Fact checking does not confirm, but apparently close to accurate. I consider Jeopardy a good source and found this (a report of Jeopardy, so a second source one removed)
That National Park Service document says the WY Legislature sent him a telegram, saying those words, so it is reasonable to suspect he passed the message along. Regardless of exact source/attribution, it is a Political Happy Thought.
Eh. internets say that women in New Jersey were allowed to vote as early as 1776, through 1807. They did have to own 50 English pounds of property, though.
Chronologically, the first state in the union in which women voted was New Jersey. The original 1776 New Jersey State Constitution provided suffrage to its citizens without mentioning gender or race—the only requirements were that they be “inhabits of this State” who were “of full age” and “worth fifty pounds proclamation money.” That is, all adults who owned at least fifty pounds worth of property were eligible to vote. This was later reinforced by a much more explicit ruling by the state’s supreme court in the 1790s, which made it clear that women held the vote in New Jersey.
This still excluded large portions of the population. Fifty pounds was quite a lot of money in the 18th century, after all, and among women of the time typically only widows owned property. But the fact that wealthy women and free non-whites were able to vote in New Jersey made it unique among the original thirteen states of the union.
Unfortunately, New Jersey’s claim to the title of First State to Grant Suffrage is muddled by the fact that this equality did not last for more than thirty years. By 1807, the state legislature amended their constitution to restrict the vote to tax-paying white male citizens. The reason why is debated, but may have been tied to the complex party politics of the time.
For me and happy thoughts, it was far more critical that Wyoming insisted that women have the right to vote, rather than that they were the first.
OTOH, after reading that history, I think that NJ’s letting them vote and then taking the right away is not something NJ should be proud of, and is not better than them not having the right to vote before 1807 either.
True, no one should be proud of that.
But this is referring to a stupid anti-social-media post that claims Wyoming was the first.
Which is NOT the truth, as to be expected in this “Political truths” thread.
