‘Should have done this long, long ago’: Richmond bridge to be dedicated for women’s suffragist
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Mary Anne Butters first heard of Dr. Mary Thomas in 1970 when she was working at the Indianapolis Star as a reporter.
She was covering the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the city when she heard about this 19th-century woman who was fighting for the right to vote over 70 years before Indiana ratified the 19th Amendment. She took pride in knowing this woman was from Wayne County like herself.
“I feel like I know her after all this,” Butters said.
After that event, Butters was inspired and dropped journalism to work in government with Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar. She later lobbied for and helped ratify the Equal Rights Act in Indiana. Butters says she’s steeped in activism as her mother’s family had a station on the Underground Railroad and her grandmother, too, was a suffragist.
Now, she serves as a Wayne County commissioner where she recently pushed for the central downtown bridge leading to the county courthouse to be renamed and dedicated in Thomas’s honor.
“We should have done this long, long ago. It should have been 140 years ago,” she said. “But we want to right that oversight.”
The Richmond community and government officials will celebrate the placement and dedication of the Indiana historical marker for Thomas at 1 p.m. Saturday on the west end of the bridge. The day also doubles as a celebration of Women’s Equality Day — a day that Butters sought to celebrate the event.
Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, who is chair of Indiana Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, will attend and take part in the christening and dedication. She said in a statement to INside INdiana Business she feels it’s her duty to celebrate the women who dedicated their lives to fighting for women’s rights and suffrage.
“Dr. Mary F. Thomas was a champion for the rights of Hoosier women and women across our great country. From being the President of the American Woman Suffrage Association to being the first woman to speak before the Indiana state legislature, her life exemplified the goals and mission of the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” Crouch said. “I am thankful for her contributions and the contributions of the many brave women who worked alongside her. This bridge dedication and historic marker will serve as a monument to her work for generations to come.”
No champagne will be popped on the bridge or alcohol be consumed at the event, Butters said, because Thomas believed in temperance, and the organizers wish to respect that.
The bridge was originally renamed for her in during the women’s suffrage centennial, but the pandemic halted the official dedication.
Wayne County commissioner Mary Anne Butters talks about the impact of Thomas and her activism on the county.
‘She made activism into her life’s mission‘: About Dr. Mary Thomas
Born in 1816 to Quaker abolitionists, Thomas grew up with her sisters to have strong convictions for the human rights issues of the time, according to the Indiana Commission for Women.
“Just to put her life in context, she was born in 1816 — the same year that Indiana became a state,” Butters said.
After hearing a female abolitionist and feminist at a Quaker meeting in 1845, she joined the Indiana Woman’s Rights Society, where she served as president. In 1859, she was the first woman to speak to Indiana’s state legislature when she presented a petition calling for a married women’s property law and women’s right to vote. It was reported the chambers did not take her seriously.
“This political oppression is crushing women, and we feel to repeat that the time has come when the women of Indiana should calmly and dispassionately assert their right to the elective franchise, and the privileges growing out of it, as the basis of all the other rights,” Thomas wrote in the petition.
She also later served as the president of the Indiana Woman Suffrage Association as well as president of the American Woman Suffrage Association.
After marrying, she studied medicine in 1854 at Penn’s Medical College for Women in Philadelphia. She practiced for two years in Fort Wayne, then later moved to Richmond. During the Civil War, she was on the Indiana Sanitary Commission, brought supplies to the front lines and patched up soldiers returning from battle.
Afterward, Thomas was a local figure in medicine by serving on Richmond’s board of public health and as the physician at the Home for Friendless Women, a shelter for homeless women. After being rejected in her first two attempts for being a woman, she eventually was elected to the Wayne County Medical Society in 1875. The next year, she was the first woman to join the State Medical College. The year after that, Thomas became a delegate from the State Medical Society to the American Medical Association, an organization where she was the second woman physician to have membership.
“She made activism into her life’s mission. She handled that with class and dignity and grace of a time when women weren’t given that, whether it was as a doctor or as a leader as an abolitionist as a suffragist,” said Ali Brown, Indianapolis city-county council member and executive director of the Indianapolis Propylaeum. “I don’t know how you can handle that many blows, that many arrows, and still hold your head up.”
