Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Amalia Barney Simons Post 1836 ~

Mrs. Amalia Barney Simons Post, like so many others of the women suffragists can boast of ancestors who were prominent in early American History. Thomas Chittenden, the first governor of Vermont, was one of her ancestors and several were officers in the Revolutionary War, and in the army and navy in the war of 1812. Mrs. Post's father was William Simons and her mother Amalia Barney. Both parents were stem in integrity and patriotism and of great strength of character. In 1864, in Chicago, Miss Simons became the wife of Morton E Post. She with her husband crossed the plain in 1866, settling in Denver. Colorado and later moving to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Mrs. Post's life in Wyoming was closely identified with the story of obtaining and maintaining equal political rights for Wyoming women, and to her perhaps more than to any other individual is due the fact that the women of Wyoming have today the right of suffrage.

In 1871 Mrs. Post was a delegate to the Women's National Convention in Washington, D. C, and before an audience of five thousand people in Lincoln Hall she told of women's emancipation in Wyoming. In the fall of 1871 the Wyoming legislature repealed the act granting suffrage to women, but Mrs. Post by a personal appeal to Governor Campbell induced him to veto the bill. To Mrs. Post he said, "I came here opposed to women's suffrage but the eagerness and fidelity with which you and your friends have performed legal duties when called upon to act has convinced me that you deserve to enjoy those rights." A determined effort was made to pass the bill over the governor's veto, and a canvass of the members showed that the necessary two-thirds majority could probably be secured by the narrow margin of one vote. With political sagacity equal to that of any man Mrs. Post decided to secure that one vote. By an earnest appeal to one of the best educated men she won him to its support and upon the final ballot being taken upon the proposal to pass the bill over the governor's veto that man. Senator Foster, voted "no," and women's suffrage became a permanency in Wyoming.

From 1880 to 1884, Mrs. Post, whose husband was delegate to Congress daring that time, lived in Washington and by her social tact and sterling womanly qualities she made many friends for the cause of women's suffrage among those who were inclined to believe that only the radical or immodest of her sex desired suffrage. For twenty years Mrs. Post was vice-president of the National Women's Suffrage Association. In 1890, after equal rights to Wyoming women had been secured irrevocably by the constitution adopted by the people of the new state, Mrs. Post was made president of the committees having in charge the state-hood's celebration. On that occasion a copy of the state constitution was presented, to the women of the state by Judge N. C. Brown, who had been president of a Constitutional Convention which adopted it, and Mrs. Post received the book in behalf of the women of the state.

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.