ce 1838 widows with children of school age had
been voters for school trustees in the country districts, and in 1888
this right was extended to allow tax-paying widows and spinsters to
vote on school taxes. This general law, however, did not apply to
chartered cities. The vigilance of Mrs. Farmer observed and seized
the opportunity offered by the revision of city charters, after the
adoption of the new constitution, to put in clauses granting full
School Suffrage to all women. At her instigation, in 1892, the equal
rights associations of Covington, Newport and Lexington, the only
second-class cities, petitioned the committee selected to prepare a
charter for such cities to insert a clause in the section on
education, making women eligible as members of school boards and
qualified to vote at all elections of such boards. This was done, and
the charter passed the General Assembly in 1894, and was signed by
Governor Brown on March 19. The influence of the State association was
not sufficient, however, to have School Suffrage put in the charters
of cities of the first, third and fourth classes. The Hons. Charles
Jacob Bronston, John O. Hodges, William Goebel and Joel Baker did
excellent service for this clause.

The changes wrought by liberal legislation and the part the State
association had in securing this will be best understood by quotations
from a leaflet issued by the State Association:

In 1888 the Kentucky E. R. A. was organized for the purpose of
obtaining for women equality with men in educational, industrial,
legal and political rights.

We found on the statute books a law which permitted a husband to
collect his wife's wages.

We found Kentucky the only State which did not allow a married
woman to make a will.

We found that marriage gave to the husband all the wife's
personal property which could be reduced to possession, and the
use of all her real estate owned at the time or acquired by her
after marriage, with power to rent the same and receive the rent.

We found that the common law of curtesy and dower prevailed,
whereby on the death of the wife the husband inherited absolutely
all her personalty and, when there were children, a life interest
in all her real estate; while the wife, when there were children,
inherited one-third of her husband's personalty and a
life-interest in one-third of his real estate.