Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920
Biography of Alice Chism, 1849-1931
By Tamara Waters-Wheeler, School Psychologist/Interim Director, Minot State University, Minot, ND
Alice Chism was born in 1849 to Milan Lansing Hitchcock and Harriet Lumley. She was born in New York and married Gardner Chism on Feb. 26, 1876 in Sacramento, CA. She was 26 and he was 45. Gardner and Alice eventually moved their growing family to Reno, Nevada.
Alice gave birth to seven children, four of whom lived to adulthood. She became a widow at the age of 60 and her family made their living by farming. At the time of the 1920 Census, Alice was living on the farm with three of her sons and a servant.
Alice was a member of the women's suffrage movement and was part of the leadership team that first won the vote for women in 1914. Alice served as the correspondence secretary for the Equal Franchise Society. She was mentioned in the Reno Gazette as being involved in many of the suffrage movement's activities throughout her adult life. She participated in several conventions of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was mentioned the "Memoirs of Anne Martin" written in August of 1948 and published in The University of Nevada Bulletin.
Alice died in 1931 in Reno, Washoe County, Nevada at the age of 82.
Sources:
"Memoirs of Anne Martin," University of Nevada Bulletin, August 1948, p. range? Is there an editor noted?
Can you list your marriage and death records? Ancestry?
Reno Gazette?
Federal Manuscript census, Reno, NV,, 1920. Accessed via Ancestry Library Edition. Other years?
Other sources?