Martha Hughes Cannon

Martha Maria Hughes Cannon ( born July 1, 1857 in near Llandudno, Wales, † July 10, 1932 in Los Angeles, California ) was an American physician, advocate of women's rights, suffragette and Senator from Utah. She was the first woman in the United States who was elected senator.

Early years

Martha Maria Hughes Cannon was the daughter of Peter and Elizabeth Evans Hughes. My nickname was Mattie. The Hughes family settled in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints baptized and emigrated to the United States. She laid on 30 March 1860 the ship " Underwriter " of Liverpool, England, and came from New York City on May 1, 1860. With the help of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the New York family was able to leave and travel to Utah in 1861. Shortly after the family's arrival in the Salt Lake Valley on September 3, Martha died in 1861 almost two- year-old sister Annie and was buried in an unknown grave. Three days after the rest of the family came to Salt Lake City, September 17, 1861 Peter Hughes died and left his 28- year-old widow Elizabeth Hughes with two small daughters.

A year later married the widower of Elizabeth James Patten Paul, who brought five more children into the marriage. After this marriage Martha led at different times, the last name and Paul Hughes. Later in her life encouraged Paul his stepdaughter to be her dream doctor to meet.

Education and work

Martha was already working as a fourteen- year-old as a school teacher. She attended the University of Deseret, was typesetter at the Women 's Exponent, a women's magazine in Salt Lake City, which was published by Emmeline B. Wells and was part of the Relief Society. She decided to study medicine, and after they had completed the study of chemistry in 1875, she attended from 1878 to 1881, the Medical School of the University of Michigan. Then she practiced briefly as a doctor in Algonac (Michigan). In 1882 she was awarded the Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the Auxiliary School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate of the National School of Elocution and Oratory. Martha returned to Salt Lake City and worked from 1882 to 1886 as an institution doctor in the newly founded Deseret Hospital.

Polygamy and exile

On October 6, 1884 Martha married the 23-year old Angus M. Cannon, the superintendent of the new hospital and a local leader of the Church of Jesus Christ LDS. She was the fourth of his six wives and bore him three children. Under pressure from the federal government Martha left with her daughter Elizabeth Rachel, who was still a baby, Utah. She wanted to avoid in order to deliver to the Federal Marshal evidence of their polygamous marriages Angus. Moreover, they feared having to testify against others and having to divulge such knowledge they had acquired due to obstetric activities. In 1885, Martha wrote:

" Accordingly, I am regarded as an important witness, and if it can be proven that these children are actually born into the world, their fathers will be sent to jail for five years. (...) For me, this is a serious thing, the reason to be why a father, of which a lot of young children are dependent, is sent to jail I do not care if these children have the same or different mothers -. , there remains the fact that they all have small mouths that must be fed. "

In the two years of their exile mother and child lived in England, Switzerland and Michigan, before returning to Salt Lake City in June, 1888. Just recently published correspondence between Cannon and her husband for this time provide an insight into the life of a polygamous family in the 19th century in Utah and also in the "underground " just before task of plural marriage. It was a time in which many polygamous families hid to avoid legal repression that polygamous families should tear them apart. "I'd rather be a stranger in a foreign country and be sure capable, upright to carry my head under my fellow man, " she wrote in her exile, " as a stealthy prisoner to be home ."

Political career

After 1888 Cannon took their practice in Salt Lake again and taught midwifery courses in the " Deseret Hospital". This school was later incorporated into the University of Utah School of Medicine. She was interested in actively promoting the work of the Equal Suffrage Association of Utah and became a part of the national women's suffrage movement. Cannon was a gifted speaker and was a member of the delegation of Utah for the Columbian Exposition, the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. In 1898, she traveled to Washington to speak before a committee of Congress, and that as an invitation to give women the right to vote in the United States. Cannon said that education and public services for women are vital. She writes:

"Somehow I know that women who stay all the time at home, have the most unpleasant homes that are out there. Show me a woman who is thinking about something else than to cookers and washtubs and baby diapers, and I will show you, in nine cases out of ten, a successful mother. "

In 1896 presented a choice paragraph in the new State Constitution women's suffrage in Utah restore. In an election that has been written about a lot, she was one of five Democrats who turned out to be state- wide ("at large" ) as state senators from Salt Lake County to choose from. Among the Republicans, the women's suffrage activist Emmeline B. Wells and Cannon's husband Angus were erected.

Local newspapers reported that a leading Mormon polygamist had been defeated by his fourth wife. The Salt Lake Tribune, representatives of the republican point of view, wrote in an editorial that Angus Munn Cannon earn the votes of the readers. The Salt Lake Herald, a Democratic newspaper, countered: "Mrs. Mattie Hughes Cannon, his wife, is the better man of the two Sends Mrs. Cannon to the state Senate and let Mr. Cannon, as a Republican, to stay at home to look after. the domestic economy to worry about. "

On November 3, 1896 Martha Hughes Cannon was elected as the first woman in the history of the United States as a state senator. She served two terms and was involved in the healthcare industry. She led the efforts to deal with financial support from speech and hearing impaired students, the establishment of a State Committee for Health and a law regulating the working conditions of women and girls ( " An Act to Protect the Health of Women and Girl Employees" ). Cannon's third child was born at the end of their second term of office. After leaving the legislature Cannon served as a member of the Utah Board of Health and as a member of pigeons and mute Committee of the Utah State School. After her husband's death in 1915, Cannon moved to the vicinity of her son to Los Angeles, where she worked for the Graves Clinic. She died in Los Angeles on 10 July 1932.