We originally held the hard copies of the Meyersdale Commercial - saved from being lost to history by former librarian, historian and genealogist Marguerite Cockley - and Somerset County Star within our Meyersdale Public Library collections. We worked hard to obtain the money to film and digitize these old newspapers. Now here we are, over a year later, and the digital images have been created. They will soon be available, free to the public, in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive.

We'd first discovered this story, printed in the Meyersdale Commercial on the 20th of March, 1913, while reviewing the microfilmed versions of the newspaper. We are still discovering such stories within our film collections. Yet, at the same time, we have found others - and look forward to locating even more - as we more easily search through the digital images we've recently acquired.

Our Somerset County women were active suffragists. These newspaper accounts attest to it.

- 5 September 2019

Published in the Meyersdale Republican newspaper on the 13th of March, 1913, this article let readers know Alice Paisley Flack Kiernan of Somerset would be visiting the community to speak not only in regard to parent-teacher issues, but also on the topic of "Votes for Women." Alice was the leading recruiter of suffragists in Somerset County. The Meyersdale Commercial's "Suffrage Meeting" story above confirms she was successful in quickly organizing a branch of the State Women's Suffrage Association in this southern Somerset County community. As the Republican reported in its March 20th issue, Alice and others throughout the state were looking ahead to 1915, when a suffrage amendment would be put to a vote before Pennsylvania's legislators.

Meyersdale's suffragists did not waste any time in organizing themselves behind the cause.

Our historical newspaper preservation project took some time, along with a lot of hard work, but our digitized newspaper images are now available for viewing within the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive. Until now, we hadn't noticed this piece of information about Alice!

By the late 1800s, the women's suffrage movement had been underway in the U.S. for decades. Dating back to July 1848, when the Declaration of Sentiments was signed during the nation's first Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, the movement has been deemed "The Largest Reform Movement in American History" by the Library of Congress. There were strong opinions on both sides, but in 1892, those responsible for publication of the Somerset County Star newspaper, printed in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, expressed their staunch belief that women should be given the vote. As we now know, nearly three more decades would pass before that idea would become a reality.

About a year after Meyersdale's suffragists had organized themselves behind the cause, a number of women in the nearby community of Berlin were deciding to join them.

To no one's surprise, Alice Kiernan led the first meeting of these Berlin suffragists. She pointed out women were seeking a voice in the electoral process not simply for the sake of voting, but for the good it would do them and their children.

Before the meeting came to a close, nearly every woman present had affixed her signature to a paper favoring women's suffrage. It was anticipated the Berlin women would permanently organize themselves as suffragists in the near future.

"... by the time Mrs. Kiernan had finished her address, all were enthusiastic about woman's suffrage."

Berlin also had its own newspaper in 1915 - the Berlin Record. Its August 6th story on the visit of the bell to its community spilled from the front page onto two additional inside pages ...

"A number of ladies in sympathy with the campaign to give the elective franchise to the women of the State had arranged to meet the bell party at the edge of town in gaily decorated automobiles and escort them into town. Men, women and children seemed possessed with a desire to see the bell that has had so much said about it in the press of the State, and the town was putting on quite a holiday appearance. But just before the noon hour word reached here from Somerset that the large truck on which the bell is transported from one place to another had broken down and that it would not be here until Monday afternoon. This caused considerable disappointment, as it being Saturday, quite a large crowd had already gathered to witness the demonstration and hear the addresses. The decorations were taken down and the ladies interested wore quite a deject look, for they knew that on Monday the crowd would not be nearly so large and the enthusiasm they had aroused in the coming of the bell would be somewhat lessened."

The article concluded by noting that after Berlin's eventual celebration of the bell's arrival on Monday, the party accompanying it departed for Schellsburg and Bedford, led as far as Roxbury by a delegation of Berlin suffragists.

"The bell, which has claimed so much attention wherever it has visited, was viewed with great interest by our people ... The Woman's Liberty Bell is as yet silent, the huge tongue being fastened, and it is the object in this tour of the bell to to induce the men of the State to unfasten the chains that bind the tongue, so that after the November election, when the suffrage amendment is to be voted on, the bell can proclaim women's liberty."