Artifacts and people related to Alaska’s suffrage efforts

• printed in gold ink on a purple silk ribbon reads: "Grand Prize Award Ribbon/Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition/Seattle 1909"
• Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle 1909
• ASM 96-11-1

This grand prize ribbon was awarded at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle. Suffragists from across the nation, including Alaska suffragist Cornelia Hatcher, rode the so-called Suffrage Express to this world’s fair, arriving in time for Woman Suffrage Day. Suffragists saw the A-Y-P Exposition as an opportunity to educate visitors from across the country and the world about the benefits of suffrage.

• white paper ballot, at the top reads "Official Ballot, First Judicial Division, for the General Election to be held in the Territory of Alaska, on Tuesday, November 7, 1916."
• First Judicial Division, for the General Election to be held in the Territory of Alaska, on Tuesday, November 7, 1916.
• Gift of Ed and Nancy Ferrell
• ASM 2002-21-1

Women were an influential political force in the 1916 Alaska election. Lena Morrow Lewis was the first woman to run for a federal office in Alaska. This nationally known Socialist and suffragist received 10% of the vote that year. That same election Alaskans voted in favor of Prohibition, in large part due to the effective campaigning of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.  It was not until 2002 that Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski was the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

• white ceramic cup and saucer with design of dark green bands and crest with initials PH at center
• Pullen House, Skagway 1930
• ASM 92-15-1

Harriet Pullen is said to have had only $7 in her pocket when she arrived in Skagway in 1898, but within a year she opened a luxury hotel, the Pullen House Hotel. This successful entrepreneur used her carriage to drive women to the polls in 1914 during the first territorial election that allowed Alaskan women to vote. The non-partisan candidates whom Pullen and many other Skagway women supported won the day.

University of Alaska Fairbanks Rasmuson Library 1980-68-146

Cornelia Jewett Hatcher Papers, Anchorage Museum, Gift of Robin Rustad, B2008.015.14.2

Monmouth College Archives