By Tony Zeli
Updated 9/13/2022
The Parkside Neighborhood Association and Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaborative dedicated Portland’s first marker on the National Votes for Women Trail at 42 Deering Street. It marks the historic home of suffrage pioneers Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Robert Treat Whitehouse. They are planning the dedication of a second marker on Sunday, September 18th, 1 p.m., at 165 State Street, home of Augustus Hunt.
-Photo courtesy of Herb Adams
On hand for the dedication in June on Deering Street were the Whitehouse great-granddaughters Amanda Dustin, Anne Gass, Vicki Gass, and Elizabeth Scully. Anne Gass wrote a biography about her great-grandmother, “Voting Down the Rose – Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage.” And Anne Gass will be on hand again for the State Street marker’s dedication on September 18th.
Local historian Herb Adams delivered the dedication address. “Rights are won and history is made right here in the streets of Portland – an important lesson to remember these complex and contradictory times,” said Adams.
A Little History
Florence Brooks Whitehouse was an activist in the National Women’s Party. She and her husband Robert Treat Whitehouse, head of the Men’s Equal Suffrage League, lived on Deering Street from 1894 to 1917. Their struggle lasted years, but finally in 1920 women in Maine attained the right to vote.
Augusta Hunt was one of the first women to cast a vote in Portland in 1920. (She was also the great-grandmother of actress Helen Hunt.) Speakers at the dedication of the Hunt marker on September 18th are to include author Anne Gass and the event will again be emceed by Herb Adams.
The markers are in the purple, white, and yellow colors of the women’s suffrage movement. They are provided by the Walter G. Pomeroy Foundation and are part of a series of markers making their way across the state. With the dedication of the second this September, Parkside becomes the first in Maine to have two such trail makers.
Special thanks to Herb Adams for his help covering the National Votes for Women trail markers in downtown Portland.
