Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920

Biography of Rosalie Barrow Edge, 1877-1962

By Ashley L. Wright

Undergraduate, SUNY Oneonta

Mabel Rosalie Barrow was born November 3, 1877 to Harriet Bowen Woodward and John Wylie Barrow, a British importer and accountant. Rosalie grew up in a family of high social standing and was given a private education. She married Charles Noel Edge, a railroad and ship construction engineer.

Edge met Sybil Thomas, a British suffragist, in February 1913, and immersed herself in the suffrage movement. She joined the Equal Franchise Society, gave speeches and prepared pamphlets. After the birth of her third child, Rosalie went to the Empire State Campaign Committee, where she met Carrie Chapman Catt. In 1915 she was elected corresponding secretary for the New York State Woman Suffrage Party, where she worked alongside Catt and Mary Garrett Hay. She wrote suffrage pamphlets and other publications for the Party's campaigns that included the successful suffrage referendum in November 1917. After 1920, Edge continued active in the League of Women Voters.

Edge spent the later part of her life as an environmentalist and wildlife activist. In 1929, she came across a pamphlet stating that some supposed wildlife protection organizations allowed hunting on their lands. She eventually purchased Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania and created Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, which became a safe haven for birds of prey.

Rosalie Barrow Edge died November 20, 1962.

Sources: Dyana Z. Furmansky, Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy (Athens, Georgia: Georgia University Press, 2009); “Rosalie Edge Biography,” https://www.biography.com/people/rosalie-edge-072715 (accessed November 1, 2018); Lincoln A. Werden, “Wood, Field and Stream,” New York Times, May 7, 1943, 26; “Mrs. Charles Noel Edge Dies; Established a Hawk Sanctuary,” New York Times, December 1, 1962, 20. See also the profile of Edge in The New Yorker, April 17, 1948 and her Wikipedia biography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Edge.

 

This photograph of Rosalie Edge can be found online at: https://www.biography.com/people/rosalie-edge-072715

 

"Mrs. Chas. Noel Edge" The Woman Citizen (August 25, 1917): 226.

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