REAL PEOPLE. REAL STORIES.

Clarina Nichols

(1810-1885)

Clarina Howard was born in West Townshend, Vermont, received an above average education for her day, and married at age twenty. She had three children, taught school, and worked for a newspaper. In 1843 she divorced her husband, Justin Carpenter, and almost immediately married George Nichols, a newspaper editor twenty-eight years her senior. They had one son.

A passionate advocate for woman's rights, Nichols was a recognized leader of the national movement and a champion of many other reform causes long before she decided to move West. In 1854 she joined the New England Emigrant Aid Society and soon moved her family to a claim in southern Douglas County, near Lawrence, Kansas Territory. Her husband died the next year, and after spending much of 1856 on the campaign trail, Nichols moved the family to Wyandotte County, where she became associate editor of the Quindaro Chindowan, an abolitionist newspaper.

Nichols traveled throughout the territory lecturing about equality, gathering signatures on petitions, and by 1859 building support for her participation at the Wyandotte Convention. She listened and knitted during convention debates. As the official representative of the Moneka Woman's Rights Association, Nichols was assigned a seat in the convention hall, and was asked to address the delegates on woman's rights issues. During recess and at every other opportunity, she met with delegates to share her strong views about equality for women and men. The final version of the Wyandotte Constitution reflected Nichols's influence. It included three provisions dear to her heart: women's rights in child custody, married women's property rights, and equality in matters pertaining to public schools.

Kansas was a vital battleground for woman's rights, and events here were important to the national movement. Thus, when the Kansas campaign for equal suffrage was launched in 1867, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Olympic Brown, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined Clarina Nichols in a valiant but futile effort. Kansas voters rejected amendments for both female and African American suffrage. The cause of woman's rights advanced slowly, thereafter, but it did advance, thanks to women such as Nichols. In 1912 Kansas women succeeded in their long effort to amend the state constitution and gain equality at the polls.

Nichols left Kansas in 1871 to be with two of her children in California. She died there in 1885. Through strong speaking and writing, Clarina Nichols made history in Kansas and advanced the cause of human rights.