Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Fannie B. Patrick, 1864-1939
By Thomas Dublin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, SUNY Binghamton
Fannie Washington Brown was born in 1864 in Iowa, the daughter of Isaac and Sara Ellen Brown. She attended Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa and taught school and music before her marriage to Nebraskan Frank G. Patrick in 1888. The couple lived in Nebraska until they moved to Reno, Nevada in 1902. Frank was active in Democratic state politics; Fannie was active in the Nebraska State Federation of Women's Clubs. In Reno, she was a charter member of the Nevada Federation of Women's Clubs and served as its president in 1914.
In Reno Frank was a successful stock and dairy farmer on a 90-acre spread and sold milk to the gambling houses of Reno. Fannie was a leading socialite, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Nevada Musical Club, and the Twentieth Century Club. She was active in and served several terms as president of the Episcopal Church Guild and was a leader of the Reno YWCA.
The Woman's Who's Who for 1914-1915 noted her support for woman suffrage, secured in Nevada in 1914. Subsequently she served on the Ratification Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association that saw the Nevada state legislature ratify the 19th Amendment in February 1920.
Local newspapers covered Fannie's civic activism. She was active in the Women's Citizens' Club in 1915; she was a director of the South Side Irrigating Canal Company in 1918. In February 1920 she joined other Women's Club and NAWSA leaders writing a letter to the editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal two days after the legislature ratified the 19th Amendment. They wrote "to express their gratitude and appreciation for the consideration shown the women of the United States, which culminated in the action of the legislature."
Fannie Patrick died in Reno in October 1939.
Sources:
Ida Husted Harper, et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (1922) [LINK].
Federal Manuscript census: Reno, 1910. Accessed through HeritageQuest.com.
WikiTree.com provided links to birth, marriage and death records Fannie Brown Patrick.
Newspapers.com searches for Fannie Patgrick produced 7 articles that mentioned her suffrage and other civic activities between 1902 and 1920. Accessed via Newspapers.com.
John William Leonard, ed. Woman's Who's Who in America (1915) [LINK]
Registration Form, National Register of Historic Places for the Patrick Ranch House, Reno, NV, 2003, Accessed online at https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/7ba7a60f-7045-4b94-bbb0-09069e99ce87