Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Ann Jarvis Greeley, 1831-1914
By Thomas Dublin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University
Ann F. Jarvis was born in Maine in 1831, daughter of Charles and Mary Ann Jarvis. She was the fourth of nine children residing in the Jarvis household in Ellsworth, ME, in 1850. In 1853 she married Everard Greeley and the family continued to live in Ellsworth. They had one child, Mary A., born in 1857. At different times Everard was recorded as a real estate agent, a speculator, and a horse breeder. Ann was noted as a dry goods trader and a dealer in fancy goods. She also wrote a column on the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the Ellsworth American and The Island Breeze.
A biographical account of Greeley notes that she purchased an Ellsworth millinery store at 20, two years before her marriage, and held women's meetings on the second floor. In 1857 she arranged for Susan B. Anthony to speak in town. In January 1858 she followed up that meeting with a petition to the state legislature "praying that the right of suffrage may be exercised by women." In 1872-73 she served on the executive committee of the Maine Woman Suffrage Association and organized a petition campaign calling for woman suffrage. She, three of her sisters, and other women also submitted a protest to the Ellsworth town assessors: "We therefore protest being taxed until we are allowed the rights of citizens."
In 1893, Greeley was listed as a member of the Federal Suffrage Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1895 she submitted a petition to the Maine State Legislature with 178 Ellsworth signatures calling for woman suffrage. She served as a Maine delegate to the NAWSA convention as late as 1911 at the age of 80.
Ann Greeley passed away in Ellsworth in October 1914. An obituary in the Ellsworth American noted that her "allegiance to a cause was not that of the passive kind; what she gave her heart to she gave her hand to."
Sources:
Ida Husted Harper, et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6 (1922). [LINK]
Federal manuscript census entries for Jarvis [Joris] family, Ellsworth, ME 1850; Greeley family, 1870, 1880, 1900, and 1910. Accessed via Ancestry Library Edition.
Find-a-Grave.com, death record for Ann F. Greeley, 1914. Accessed via Ancestry Library edition.
Steve Fuller, "Pioneering Businesswoman Helped Bring Susan B. Anthony to Ellsworth in 1857," 27 April 2017, accessed online at https://www.ellsworthamerican.com/featured/pioneering-businesswoman-helped-bring-susan-b-anthony-ellsworth-1857/.
Charles A. Scontras, "Maine women have long fought for equal rights, and the fight continues still," Lewiston (ME)Sun Journal, 7 January 1918. Accessed online at https://www.sunjournal.com/2018/01/07/maine-women-have-long-fought-for-equal-rights-and-the-fight-continues-still/.
On the Library of Congress website, "By the People," there is a scanned and transcribed collection documents from the Mary Church Terrell Papers. Included in this set are the Proceedings of the 1893 Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.; These include a listing on p. 162 of Ann F. Greeley as a member of the Federal Suffrage Committee of NAWSA. Accessible online at https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/mary-church-terrell-advocate-for-african-americans-and-women/democracy-in-action/mss425490286/mss425490286-135/.
NAWSA, Forty-Third Annual Report of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association Given at the Convention Held in Louisville, KY, October 19 to 25 . . . [1911].