Jerry Carbone started Whetstone Brook Genealogy to help individuals understand their family history "by uncovering generations of family stories, artifacts, and documents, while using professional and trusted genealogical research standards, as described on his website. He is retired from a 22-year career as the director of Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro. For the version of this story that puts an accent on the genealogy, including full citations, visit bit.ly/MR-Citations.
BRATTLEBORO-More than 100 years have passed since women received the right to vote in national elections. It has been 56 years since Shirley Chisholm of New York was the first Black woman elected to Congress, and 52 years since she launched her candidacy for President in 1972.
In 2018, then-Sen. Kamala Harris of California wrote a foreword for a report, "The Chisholm Effect: Black Women in American Politics 2018" (from the Center for American Women and Politics), in which she discussed the ground that Chisholm broke.
"Her arrival on the national political stage was validation that our centuries-long work to claim seats at our country's most powerful decision-making tables was not in vain," Harris wrote. "Chisholm's salient, constant voice on behalf of disenfranchised Americans was a clarion call for Black women to continue pushing toward representational parity and for leadership that will work to realize our country's founding principals of equity and opportunity for all."
So, come next November, should the United States elect Kamala Harris as our president, she will finally join the other 30 women, according to the United Nations, who are currently holding the position of head of state.
Could Brattleboro's Mary Rogers, likely a child of an enslaved family, a housekeeper, the first woman of color in Brattleboro to register to vote, and very likely the first to vote for president in November 1920, ever imagine the phrase "Madame President"? And that the person who would be addressed in this manner would have been just like her?
Let's hope so.
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In August of 1920, through the passage of the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution, women 21 years of age and older were granted the ability to vote, beginning with the presidential election that coming November.
There were 144 women of color living in Vermont who were eligible. In Windham County, there were 13 females, 11 of whom had reached the minimum age of 21. Five of those women lived in Brattleboro.
During the pandemic, Project 144 was created by Vermont Historical Records Program Director Rachel Onuf to research these Vermont women of color (specifically, Black women) who may have been involved in the women's suffrage movement and possibly voted that November.
The committee scoured the pages of the 1920 U.S. Census of Vermont to extract the records that enumerators coded as "B" for Black or "Mu" for mulatto women and families.
The actual voting records have been lost or destroyed in most towns, as was the case in Brattleboro, but the records of the Freeman's Oath (now named the "Voter's Oath or Affirmation") have survived in the form of a miscellaneous records book in the archives of the Brattleboro Town Clerk.
The oath, taken by all residents of Vermont as a qualification for voting, reads:
You solemnly swear (or affirm) that whenever you give your vote or suffrage, touching any matter that concerns the State of Vermont, you will do it so as in your conscience you shall judge will most conduce to the best good of the same, as established by the Constitution, without fear or favor of any person.
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At least one woman of the five who lived in Brattleboro, Mary M. Rogers, 31, had taken the oath in Brattleboro and likely voted in the November 1920 presidential election.
Mary Rogers had resided in Brattleboro at least since 1910, where she lived and worked as a servant in the household of Dr. Edwin Bowen, physician, at 17 High St. Her age was listed at 26 (meaning she was born about 1884) and her race as "Mu" (mulatto). She was born in North Carolina, as were her parents.
Ten years later, in the 1920 Census, Rogers was enumerated as being 32 years of age (a discrepancy), and she was still part of the household at 43 High St., owned by Bowen.
Town records show that on Sept. 9, 1920, Carl S. Hopkins, a local justice, attested that Miss Mary M. Rogers took the Freeman's Oath.
While we do not know if Rogers voted the following November in the national election for president and for her senator and representatives in Washington D.C., it is likely that she did.
And because the other four women of color (Delia McCuller, 32, Julia Scott, 30, Clarice Burnett, 30, and Lillian Harris, 35) were not located in the town's Freeman Oath records, if Rogers did vote, she would have been the first.
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Mary Rogers' birthdates were listed as 1884 and 1891 in the 1910 and 1920 Census, respectively. North Carolina online birth records offered no answers.
