer (1925). "I am a feminist first, last and all the time," she wrote. "It simply makes me angry through and through to see women as women imposed upon. Not a day passes without some flagrant violation of fair play toward them coming to my notice."[7]

After suffrage was won, Algeo was first president of the Rhode Island League of Women Voters. She ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Rhode Island state senate in 1920.[8] She represented the National American Woman Suffrage Association at an international suffrage congress in Geneva in 1920. In 1924 she was chair of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Woman's Party.[9] In 1932, she was a third-party temperance candidate for a seat in the United States House of Representatives.[10][11]

Personal life and legacy

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Sara MacCormack married James Walker Algeo in 1907.[1] She was widowed when Algeo died in 1945, and she died in 1953, in her seventies, in Barrington, Rhode Island. Her collection of suffrage postcards is in the Schlesinger Library.[12] In 2020, she was selected for induction into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame, to mark the centenary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b College of Liberal Arts, Bostonia 8(October 1907): 22.
  2. ^ Leonard, John W. (1914). Woman's Who's who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914-1915. American Commonwealth Company. p. 42.
  3. ^ The State of Rhode Island (1916). Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. p. 618.
  4. ^ "Rhode Island's Lively Summer Plans". The Woman Citizen. 1: 89. June 30, 1917.
  5. ^ "A Woman's Duty to Vote". Newport Daily News. 1914-01-06. p. 4. Retrieved 2020-08-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ "Woman Suffrage Meeting". Newport Mercury. 1918-03-08. p. 5. Retrieved 2020-08-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ Sara Algeo, The Story of a Sub-Pioneer (Providence: Snow & Farnham Company, 1925): 13.
  8. ^ "Sara MacCormack Algeo". Her Hat Was In The Ring. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  9. ^ "Mrs. H. Havemeyer visits Republican Committee on behalf of ERA- Rhode Island, 1924" Photographic Records of the National Woman's Party.
  10. ^ "Allied Forces Launch Lively Campaign". Newport Mercury. 1932-10-14. p. 7. Retrieved 2020-08-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ "Mrs. Algeo Files Nomination Papers". Newport Mercury. 1932-10-14. p. 1. Retrieved 2020-08-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ Suffrage postcards of Sara M. Algeo, 1912-1913, Schlesinger Library.
  13. ^ "14 notable women to be inducted into RIHHF". RICentral. June 23, 2020. Retrieved 2020-08-12.
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