Biographical Database of Black Women Suffragists

Biography of Alice Bartee Scott, 1875-1939

 

By Hallie Borstel, historian

Alice Bartee was born in Virginia, probably at Fork Union in Fluvanna County, in about 1874 or 1875, daughter of Miles Bartee and Lucy Kingston. She had at least four sisters (Chance, Charity, Henrietta, and Laura) and three brothers (Philip, James, and an unnamed baby boy who died in infancy). It seems that Alice, Henrietta, and Laura all moved to the New York City area to work as domestic servants in the last decade of the 19th century.

On 18 February 1903 in Kings County, New York, Alice married Henry Thomas Scott, a carpenter. Henry and Alice lived for many years at 89 Samuel Street in Jamaica, Queens, New York, with Henry's son Walter. Henry and Alice did not have any children together.

Alice attended the annual meeting of the Empire State Federation of Women's Clubs in July 1913 where for the first time the statewide federation officially adopted a pro-suffrage resolution. She was elected treasurer of that organization in 1919 and again in 1920. By 1930, she was acting as the chaplain of the Northeastern Federation of Women's Clubs.

Alice was a Sunday School teacher at Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York (1914-1918). This means she most likely knew and worked with fellow Virginian and suffragist Alice Wiley Seay, also an activist in that church. She was also a member and recording secretary of the Mortgage Relief Club (1906-1908).

Henry Scott died on 17 September 1921 in Queens. Alice married, secondly, James C. Mapp, on 27 September 1924 in Brooklyn. James was a chauffeur originally from the British West Indies.

Alice died on 31 January 1939 in Brooklyn and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery.

Sources:

1880 U.S. Census

1892 New York State Census

1900 U.S. Census

1910 U.S. Census

1920 U.S. Census

1925 New York State Census

1930 U.S. Census

New York City Grooms' Index, italiangen.org.

New York, New York, U.S., Index to Death Certificates, 1862-1948, Ancestry.com.

New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795-1949, FamilySearch.org.

The Daily Star (Queens, NY)

The New York Age, 10 July 1913, p. 1.

Virginia Births and Christenings, 1584-1917, FamilySearch.org.

Virginia, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Death Records, 1853-1912, FamilySearch.org.

 

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