Fanny Eyre Smith, Early Suffragist
North-Western College, as North Central College was known before 1926, was a likely place to find advocates for woman suffrage. The college was coeducational from its founding, and women were also professors and administrators. Its first president, A. A. Smith, was a staunch abolitionist and advocate for coeducation, so it is not surprising that one of the strongest early voices for woman suffrage on campus was that of his granddaughter, Fanny Eyre Smith (later Frances Smith Hildreth).
Smith kept a journal in which she noted an important event: the founding of the Naperville Equal Suffrage Club. Remarkably, one of the three officers she noted in this entry was a man, Simon “Sime” Stanger. This is likely because during this period, the campaign for woman suffrage was often intertwined with another cause: the temperance movement, which called for the regulation of alcohol production and sales. Stanger was a noted temperance advocate, so it would not have been difficult for him to make the intellectual leap and support woman suffrage. Also, as a man, he would have been able to open a bank account; his position in the club was treasurer.
