RETRO INDY

Retro Indy: May Wright Sewall

INDY

May Wright Sewall, an internationally known peace activist and women's suffrage leader, began her activism on a small scale here during the 1870s.

Sewall and other Hoosier women met in secret to form the Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis. Later, she founded the International Council of Women and served two terms as its president.

She also served eight years as chairman of the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Associations. For most of the 1890s, she was president of the National Council of Women of the United States.

Born Mary Eliza Wright in 1844 in Wisconsin, Sewall graduated from high school and went on to attend North Western Female College (later absorbed into Northwestern University). She taught in Michigan and Mississippi before moving to Indiana with her first husband.

In 1875, Sewall helped found the Indianapolis Woman's Club and was a founder and early officer of the Art Association, predecessor of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The couple taught at Indianapolis High School, which later became Shortridge High School. Sewall was teaching English and German in 1875 when her husband died of tuberculosis, just a year after coming here.

She persuaded second husband Theodore Lovett Sewall, who ran the Classical School for Boys, to open the Classical School for Girls in 1882. The girls school offered physical education, which was unusual because few schools had gymnasiums -- and because it wasn't considered "proper" for girls to take such instruction. The school closed in 1907 because of financial difficulties.

Add to Sewall's credit the building of the Propylaeum women's club in 1890 and organizing national campaigns to give women the vote.

In 1907, she moved to New England, where it was easier to orchestrate her many speaking engagements and organizing trips. She traveled and rallied women throughout Europe, and President William McKinley sent her to Paris as a delegate to a women's meeting.

Sewell later worked with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others to secure women's right to vote.

Sewall, who moved back to her beloved Indianapolis in 1919, died in 1920, a few months before women voted in national elections for the first time.

May Wright Sewall