{"id":17037,"date":"2019-10-31T17:12:29","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T21:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=17037"},"modified":"2020-04-24T16:00:20","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T20:00:20","slug":"ten-most-augusta-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/ten-most-augusta-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile: Augusta Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 450px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23d2d2d2&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23d2d2d2&amp;d=nov19_flipbook_final&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=52&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">November 2019<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"p3\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">9.\u00a0<span class=\"s1\"><b>Meet the First Woman Ever to Vote in Maine<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n<h4 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Augusta Merrill Barstow Hunt<\/b><\/span><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em><span class=\"s1\">By Anne B. Gass<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cLearning about the life and\u00a0<strong>devotion to freedom<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>equality<\/strong>\u00a0that Augusta had has filled me with a sort of\u00a0<strong>pride<\/strong>\u00a0I have no right to, and\u00a0<strong>inspiration<\/strong>\u00a0to keep her work and dreams alive. Even,\u00a0<i>especially<\/i>, in these troubled times.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><strong><span class=\"s1\">\u2014Helen Hunt<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16874\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19_10Most-_9-Augusta-291x300.jpg\" alt=\"nov19_10Most _9 Augusta\" width=\"291\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19_10Most-_9-Augusta-291x300.jpg 291w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19_10Most-_9-Augusta-36x36.jpg 36w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19_10Most-_9-Augusta-200x206.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19_10Most-_9-Augusta-340x350.jpg 340w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19_10Most-_9-Augusta.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 291px) 100vw, 291px\" \/>\u201cA\u00a0<\/span>great humanitarian\u201d\u2014that\u2019s how the\u00a0<em>Portland Sunday Telegram<\/em>\u00a0described\u00a0<strong>Augusta Hunt<\/strong>\u00a0on her 90th birthday. Throughout her long life, she championed many causes, using her wealth and privilege to improve the lives of those less fortunate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Augusta Merrill Barstow was born in Portland on 6 June 1842. At the age of 21, she married\u00a0<strong>George S. Hunt<\/strong>, a prosperous merchant with West Indies shipping interests, including sugar importing. They set up housekeeping in the stately brick townhouse at\u00a0<strong>165 State Street<\/strong>\u00a0(now the home of\u00a0<em>Portland Monthly Magazine<\/em>) and raised two sons.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">With a lively mind, a keen interest in history, and her husband\u2019s support, Hunt soon found ways to be active in the community. She had a particular interest in improving the lives of women and children. Once, she heard a story of a husband who sent his young children to live with relatives in Canada. His wife objected but had no legal way to stop him. Hunt went to work, and in 1895, the Maine legislature passed an equal guardianship law.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1876 Hunt helped found the Maine branch of the\u00a0<strong>Woman\u2019s Christian Temperance Union<\/strong>\u00a0(WCTU) and served for many years as its president. This sparked her interest in voting rights for women, which the WCTU saw as vital for protecting the home and children. For decades, Hunt and others campaigned for full voting rights through the Maine legislature. When the all-male legislature turned them down (repeatedly), they tried for the right to vote in municipal elections or simply for the U.S. President. All of these efforts failed.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h5 class=\"p1\"><strong>Oil &amp; Water<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI\u2019ve always been struck by the great success of both my great-grandparents. The\u00a0<strong>George S. Hunt &amp; Company<\/strong>\u00a0was composed of 21 ships and two sugar refining companies. The ships sailed to Cuba and returned with sugar cane which was refined and used in the distilling of rum.<br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Augusta, on the other hand, was a leader in the local\u00a0<strong>Christian Temperance Union<\/strong>, advocating sobriety. One can only imagine the heated conversations between them! George only lived to the age of 67. Augusta was left financially well-off. She had the time and means to pursue her other interest\u2014achieving equal rights for women to vote. She was quite a force and lived into her nineties\u2014also an achievement in those times.