Moment in Time (November 17, 2021)

From the middle of the nineteenth century, women demanded access to appointed and elected positions, ranging from notary public to mayor. However, the language in most laws, including those in Ohio, required that any elected office holder must be “an elector”, or someone who has the ability to vote. Women were not allowed to vote, so they couldn’t hold office.

This photo, courtesy of the Library of Congress, shows the Woman Suffrage Headquarters in Cleveland in 1912. Some of the earliest women’s rights conventions were held in Ohio, and the American Woman Suffrage Association was established in Cleveland in 1869. The inset photo is Mertie Bennett Smith, first woman elected to Village Council in Marble Cliff.

Some states, including Ohio, passed laws that allowed women to be “elected” to school boards, and later added provisions that they could be appointed notaries. But higher offices, such as mayor, city council, or state or federal representative were off limits.

This all changed through ratification of the federal suffrage amendment in 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Ohio ratified the Amendment, and even passed legislation in April of 1919 that would allow women the vote, in case the states failed to ratify it before the 1920 elections. As it turned out, by August of 1920, 36 states (including Ohio) ratified the amendment and it became part of the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that the right to vote could not be denied based on sex.

Almost immediately after the ratification, women appeared on the ballots across the country, and were elected to the offices they had been dreaming of holding. In Marble Cliff, Mertie Bennett Smith became a member of the village council, an elected position she would hold until her retirement in 1951. The inset photo shows Mertie Smith at her retirement after 30 years in elected office.

Mertie Bennett (some records show her name to be Myrtle, but birth and christening and marriage records show her given name to be Mertie) was born in Harlem in Delaware County in 1868 to Daniel and Margaret Bennett. She married McKendree Smith just before her 17th birthday. He was five years older than she was. They lived in various places in Ohio, including Ironton, where McKendree served as the superintendent of schools. He graduated medical school from The Ohio Medical College and in 1903 was appointed an instructor in Dermatology and Syphilology at the College. The following year Dr. Smith was named the head of the Columbus Health Department, and served that organization until failing health in 1927 required him to retire.

One of his special assignments at the Board of Health was to determine why so many were dying of typhoid, and his experiments with the water system were instrumental in exposing sources of contamination in the northern watershed that provided the source of much of Columbus’ drinking water. Dr. Smith used this expertise together with the political position Mertie Smith held on village council to upgrade the water and sewer systems of Marble Cliff, resulting in clean drinking water and sanitary sewers for the residents.

Mertie was quoted as saying that two petitions to Village council launched her 30 year career. The first was to upgrade the village streets and add streetlights and sidewalks. She said that her initial petition was unsuccessful, and these modernizations would have to wait. Her second petition was successful, and the resulting ordinance prohibited individuals from “parking their cows” in the village because of the disturbance caused by their incessant mooing.

The Smiths lived on Tenth Ave. near Neil in 1900, where they rented rooms to eight students in their home. They moved to a rental on Cambridge Place before settling in their Marble Cliff home at 1520 Arlington Avenue, on the northeast corner of Arlington and Cardigan, which was built in 1913. The couple had a son Floyd and a daughter Louella, who married John Nau, who became an attorney and served as Chief Magistrate (Mayor) of Marble Cliff. McKendree Smith died at home in 1928, and Mertie lived at their home until her death in Macon, Georgia in 1960.

NOTE: The home at 1520 Arlington Avenue in Marble Cliff will be a featured home on the Society’s 2022 Tour of Homes. Watch for more information about the tour.