EVelyn Sears (1875-1966)

Evelyn Sears was a woman of contradictions. At the same time she challenged Victorian norms and expectations for women by becoming a professional athlete, she held tightly to conservative views on women’s role in society and politics. She was an anti-suffragist opposed to women’s voting rights and women’s participation in world affairs, and yet she became a leading activist in that movement, venturing onto the streets and into the chambers of the House and Senate.

In the 19th century, the “strict differentiation between the roles of women and men [were seen] as crucial to the proper functioning of the nation.” Men dominated government, business and world affairs, and women protected the family and the home from such external corruptions. Conservative men and women feared that “altering deeply revered gender roles would irreparably disrupt society.” (Goodier.)

On some level, Evelyn, her sisters and Paine and Lyman cousins were shaped by those conservative views that characterized their era. They came from a close-knit family of wealth and privilege, but despite their shared upbringing, they grew to adopt very different points of view. Even as Evelyn led the anti-suffrage movement in Massachusetts, her sisters and housemates contributed to the state’s leading pro-suffrage organization.

Before and during her involvement in the anti-suffrage effort, Evelyn Sears played tennis professionally. Women as successful athletes helped bring into question the Victorian ideal of women as gentle, passive and frail creatures with a finite amount of vital energy which could be drained by education or sports. Women’s health was so ill understood by their male doctors that it was commonplace to believe that physical excursion might damage their reproductive organs, rendering them unable to bear children, and make them unattractive to men. (Smithsonian)

Middle- and upper-class women could participate in lawn sports like tennis, golf, croquet, and badminton in their own manicured yards. In this space attached to the home, privileged women like Evelyn could find common ground with men through outdoor activity. Evelyn played tennis almost every day with male and female cousins on one of the earliest tennis courts in the country built by her uncle and neighbor Robert Treat Paine. The skills she developed on the family’s estate brought her onto professional courts, and in 1907 and 1908, she won the US National Tennis Championship.

In many ways, Evelyn Sears represents aspects of the “New Woman” of the early 20th century: young, well-educated, single, active in sports, and frequently in the public eye. Yet, she clung to “True Woman” ideals bound to the cult of domesticity that limited women to the privacy of the home where their power of influence was “as significant as that of men to influence the greater good of the nation state.” (Goodier)

Evelyn Sears was active as a member and board member of the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association from at least 1913 to 1918, and was the president of the Waltham Anti-Suffrage Association in 1913. In a newspaper series, “A Reason a Day Why Women Should Not Vote,” she argued that “the Anti-Man Position of the Suffragists would Weaken Women’s Power to Influence Public Opinion.” She believed that only men should make and administer laws and that, if a woman wanted her views represented, she would have to vote for a woman to represent her. “Is Massachusetts prepared for a government by women? For that is where the suffragist argument leads us! The suffragist position is an anti-man position.” (Boston Globe, April 4, 1913.) As one of the few women who dared to venture into the man’s world of sports, one wonders whether she had to defend herself against similar criticism.

If Evelyn Sears was not prepared for female politicians, she was ready to mirror the arguments, tactics and public relation strategies of female political activists. Her women-led anti-suffrage organization printed leaflets, cartoons, buttons, pennants and held parades and demonstrations to counter those of the pro-suffragists. A contemporary Boston Globe reporter noted the “sad dilemma” of the anti-suffragists who “want to elect opponents of suffrage and yet keep out of politics.”  (Boston Globe, March 30, 1913)

As the pro-suffragists in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania ramped up their efforts in 1915 for women’s participation in state elections, so too did the Anti’s, led by in part by Evelyn Sears. The sweeping defeat of women’s suffrage referenda in Massachusetts and other northeast states in 1915 led to transformative changes in the national movement. As a result, the National American Woman Suffrage Association changed tactics, and sought an amendment to the US constitution. (Berenson, 142)

Waltham residence: 395 Beaver Street (on present Gentleman’s Way off of Robert Treat Paine Dr., demolished 1990s) (Summers, 1875-1966)

“Anti-Suffragist Speakers Tell Women to Eschew Politics,” Waltham Evening News, June 13, 1913.

Berenson, Barbara. Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement. The History Press, 2018.

Boston Globe, March 30, 1913; April 4, 1913

Collins, Gail. America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2003.

Goodier, Susan. No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013.

Mansky, Jackie and Maya Wei-Haas, “The Rise of the Modern Sportswoman,” Smithsonianmag.com, August 18, 2016 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rise-modern-sportswoman-180960174/

Schuessler, Jennifer. “The Women Who Fought Against the Vote,” New York Times, August 14, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/anti-suffrage-movement-vote.html

Ann Clifford wrote this biographical sketch in conjunction with “Anxious to Vote: Students, Workers and teh 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 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.