Quick Facts
Biography
Mary Catherine Seymour Howell (1844-1913) was a leader and activist for women's suffrage in the United States. She authored the bill granting women the right to vote in New York State that passed in 1892.
Biography
Mary Seymour Howell was born in 1844 to Mr. and Mrs. Norman Seymour of Mt. Morris, New York, who were prominent members of the local community. She attended local schools in Mt. Morris before graduating from the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York. In 1869, she was married to George Rogers Howell from Long Island. He was employed at the New York State Library, serving as the State Librarian for a time, and died in 1889 at Albany, where they resided. Howell died in 1913 at her hometown of Mt. Morris and is buried at the Mt. Morris Cemetery.
Activism Career
Howell is best known for her oratory abilities and the lectures on suffrage that she gave across the nation. In the 1890s, she spoke in Kansas and the Dakotas with her colleague, the national suffrage advocate Susan B. Anthony, who was from Rochester, New York. She and Anthony also made a tour of New York State in 1894, presenting the state constitutional convention with a "monster suffrage petition." She was also a national lecturer for the Women's Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.).