Early Suffrage Advocate and Lawyer, Olive S. England Deserves to be Remembered Better

Back in 1912, after failed attempts in 1906, 1908, and 1910, the Oregon amendment for woman suffrage was close and took several days to count.

Olive S. England, c.1898
(via OE and WU Law)

Election Day was November 4th. By the 8th, victory had finally become clear.

November 8th, 1912

The morning paper first went to Olive S. Enright for comment.

A couple weeks later as a celebration was organized, listed as Olive England Enright she was to give the welcoming remarks.

November 21st, 1912

Olive S. England, as she most often seems to be known, has not been discussed much at all in Salem history. In the Oregon Encyclopedia article on Woman Suffrage she is not mentioned. It is plausible, perhaps likely, that she was not a significant figure in any statewide context.

Even so, she is certainly an interesting and significant person in local Salem history and deserves more notice.

March 21st, 1936

At the end of her life the paper featured her house on the east side of Liberty Street between Chemeketa and Center, the current site of the mall.

For many years this was the home of William England and his wife, Olive Stanton England....He crossed the plans to Oregon in 1852 and settled in Salem....

In 1890 he formed a partnership with George Williams, and they organized the bank of Williams and England. About five years after this, the State Insurance company went broke, and the bank of Williams and England failed with it.

Olive Stanton was of the Alfred Stanton family. After finishing Willamette university she was known as a writer and artist of ability. She was Mrs. Olive Enright after Mr. England's death about the year 1900.

You will recall George Williams. He was active in the first phase of suffrage advocacy here during the 1870s.

• "Which George Williams was Mayor and Banker here?"

So was Olive England. Here she is at the "first annual meeting of the Marion County Woman's Suffrage Association" in 1875.

January 9th, 1875

Maybe another time we'll look more closely at the range of her activity in the 1870s. But at the very least this is evidence for a start and end to suffrage advocacy over nearly 40 years.

Not surprisingly, the piece from 1936 does not quite give Olive her due. Some sources have said she was the first woman law school graduate at Willamette, but the Oregon Encyclopedia article says one of two: "the class of 1898 included Willamette's first two women law graduates, Olive S. England and Gabrielle Clark." A news piece in April of 1898 agrees. She passed the bar exam in June.

As a writer, she published at least one book and there are suggestions there might be more.

Ceres: A Harvest Home Festival

Parts of it were performed locally, and there is evidence it escaped the region with a performance in Los Angeles.

December 14th, 1895

William England died in 1901. A couple years later she relocated to Houston and married J. E. Enright.

The morning paper picked up a Houston notice about the wedding.

His bride has been known to the people of Houston during the past year, and is a charming and versatile newspaper writer. In addition to her journalistic acquirements, she is a graduate of the law department of the University of Oregon [sic], and engaged in the practice of law in that commonwealth before coming to Texas. Some months ago she made application before Judge W. H. Wilson, then on the bench of the Fifty-fourth judicial district, for admission to the Harris county bar. The court refused the application...Instead of prosecuting an appeal to the decision, Mrs. England decided to abandon the forum for the more important, if less splendid, avocation involved in being queen of her husband's heart and home.

They did not stay in Houston long. She owned property here and for whatever combination of reasons Salem was a better fit.

December 13th, 1904

Solely "being queen of her husband's heart and home" was certainly not enough, and the marriage may not have been happy above and beyond the usual strictures of marriage at this time.

June 26th, 1903

The building to be rebuilt in that 1903 notice is probably the former site of Great Harvest downtown on Court Street. (While she owned the lot where the Court Street Dairy was located, the current building appears to post-date her ownership.)

Downtown Historic District National Register Nomination

Curiously, though not probably very importantly, she had a dispute with Benjamin Brick in 1914.

• "Brick's Corner and the Strangeness of Benjamin Brick" (2017)

Notices of her death in 1936 were minimal. She had not in fact divorced Enright. All so many ways she deserved longer narrative.

August 15th, 1936

She's buried in the IOOF Pioneer Cemetery with her first husband, William England, and also with Enright. The grave has a concrete slab and is at the main entry, just past the first east-west drive.

Olive S. England in back under concrete slab
(2012, weather was too crappy this weekend for a new photo!)

We'll probably return to her as there is surely more to discover and say about her suffrage advocacy, politics generally, writing, practice of law, and downtown development!

Addendum

Here's a note on the demolition of the house. For a flipping parking lot! What a waste.

April 19th, 1951

Additionally, the "gay nineties" headline in that piece from 1936 is weird. The piece mentions business and bank failures in the depression that followed the Panic of 1893. Gaiety isn't the focus. And 1936 is still in the Great Depression. That's some major erasure of economic hard times and misery, total mischaracterization and myth-making for the 1890s.