\u201d\u00a0<strong>\u2014George S. Hunt III<\/strong>\u00a0(great-grandson, age 93)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h5 class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Maine Woman Suffrage Association<\/b><\/span><\/h5>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">In 1916, Maine suffragists finally had sufficient votes in the legislature to send the suffrage question to voters in a referendum. Now 75 and retired, Hunt agreed to serve as interim president of the MWSA during a short-term leadership crisis. In October 1916, she hosted MWSA\u2019s annual meeting at her State Street home to choose a new president and decide whether to pursue the referendum.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Opposing the idea was none other than Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the\u00a0<strong>National American Woman Suffrage Association<\/strong>\u00a0(NAWSA). This was odd because, for decades, NAWSA had been all about state campaigns. But Maine wasn\u2019t ready, she counseled. MWSA had only $160 in its bank account, a tiny fraction of the war chest it would need\u2014especially because it lacked experienced suffrage organizers. A campaign would require outside help. Catt wanted to use NAWSA\u2019s scarce resources to support campaigns in states where success was more likely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Hunt served coffee rather than the customary tea, and perhaps the extra infusion of caffeine emboldened the almost 100 women gathered there. Insisting that the \u201cgood old state of Maine\u201d wouldn\u2019t let them down, they voted to pursue a suffrage referendum.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">While no longer its president, Hunt worked hard on MWSA\u2019s campaign. She went door-to-door collecting signatures from women on a voting rights petition. She found office space for the\u00a0<strong>Suffrage Referendum League of Maine<\/strong>\u00a0at 662 Congress Street, in the storefront of the Queen Anne style building her husband built in 1886.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Working for rights denied by society requires sacrifice, courage, and the ability to take the long view. Hunt demonstrated these in abundance throughout her career. So, when the referendum met with resounding defeat, she just looked ahead to the next campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The 19th Amendment that gave most women the right to vote was ratified in August of 1920. In recognition of her many contributions, Hunt was given the distinction of being the\u00a0<strong>first woman to cast a ballot<\/strong>. \u201cIt was indeed fitting that&#8230;when woman suffrage was at last granted the first woman\u2019s ballot to be passed was that of Augusta Hunt,\u201d said Maude Wood Park, Ex-President, National League of Women Voters, to the\u00a0<em>Portland Sunday Telegram<\/em>\u00a0on 5 June 1932, in \u201cMrs. George S. Hunt About to Pass her 90th Milestone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">For 50 years, Augusta Hunt supported or led every movement in Maine to improve the lives of women and children. Highlights include equal guardianship, free kindergartens and day nurseries, Portland\u2019s first-ever police matron, a women\u2019s reformatory, a rest home for aging women, and, of course, voting rights.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">This Spring, 2020, a roadside marker that recognizes Hunt\u2019s suffrage work, donated by the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, will be installed outside 165 State Street.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">As her 90th news article concluded, \u201cHer name will live long and her work will live always.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h5 class=\"p2\"><strong>Book Worm<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Augusta Hunt had two hobbies\u2014bridge and\u00a0<strong>Charles Dickens<\/strong>. She devoted a corner of her suite at the\u00a0<strong>Eastland\u00a0<\/strong>to prints of Dickens characters and held a Dickens Club meeting twice a month from November through May. One morning while Dickens was in Portland, George Hunt spotted the author leaving the\u00a0<strong>Preble House<\/strong>. When he started to walk up Cumberland Avenue, George hurried home to tell his wife the news that Dickens was likely to walk past the Hunt mansion. Before long, Augusta spotted him passing their home. \u201cI would have liked to shake his hand and tell him what his books meant to me,\u201d Augusta said, \u201cbut I recalled what he had said about ladies gushing, and I made up my mind I was not going to gush.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u2014Anne B. Gass is the author of\u00a0<em>Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine\u2019s Fight for Woman Suffrage<\/em><i>,\u00a0<\/i>a book about her great-grandmother. She serves on the steering committee for the Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaborative and speaks frequently on suffrage history.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet the First Woman Ever to Vote in Maine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[943,120],"tags":[525,549,550],"class_list":["post-17037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personalities","category-the-women-of-maine","tag-10-most","tag-augusta-hunt","tag-helen-hunt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17037"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18023,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17037\/revisions\/18023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}