Josephine Brawley Hughes

File:Josephine Brawley Hughes in 1887.jpg

Josephine Brawley Hughes in 1887

Elizabeth Josephine Brawley Hughes (December 22, 1839 – March 1926) was an advocate of women's rights in the United States West region. George W. P. Hunt described her as the Mother of Arizona.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite web</ref>

Biography

Elizabeth Josephine Brawley (she dropped her first name later in life) was born on a farm near Meadville, Pennsylvania, on December 22, 1839, to John R. Brawley and Sarah Haskins.<ref name=AWHF>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=Boehringer1930>Template:Cite journal</ref> After graduating from Edinboro State Normal School, she was a teacher for two years in Pennsylvania public schools.<ref name=Boehringer1930/>

While a student at Edinboro, she met Louis C. Hughes, whom she married in 1868. Because of a Civil War wound, Louis moved to the Arizona Territory in 1871 and Josephine followed in 1872 with their first child, Gertrude. Josephine and the baby traveled first by rail to San Francisco, then by boat to San Diego, and finally by stagecoach to Tucson.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> During the trip, Hughes carried a loaded rifle in one arm and her infant daughter in the other.<ref name=":0" /> According to a biography by Louise Boehringer in the January 1930 edition of the Arizona Historical Review, at the time of Josephine's arrival, "Only two other (Eastern) homemakers were established in Tucson when the young wife and mother reached her destination–Mrs. Charles Lord (wife of Dr. Lord) and Mrs. C. Scott (wife of Judge C. Scott)."<ref name=Boehringer1930/> Thus, Hughes may have been the third English-speaking woman in Tucson.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The family lived in an adobe home like the rest of "The Old Pueblo" (a nickname for Tucson), but it did contain the town's first cistern.<ref name=Boehringer1930/> Hughes had three children after Gertrude: John, Josephine, and a child that died at age two.<ref name=":2" />

Hughes taught in the first public school for girls in Tucson.<ref name=":0" /> She also worked in the office of her husband's newspaper, the Arizona Star. <ref name=":1" />

In 1893, Louis was appointed territorial governor by President Grover Cleveland. Their son, John T., later served in the first state Senate.<ref name="Boehringer1930" />

Louis died in 1915 and John in 1921, leaving Hughes with no other family in Arizona. She moved to California to be closer to her daughter, where she died in 1926.<ref name=":2" />

The Arizona State Capitol building in Phoenix has a bronze plaque in its rotunda in Josephine's honor, placed December 16, 1926.<ref name=Boehringer1930/><ref name=BDE/>

Activism

Hughes was the first president of the Arizona Women's Christian Temperance Association.<ref name=":2" /> The Arizona WCTU, like the national WCTU, believed that women needed the right to vote so that they could regulate alcohol and other forms of vice in their communities.<ref name=":1" /> She traveled around the Arizona Territory denouncing "Demon Rum" and promoting temperance.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 1891, as the push for Arizona statehood began, Hughes helped to found the first woman suffrage organization in Arizona Territory.<ref name=":1">Osselaer, Heidi J. Winning Their Place. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 2009.</ref><ref name=":3">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Heidi J. Osselaer, Arizona's Woman Suffrage Movement, 30 W. LEGAL HIST. 81 (2019).</ref> The organization hoped that women's right to vote would be included in the state constitution.<ref name=":3" /> From 1891 to 1900, she was a major advocate for the women's suffrage bill, which was vetoed in 1900 by Governor Alexander Oswald Brodie. Despite her efforts, Arizona's women did not gain the right to vote until 1912.<ref name=":2" />

Accomplishments

• Helped establish the first public girls' school in the Southwest.<ref name=BDE>Template:Cite news</ref>
• Was the first woman public school teacher in Arizona.<ref name=Buehman>Template:Cite news</ref>
• Joined other women to raise funds for the first Protestant church in Arizona.<ref name=Boehringer1930/>
• Helped found the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Arizona.<ref name=Buehman/>
• Helped found the women's suffrage movement in Arizona.<ref name=Buehman/>
• Helped to manage and operate the Arizona Daily Star newspaper.<ref name=AWHF/>

See also

• List of Arizona suffragists
• Timeline of women's suffrage in Arizona
• Women's suffrage in Arizona
• National American Woman Suffrage Association
• Sallie Davis Hayden
• Frances Willard Munds

Further reading

• Template:Cite book

External links

• Josephine Brawley Hughes, Arizona Women's Hall of Fame