In an era when women across the nation crusaded to gain voting rights, Rising Sun led the way locally in 1916, allowing ladies to cast ballots in a county election for the first time in Cecil’s history, the Midland Journal reported.
The question facing taxpayers heading to the polls was whether the town board could refinance a $16,000 debt by issuing 20-year bonds. These instruments would replace short-term loans that had paid for the waterworks installed two years earlier, the sidewalks already laid, and the apparatus for fire protection already purchased.
Short-term notes carried this public debt, so the issuance would not increase the tax rate, the town commissioners assured residents. In fact, lower interest rates would give the municipality a way to minimize cash outlays, providing the budget with a $140 annual savings bonus if the voters approved.
This was a “good practical business proposition, and one which those who have the interest of our town at heart” should endorse, the town newspaper, the Midland Journal, editorialized. These savings were “an item of no small consideration.”
The Legislature authorized all municipal taxpayers of legal age to vote on the question at the next Rising Sun election. It was decided favorably. Seventy-four voters approved, while two opposed the matter. The town’s newspaper editor said he didn’t know whether the expanded franchise affected the results, but the near-unanimous vote suggests that practically all the citizens favored the action.
This happened as Maryland and national women’s suffrage associations waged campaigns for the franchise. It was unsuccessful in Maryland, where the lawmakers failed to amend the state constitution or approve the 19th Amendment. But on August 26, 1920, the positions of Maryland politicians were irrelevant after a sufficient number of states ratified the amendment, giving all women the right to vote.
As ladies across the country struggled with the national campaign, Rising Sun had held a historic vote, allowing women to go to the polls four years before the ratification of the 19th Amendment created a more universal franchise. The 1920 presidential election, in which Warren G. Harding, Republican, and James M. Cox, Democrat, were the nominees, was the first time most female voters in Cecil County and across the nation exercised their power at the ballot box. It was old news by that time in the northern Cecil County town.
