Background

Gertrude Foster Brown was born on July 29, 1867 in Morrison, Illinois, the daughter of Charles Foster and Anna Drake. Her father earned a comfortable living as a trader in butter, eggs, and grain for the Chicago commodities market.

Education

Gertrude Foster's musical talent developed early, and at the age of twelve she was the organist of the local Presbyterian church. She convinced her parents to send her to the New England Conservatory of Music, from which she received a diploma in piano in 1885. She then went to study the piano with Scharwenka in Berlin and Delaborde in Paris.

Career

After returning to Chicago from Europe she began her career as a concert pianist, lecturer on Richard Wagner, and teacher.

After marrying Raymond Brown, artist and newspaperman; she moved to New York when he became art director for the Hearst newspapers and a group of magazines, including Everybody's magazine.

Until 1910 Brown pursued her musical career oblivious to the suffrage movement. Her introduction to that issue came at an otherwise dull dinner party on Long Island.

Consequently, she invited a group of her friends to tea one afternoon to discuss the matter of woman suffrage. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), spoke to them. On the spot they organized the Suffrage Study Club, which grew rapidly.

The woman suffrage movement began expanding significantly about 1910, and the first suffrage parade was staged in New York City in May 1911. Three thousand women and eighty-nine men, including Raymond Brown, braved the jeers of the spectators. Two years later more than 40, 000 people marched in the parade.

She became a friend and associate of Carrie Chapman Catt, who headed the New York State Woman Suffrage Party. Catt managed the 1915 New York suffrage referendum campaign; and although defeated, the organization, tactics, and strategy that she developed promised victory in 1917. When Catt became president of NAWSA, the Woman Suffrage Party in New York was reorganized with Brown as vice-president and chairman of the organization committee.

Catt mapped a national four-year plan, laid out month-by-month, to win suffrage in the states and ratification of the suffrage amendment to the Constitution. Success in New York was a crucial element, and Brown played a key role in the 1917 referendum victory. She then joined Catt in NAWSA as first vice-president. With the entry of the United States into World War I, a group of women physicians and surgeons, organized by the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, offered their services to the government but were rejected. The French government, however, eagerly accepted them.

NAWSA agreed to be responsible for the maintainence of the unit and raised nearly $135, 000 to send seventy-four women to France. Brown went along as director of the Women's Overseas Hospitals. After the war, the unit was merged with other war relief agencies, and Brown returned to the suffrage campaign.

She was asked to run for secretary of state of New York but declined. Instead, in February 1921, she became managing director of the Woman Citizen, which had superseded the Woman's Journal founded by Lucy Stone in Boston in 1870.

Brown raised much of the money required to subsidize the magazine throughout the 1920's, but the Great Depression ended it in June 1931. Brown then returned to her first love, music, which she practiced for her own pleasure and that of her friends, and spent summers traveling with her husband in Europe and North Africa. When World War II broke out, she and several of her former suffrage associates formed the Women's Action Committee for Victory and Lasting Peace. It supported the war effort and United States entry into the United Nations. After the war she retired entirely from community work to her music and travel. She made her last trip to Europe in 1952. She died in Westport, Connecticut.

Achievements

• Gertrude Foster Brown was elected president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association in 1913. Following ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Brown helped launch the National League of Women Voters as the successor organization to NAWSA. She was Director-General of the Women's Overseas Hospitals in France, founded by suffragists, in 1918. In addition to her work in the New York suffrage movement, she helped to found the National League of Women Voters. She was the Managing Director of the Woman's Journal from 1921-1931.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Your Vote and How to Use It

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Button Parade. New, Revised, and Enlarged Edition. Together with Price Guide to Button Parade by Gertrude D. Adkins.

Views

A judge, the guest of honor, was asked by the hostess if he thought women ought to have the vote; and he declared, "Of course I do, and they would have voted years ago if they hadn't been such damn fools. " Brown had never heard anyone mention woman suffrage, and her husband admitted that he had seen only an occasional newspaper squib about it. Together they sought to learn about the issue; and when they finally located the headquarters of the New York State Suffrage Association, they found a dreary place inhabited by one dowdy little woman in "very old fashioned clothes and frizzed grey hair. " Gertrude Brown's professional friends knew little about suffrage; indeed, few had ever thought about it.

Membership

Gertrude Foster Brown was a member of the Suffrage Study Club. She also was involved in the New York Woman's City Club.

Personality

Gertrude Brown was tall, attractive, energetic, and an able speaker and organizer.

Connections

On August 4, 1893, Gertrude Foster Brown married Raymond Brown, artist and newspaperman. The Browns had no children.

Father:

Charles Foster

Mother:

Anna Drake

husband:

Raymond Brown

Friend:

Carrie Chapman Catt

She became a friend and associate of Carrie Chapman Catt, who headed the New York State Woman Suffrage Party.

References

• How it Feels to Be the Husband of a Suffragette