Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Annie Childs Taylor, 1875-1965
By Carson Davies, student, and Melanie Gustafson, professor, University of Vermont
President, Burlington Equal Franchise League
Recording Secretary and Legislative Committee, Vermont Equal Suffrage Association
Annie Childs Taylor was born on August 12, 1875 in St. Albans, Vermont, to Lucy Ella Childs and George Theodore Childs, a postmaster. She graduated from St. Albans High School and Vassar College, class of 1896. After returning to St. Albans, she was a schoolteacher at a local grammar school. In 1902, she married John Burnham Taylor of Burlington, Vermont, who had attended the University of Michigan before returning to Vermont to work at the St. Albans Messenger. In 1901 he became editor of the Burlington Free Press. They lived in Burlington.
In 1913, three new suffrage clubs were organized in Vermont: in Burlington, St. Albans, and Enosburg Falls. The Burlington Equal Franchise League was the most active and in 1914 Annie Taylor became its president. The next year, she became the recording secretary of the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association (VESA) and her report on the annual convention, which met in Springfield, Vermont in October, was printed in the 1915 Year Book. She wrote: "Your Corresponding Secretary has little to report. She has carried out the necessary correspondence and sent out the usual notices." The brevity of her report may have been a way to indicate that the disagreements among the state suffragists that had emerged a year earlier over their name, methods, and structure. For a brief period in 1914, the VESA was called the Vermont State Suffrage Association and the name change and establishment of the independent leagues indicated to some longtime VESA that the Congressional Union was making a headway in the state.
Taylor's roles as corresponding secretary reflected her loyalty to the VESA. In 1915, she was also appointed on a three-woman legislative committee to monitor the progress of the woman suffrage bill in the state legislature. Taylor was not able to travel to Montpelier and was therefore made responsible for "all necessary correspondence."
After her husband's death in 1917, Annie Childs Taylor moved to New York City. She died in 1965 and was buried in St. Albans.
Sources:
Vermont Equal Suffrage Association Year Book, 1912-1913 (Woodstock, Vt.: Elm Tree Press, 1913)
Vermont Equal Suffrage Association Twenty-Sixth Annual Convention, Rochester, June 11-12, 1913 (n.d., n.p.).
Vermont Equal Suffrage Association Year Book 1915 (Burlington, Free Press Printing Co., 1915).
Vassar Miscellany, October 1, 1896, p. 46.
Vassar College, The fourth general catalogue of the officers and graduates of Vassar College 1861-1910. (A. V. Haight Company 1910).
"Vermont Suffragists Meet," The Advance, November 14, 1914, clipping in Vermont Equal Suffrage Association Papers, 1883-1927, MSC 144-146, Leahy Library, Vermont History Center, Barre, Vermont.
"Annie C. Taylor in the 1920 United States Federal Census." Ancestry. http://search.ancestrylibrary.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?_phsrc=Hrl4&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&gss=angs-g&new=1&rank=1&msT=1&gsfn=annie childs&gsfn_x=0&gsln=taylor&gsln_x=0&msypn__ftp=vermont&MSAV=0&catbucket=rstp&uidh=mtj&pcat=ROOT_CATEGORY&h=41862193&db=1920usfedcen&indiv=1&ml_rpos=1.