According to the 1900 U.S. Census, a family named Rogers lived in Kittrell, North Carolina. The family included George Rogers Sr. (68), and his wife, Harriet (55); a son, Willie (16); and a daughter, Kittie (18).
While Mary Rogers is not listed as part of this household, a clue in her father's probate record of 1925 perhaps points to this household as her family. One of the heirs in his will was a woman of the same name.
No marriage records were found in North Carolina. She was listed as single in 1940, when she was last recorded in that year's census in Vermont.
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Mary Rogers likely arrived in Brattleboro sometime between 1904 and 1910. Why those dates? Edwin Bowen, her employer, was a widower already, according to the 1910 U.S. Census, where Rogers' name first appears in Vermont. Bowen's wife, Louise, passed away after an operation in a Springfield, Massachusetts, hospital on Sept. 13, 1904. Rogers was likely hired to help with the household tasks after Louise Bowen died.
According to the 1900 census, Mary M. Rogers was a servant in the household of David and Lucretia Heald, of Milford, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. The census also reported that the Healds had been married four years. If Rogers was hired when they got married, it is possible that she relocated to New Hampshire as early as 1895 or 1896.
How did Mary Rogers, then, get from Milford, New Hampshire, to Brattleboro, Vermont, almost 60 miles away? What occurred in the Heald family that would have made her want to leave? How did she make the connection to Edwin Bowen? These are questions that may never be answered.
On March 13, 1913, an article in the Brattleboro Reformer with the headline "Followed and Robbed," reported about a woman who was stalked and robbed while attempting to enter the house of her employer, Dr. E. S. Bowen of 17 High St. That unfortunate woman was Mary M. Rogers.
Other articles over the years documented Mary's time in Brattleboro as well as her sojourns down south to her state of birth, North Carolina. At times, it seemed she lived in both places:
• June 7, 1932: Mary M. Rogers returned from her home in Kittrell, North Carolina. By this time, she no longer worked for E.S. Bowen. She rented a room in the Wagner Building.
• Nov. 19, 1932: After spending the summer and fall in Brattleboro, Rogers returned to her home in Kittrell.
• Sept. 11, 1934: Rogers left for an indefinite visit with her sister in Kittrell.
The 1940 U.S. Census documented that Rogers was living in Brattleboro. She rented an apartment at 95 Main St. and she was enumerated as a "retired housekeeper." She had also attained a college degree.
On May 12, 1941, the Reformer reported that Mary Rogers moved from her home at 95 Main St. back to her former home in Kittrell, North Carolina. This would seem to indicate that she had returned permanently to her hometown. It seems, though, that she wanted to be in Brattleboro, as records show she returned.
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Subsequent articles in the Reformer reported that Rogers had returned to Brattleboro and was experiencing failing health. She was in and out of the hospital and Hillcrest Rest Home.
On Feb. 16, 1963, her obituary appeared in the Reformer:
"Miss Mary Rogers, about 95, a resident of Brattleboro for many years, died this morning at Hillcrest Rest Home. She had been a patient there since December 1959. Miss Rogers was employed many years by E.S. Bowen, who died in 1930. She is survived by one sister, Mrs. Kittie Young, Kittrell, N.C., no funeral series will be conducted. Burial will take place next spring in Meetinghouse Hill Cemetery."
From this obituary, her birth year is now estimated about 1868. Three subsequent notices appeared in the Reformer regarding her probate.
According to these records, Rogers wanted her undertaker to be A.L. Rhode. Her wish was to be buried in an "inexpensive, plain casket," in a "small lot" in Meeting House Hill Cemetery. She did not want any services "but merely a prayer at my grave." Any material effects were to be given to her sister, Miss Kittie Young.
According to Marjorie Howe's book, Meeting House Hill Cemetery, Mary Rogers was buried in historical section A, row P, number 18.
There, a simple stone marker, almost overcome by grass and lichen, honors the memory of the first woman of color to exercise her right to vote in Brattleboro in 1920.
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