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Minona Stearns Fitts Jones 1855 ~ 1926

 

Mrs. Minona Stearns Fitts Jones was born in Abington, Massachusetts, July 5, 1855, of New England ancestry. Her ancestors settled Walpole, Wrentham and Mansfield, Mass. She is the daughter of Dr. I. H. Steams and Catherine M. Guild Steams. Attended the New England public schools; New Vineyard, Maine, and Oak Grove Seminary, Vassalboro, Maine, finishing her education at Milwaukee Female College. She studied medicine and assisted her father. Dr. Stearns, in the Milwaukee National Soldiers' Home where he was surgeon.

Married Robert C. Fitts, of Leverett, Massachusetts, at Milwaukee, on December 6, 1879. She engaged in business in Milwaukee for six years. She became interested in politics through the street-car strike in Milwaukee in 1896, and was the only woman writer and speaker for the strikers and became converted to woman suffrage at that time and spoke for the populists in their campaign in Wisconsin.

Upon the discovery of rich deposits of mica in Park and Fremont Counties, Colorado, by her son, Roy Fields Fitts, Mrs. Fitts visited Colorado and bought the mines and milling property and began the mining of mica, assisted by her son, who was a boy of eighteen years. Mrs. Fitts returned to Chicago and organized the United States Mica Mining and Milling Company, and was elected secretary and treasurer of same, which position she held for six years. Mrs. Fitts married for the second time. Senator Frank W. Jones, of Massachusetts, May 29, 1905. Mrs. Fitts Jones founded the "No Vote No Tax" League of Illinois. This league was established for the purpose of bringing together all who would refuse to pay taxes until they could vote, since "Taxation without representation is tyranny." Mrs. Fitts Jones is one of the incorporators of the "Public Policy League" of Illinois, and also incorporated the National Race Betterment League, and was elected the first president of this world-wide movement for race betterment.

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.

 

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