Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Alice Campbell Houghton Beckwith, 1848-1916
By Dr. Shannon M. Risk, Associate Professor of History, Niagara University
Maine Suffragist and Minister's Wife
Alice Campbell Houghton Beckwith represented the unknown cohort that comprised the first generations of the women's suffrage movement. While her own historical shadow is limited, the stories of her and husband Loring Everett Beckwith's families demonstrate the monumental changes during the progressive era in the United States. Her life also represents the many expectations of a minister's wife, mother, and reformer, where more immediate family needs often overwhelmed any spare time for suffrage work.
Born on July 22, 1848, to George Augustus Houghton and Mary Appleton Tilden Houghton in Boston, Alice counted early Boston settlers in her lineage. She joined a sister, Catherine J. Houghton, born in 1844. Her family resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father worked as auditor of accounts. George Houghton died in 1867 of heart disease, the same year as his daughter Catherine. The 1870 census registered an Irish servant in the Houghton household, with Mary Houghton as head of household, Alice helping her keep house, and their recorded income a very comfortable $5,000. Alice, age 23 at the time of the 1870 census, was listed with "no profession."
Alice's future husband, Loring Everett Beckwith, was born on February 12, 1846, to George C. Beckwith and Tamesin Heath Beckwith. At age 18, he earned his A.B. degree from Harvard University in the class of 1864 in the late Civil War period. He spent two and a half years at Harvard Divinity School, graduating in 1870. He and Alice married on April 28, 1871, in Cambridge. The couple immediately shuttled to Denver, Colorado, so that the bride could meet the extended Beckwith family that now resided there. They stayed in Colorado for a year before heading back east where Loring Everett Beckwith was ordained in July 1873. That same year, the young couple arrived to Beckwith's new position at the Christ Church - a congregation that leaned towards Unitarianism - on Oak and State Streets near the capital building in Augusta, Maine. Quite quickly, Alice Beckwith was welcomed onto the executive committee of the Maine State Woman Suffrage Association in 1874. The MWSA had organized in 1872, primarily in Portland, but the network soon grew. Alice, the new minister's wife and a blooming suffragist, did not have much time to roll up her sleeves. The financial panic of 1873 strained church coffers, Loring's health began to fail, and by 1874, the Beckwiths relocated back to Boston to seek new opportunities. Christ Church in Augusta had struggled to keep its doors open in the decades bookending the Civil War. Some parishioners abandoned the church when its ministry committed to anti-slavery during the war.
In 1875, the next opportunity came in Milford, New Hampshire, where Reverend Beckwith headed a Unitarian Church. After two years, the Beckwiths once again relocated to Boston. Reverend Beckwith became well known as an expert on English literature during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Anne. According to his Harvard alumni publication, he "lectured between three hundred and three hundred and fifty times," while teaching at Essex Institute in Salem in the 1879-1880 academic year. By spring 1880, Alice and Loring settled in to live with her mother, Mary A. Houghton, in Cambridge at the time of that year's census. The Beckwiths welcomed a daughter, Theodora Mary Tilden Beckwith, on April 21, 1880. In the census, Loring listed his profession as lecturer, and Theodora, not yet one year old, appeared on the rolls as well. The record is spotty between 1880--1895. In 1885, Alice's mother, Mary Appleton Tilden Houghton died at the family home in Cambridge of "acute bronchitis." By 1895, Loring's poor health brought an early death at age 49.
Alice Beckwith, now a widow, raised her daughter Theodora alone in Cambridge, and the two shared their home into the early 1900s. No further suffrage activities were noted for Beckwith aside from the tantalizing note in a Maine Woman Suffrage Association pamphlet that identified her sentiments back in 1874. Unfortunately, Alice Beckwith did not live to see passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that recognized American women's right to vote in 1920. While the First World War raged in Europe and Asia, Alice Beckwith died on May 24, 1916 in Boston at 68 years old, leaving her home at the 60 Charlesgate East building in Boston to family. Ten years passed between her death and her noted burial in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in the Houghton-Tilden family plot, according to www.findagrave.com.
SOURCES
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