Womens' History Month: March 10, 2021

The ratification of the 19^th Amendment in 1920 established the right of women to vote in federal elections, but in Melrose women had been voting in some municipal elections since 1874. Most significantly, three of the six seats on the School Committee were reserved for female candidates. Following the School Committee election of April of 1874, Harriet W. Sewall, Phebe Norris, and Maria S. Porter became the first women elected to public office in Melrose history.

While almost all women at that time were denied access to higher education and a professional career path, they were nonetheless frequently judged by the status of their husbands or fathers. The women who first served on the School Committee were typical in this regard; Sewall’s husband was an attorney, Norris’s father a bank president, Porter’s husband an industrialist.

That made the election of Arethusa K. Miller in 1881 all the more unusual. Her husband was a cloth cutter. Despite living in Melrose for decades, they were never able to buy their own home. Miller served on the School Committee for a record twelve years, and during that time they rented living space at 45 Myrtle Street, sharing it with another family.

One reason Miller may have been reelected five times was the demonstrated academic success in her own home. Her son Harry had been educated at the Melrose schools, then matriculated at Harvard, graduated with distinction in modern languages, studied medicine in Paris, and then returned to Harvard to complete his MD. Tragically, he caught a case of pneumonia from which he never fully recovered, and died of the disease in 1896, just a month shy of his 29^th birthday. His mother would live in Melrose for another thirty years, dying in her nineties.

In 2021, we can easily imagine a boy like Harry Miller using the Melrose schools as a springboard to greatness. But in our resumé-obsessed electoral environment, could we imagine someone like his mother serving on the School Committee? Some barriers to election have fallen; others have risen to take their place.