Thomas specialized in practicing medicine by caring for women and children at the same practice, which Butters said is hard to find today. She also said Thomas held several relationships with the Black community and provided care to them as well.
“She established a domestic violence shelter and a homeless shelter, two things that Wayne County does not have today,” Butters said. “We wish we could get her back so we could establish a homeless shelter and a women’s shelter.”
She died at age 71 in 1888. At her funeral, she required all her pallbearers to be women, which included two Black women.
Inspiring women and change
Thomas did not live to see the day she or other women could vote.
Butters said she wants to see the day women are included in the Constitution and the ERA ratified into it. She said maybe a girl on the bridge will be inspired to pick up the baton and continue that fight.
Brown expressed a similar sentiment to Butters. She said the arc of justice is often long but is moving in a positive direction. Thinking about these women, Brown said they often fought for something they never got the chance to do themselves. She sees her civil role as progressing toward the finish line, so whoever comes after is closer than she was. Small victories, she said, can lead to significant change over time, she said.
“Though we may not sit in the shade of trees, we must plant them for future generations,” she said. “So we carry on that legacy. We’re still fighting for equality of women.”
She mentioned her grandmother who was born just after suffrage was ratified and how the Civil Rights Act was in 1964. It wasn’t that long ago that these rights weren’t ensured, she said, and it’s still a present and ongoing topic.
“It feels far away, but it’s so close in our history. It’s so close,” she said. “We were never given the right to vote. We were not granted the right to vote. We fought for it.”
Ali Brown talks about the proximity of the women’s suffrage and civil right movement and how women continue to make progress toward equity.
Brown wears a bracelet that says, “I do clamor,” which was May Wright Sewall’s response when someone told her they don’t talk politics. Brown said it’s her reminder to do the same.
“Am I clamoring enough for the right thing? Am I clamoring enough so I’m ensuring a better world to the next generation?” she said. “That’s something I hold really dear.”
Brown is the executive director of the Indianapolis Propylaeum, which acts now as a historic and welcoming spot celebrating the state’s women. In the Propylaeum, she said one can feel the weight of the women who came before them.
It was originally established in 1888 by Sewall, who was also a suffragist. She formed the corporation to buy a hall (since women couldn’t buy property but a business could) and act as a meeting place for the movement. The group was responsible for pushing for women’s rights to be in the legislative conversation. Brown said she believes May and Thomas must have known of each other.
Often, the women well known for their part in the women’s suffrage movement are from the northeastern part of the country, Brown said, but Indiana had one of the largest and earliest movements. While Indiana is not often regarded as a progressive state, she said there’s a long history of influential people who defy that idea.
Butters hopes Saturday’s event inspires generations to come and reminds people of the deep history found in the county and the state. She hopes people remember Thomas each time they walk, drive or bike over the bridge.
Wayne County was a hotspot for the women’s suffrage movement in the state. Dublin, Indiana, held the second women’s rights convention in 1851 after the Seneca Falls convention in 1848. The county is also home to a destination on the Underground Railroad, the Levi Coffin House, and had a number of abolitionists.
“Many thought leaders in the human rights movement were attracted to Richmond people because there was so much critical mass of people gathering here to advance human dignity throughout the country,” Butters said.
More on the marker
Markers have popped up all over the state to commemorate and remember influential people, events, spaces and organizations. The Indiana Historical Bureau will add to its total of about 750 on Saturday.
All state markers can be found on the IHB website, including one installed in 2003 in Wayne County for Indiana’s First Woman’s Rights Convention.
The text on Thomas’s marker will read:
“Abolitionist, suffragist, and temperance advocate Dr. Mary F. Thomas graduated from medical school in 1854 and practiced medicine in Richmond by 1856. She led Indiana’s early suffrage efforts, addressed the state legislature on women’s rights in 1859, served as Indiana Woman’s Suffrage Association president, and co-edited suffrage newspapers The Lily and The Mayflower. During the Civil War, Dr. Thomas applied her medical experience in the field while championing both abolition and suffrage. She served as Richmond’s City Physician, assisted the Home for the Friendless, and advocated prison and hospital reform. Elected president of the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1880, Dr. Thomas worked for women’s rights until her death.”