Ep. 4 Petticoat Governments and the Pursuit of Progress

Feb 19

*Susanna Madora Salter, Mayor of Argonia, 1887. Source: Kansas Memory*

In the late 1880s, Kansas voters did something almost no other state was doing: they elected women to local office. This episode follows three of those elections - Susanna Salter's 1887 win in Argonia, where she became the first woman mayor in the United States after being nominated as a joke; Mary Lowman's 1888 win in Oskaloosa, where she led the all-women "Oskaloosa Improvement Ticket"; and Lucy Sullivan's 1889 win in Baldwin City, where her "petticoat council" won 179 votes to 39.

These weren't symbolic victories. Lowman's administration cleared a budget deficit, lit streets, paved sidewalks, and enforced Sunday closing laws. Sullivan's council passed dozens of ordinances regulating public life and built the still-standing Women's Bridge. These women challenged traditional gender norms and redefined what it meant to pursue liberty and happiness in civic life. But their terms sparked complications: most of Sullivan's ordinances were overturned, and the wave of women's elections subsided within a decade.

From Argonia to Oskaloosa to Baldwin City, we explore how Kansas women took up the Declaration's promises - that all are created equal, and that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed - and what it took to put them into practice.

Listen to the full episode:

Places to Visit

Museums and Historic Sites

Salter House Museum, Argonia, Kansas.
Old Jefferson Town Museum, Jefferson County Historical Society, Oskaloosa, Kansas. Has artifacts about Mary Lowman and the Petticoat Council.
The Women's Bridge and the Lucy Sullivan walking tour, Baldwin City, Kansas.
Kansas Room, Baldwin City Public Library, Baldwin City, Kansas.
Kansas Museum of History, Topeka, Kansas. Has exhibits on the long history of suffrage in Kansas, including the stories from this episode.

Episode Sources

Episode Interviewees

Sarah Bell, Director of the Kansas Museum of History.
Marta Jardon, Kansas Room Librarian at the Baldwin City Public Library, and Secretary of the Santa Fe Trail Historical Society of Douglas County, Kansas
Deb Case, Manager of the Old Jefferson Town Museum, and the rest of the Oskaloosa group: Leanne Chapman, Candy Braksick, Jane Hoskinson, and Monica Mueller (Mary Lowman's great-great-great-granddaughter).

Primary Sources

Franklin Adams, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, “The women's vote in Kansas,” pamphlet, 1887.
“The First and Only Woman Mayor,” The Topeka Daily Capital, June 10, 1887.
The Evening Kansan Republican, Dec. 16, 1887.
“She Heard of It,” The Kansas City Journal, Feb. 1, 1888.
“A Reformed Town,” The Parsons Daily Sun, Feb. 3, 1888
The Evening Tribune (Lawrence), April 5, 1888.
“Oskaloosa’s Rulers, Women of Various Political Faith, But All Prohibitionists,” The Oskaloosa Independent, April 28, 1888.
“A Woman for Mayor,” The Evening Tribune (Lawrence), April 2, 1889.
“The Election at Baldwin,” The Lawrence Gazette, April 11, 1889.
Joel Benton, “Oskaloosa,” poem in The Cosmopolitan Magazine, June 1888, pg. 291.
“Revised Ordinances of the City of Baldwin,” The Baldwin Ledger, August 23, 1889.
Thomas County Cat (Colby), Oct. 10, 1889.