Amy Florence Acton (1870-1918)
Lawyer and suffragist Amy Acton (1869-1918) was the second woman to pass the Massachusetts bar, the first woman to argue a case before the Boston municipal court and the New Hampshire Supreme Court, and the first female corporate lawyer. “One of Boston’s most brilliant and best known professional women,” Acton was a strong legal representative for the Massachusetts Women’s Suffrage Association and Boston Business League, presenting bill after bill to Massachusetts Legislature to improve laws affecting women and children of the Commonwealth. She worked for the state board of charities and conducted research for the Russell Sage Foundation, established in 1907 “for the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” (Sage, April 19, 1907)
Amy Acton, Boston Herald, April 9, 1905
Born in Sydney, Australia to an English travelling salesman and publisher, Acton moved to South Boston as a child. Her father’s early death must have contributed to her belief that “every woman should know how to earn her living, should study some occupation,…face the facts, and prepare themselves for economic independence.” (Boston Herald, April 9, 1905) Her desire to help the poor—especially poor women—led her to pursue a law degree. After graduating from Boston University and serving as a corporate lawyer in Ohio for three years, she returned to Boston in 1898 to establish her own practice which became known for giving free legal advice to poor women.
Amy Acton received frequent press coverage for her cases and personal opinions on women’s voting rights, child custody, divorce, wife desertion, female probation officers and “woman’s foolish subservience to manmade customs which have chained women for centuries.” (Ann Arbor News, Feb 29, 1912) In her many interactions with the Massachusetts legislature, she must have developed a good working relationship with one of the very few pro-suffrage state representatives: Patrick Duane of Waltham.
Dr. Eloise Sears (1864-1942)
homeopathic doctor and suffragist
The home she would share in Waltham with fellow Boston University graduate Dr. Eloise Sears was the subject of a series in the Boston Herald, “Is the Professional Woman A Failure As A Home-maker?” Sears and Acton kept an attractive home “filled with the sweet influence of music, books, pictures, flowers…and friends,” but Acton joked that “I cannot say that I think the professional woman is the greatest success as a homemaker for one cannot succeed thoroughly in an occupation to which one can bring but the tag ends of interest and time.” The reporter conceded that both Acton and Sears “come in touch helpfully with the lives of men, women and children, though neither is a mother nor wife.” (Boston Herald, April 9, 1905)
The Sears and Acton house at 58 Adams Street in the heart of Waltham Watch Company workers’ housing was a regular meeting place for suffragists from the 1890s to 1914. Acton may have moved from her sister’s house in Boston to her friends’ house in Waltham in about 1903 precisely because of its proximity to the more than 3000 women employed by the Watch factory whom she interviewed and recruited that year.
Sears and Acton would lead not only the Waltham Suffrage League but also the Waltham Civic Club and Waltham Women’s Club which included women who were indifferent or even opposed to equal suffrage. They discussed law, books by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, current events, and other inclusive topics, carefully avoiding a militant stance on suffrage. “If you want to get in outsiders, spread out the sugar and the honey, and they will come,” Acton advised. (Women’s Journal, Nov 5, 1904) Her strategy worked. When she circulated MWSA enrollment cards through the Waltham Watch Factory she was pleased to report: “Of the hundreds asked, not one woman refused to sign; and the men wanted to sign too.” (Women’s Journal, Jan 31, 1903) In 1913, they circulated a petition in the Waltham Women’s Club to support the controversial recommendation of Waltham’s newly elected pro-suffrage Mayor Patrick Duane to appoint women to senior government positions.
In 1905, Acton and Sears travelled to Oregon to represent Massachusetts in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association annual convention. Along the way, they stayed at the home of Ellis Meredith. Colorado’s leading suffragist and writer, a like-minded professional woman.
When Patrick Duane lost reelection in 1914 after a short two years as mayor, Acton and Sears may have seen the writing on the wall and moved away from Waltham to share a new home together in Allston.
Acton and Sears graves, South Yarmouth, MA
Sadly, Amy Acton did not live long enough to witness the ratification of the 19th Amendment that ensured the right to vote could not be denied or abridged on account of sex. She died in Allston in 1918 before she reached her 50th birthday and is buried next to her friend Dr. Eloise Sears, with matching gravestones, in South Yarmouth, Massachusetts.
Education: Boston University, LLB, 1895
Waltham residence: 58 Adams St. (1903-1914)
References
The American Lawyer: A Monthly Journal, June 1899, p. 249
Ann Arbor News, Feb 29, 1912
Boston Daily Advertiser June 6, 1900
Boston Globe, May 18, 1903; Oct 22, 1904; Feb 5, 1905; Aug 8, 1918
Boston Herald, Apr 9 and Sept 10, 1905; Mar 11, 1907; July 26, 1914
Dalton, Curt. On this Date in Dayton’s History, 2017, p. 351.
Proceedings of 37th Annual Convention of NAWSA, Portland, OR, June 28-July 5, 1905
Sage, Margaret Olivia, letter establishing the Russell Sage Foundation, April 19, 1907 https://www.russellsage.org/
Springfield Republican, March 30, 1902
Women’s Journal, March 15 and July 26, 1902; Jan 31, 1903; Jan 23, 1904; Nov 5, 1904; July 1, 1905, April 1 and June 10 1911
Stonehurst Curator Ann Clifford wrote this biography in conjunction with “Anxious to Vote: Students, Workers and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage,” a curriculum and public education project developed in partnership by Stonehurst the Robert Treat Paine Estate and Waltham Public Schools in commemoration of the national suffrage centennial in 2020. STONEHURST is a National Historic Landmark owned by the City of Waltham. The once-private estate of generous social justice advocates whose ancestors helped establish the democratic foundations of this country is now appropriately owned by the people.
The Friends of Stonehurst received support for this program through “The Vote: A Statewide Conversation about Voting Rights,” a special initiative of Mass Humanities that includes organizations around the state.
This program is funded in part by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
