Mary Ashley Abel

• (1867-1957), spouse Dr. Herman J. Abel, 3 children
• Born in Richmond Center, spent much of adult life in NYC or west coast
•  Married in 1901, had three children, husband died of tuberculosis in 1906 six months after birth of last child
•  After 1910, she moved to San Diego, both surviving children attended school at the International Theosophical Headquarters where Buddhist and Brahmanic theories were taught – she may have taught there?
• Lived in NYC in the 1930s, then returned to Canandaigua

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Mary Ashley Abel PDF

Anna Bancroft Sayre

• (1855-1924), spouse Dr. Ellis Sayre, one child
• Born in West Bloomfield
• Husband practiced medicine in Allen’s Hill
•  Member of the Home Missionary Society – hosted meeting at her home – 1900
•  Member of Honeoye [?] Aid Society – was secretary in 1930

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Anna B Sayre PDF

Alice Ashley

• remained single
• Older sister of Mary Ashley Abe
• “A Political Equality Club was recently organized here by Miss Harriet May Mills of Syracuse. It is the fourth suffrage club in the county, and starts out with 12 members. Miss Alice Ashley is president.” ORM 1/25/1906

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click to view entire letter

1906 Letter

Margaret Arnold Peck

• (1872-1949), Spouse Horace G. Peck, 2 children
• Born in West Bloomfield
• Husband a farmer
• By 1920, family living in Washington State, husband a warehouse manager

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Margaret Arnold Peck PDF

1909 County Conv.

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Political Equality
Clubs of Richmond

Richmond, in the southwest corner of Ontario County, was home in the early years of the twentieth century to two important communities: Allen’s Hill in the north, and Honeoye in the south at the foot of Honeoye Lake. Each of these localities formed a Political Equality Club in 1906, following the lead of many other communities across the state.
By 1900 Richmond bore a potent legacy regarding abolition, temperance, and the rights of women, established in the work of William Goodell, the Pitts family, Samuel Chipman, and Theodosia Gilbert among many others. In the 1800s local people had turned out in droves to hear Frederick Douglass, friend and (later) son-in-law of Gideon Pitts, speak at the Congregational Church. Thanks in large part to home-grown lobbying, Richmond voters elected to go “dry” well before the Civil War. Activist Mrs. William (Theodosia) Chaplin – abolitionist and women’s advocate – was born in Richmond Center. And in the summer of 1873, Honeoye was host to speaker Matilda Joslyn Gage, a noted civil rights supporter, the co-author, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, of The History of Woman Suffrage. She recounted for her Richmond listeners, perhaps, her failed attempt a few months earlier to vote in the Presidential election. … READ MORE

 William & Bertha Bray Pingrey