Last updated on November 17, 2025
The Mary Eliza Project hosted a talk on Jamaica Plain’s first female voters at the Northeast Arts Building, the very site where these women registered in Ward 22 in 1920.
As part of the city’s Community Preservation Act, historians and archivists created a database containing information of more than 56,000 women who registered to vote in Boston around the time when the 19th Amendment passed, specifically between August and October of 1920. This group included about 3,000 women in JP.
“Looking at [these voters] individually and as a group really helps to revise a lot of general assumptions that only a small number of privileged women cared about equal rights at the time, or even engagement in politics,” said historian and Mary Eliza Project volunteer Laura Prieto. “We consider all these women suffragists… not just the women who gave speeches or marched.”
Working with city archives, the project’s volunteers went through the handwritten voter registration records, which included information such as each woman’s age, country of birth, address and place of business, and digitized them into a spreadsheet.
The talk, held in conjunction with the Jamaica Plain Historical Society, took place on Nov. 6 and included descriptions of the archival project, discussions of notable local female voters and advice on how to navigate the database.
Representatives from The Mary Eliza Project also shared information on how the data provided insight into the city’s suffragette movement as a whole.
The research also revealed specific demographics of women who exercised their new right to vote. This information provided the project members with a clearer picture of history.
“When we think about what these registration sites were like, we can think about lines of women standing out in the evening air, chatting with their neighbors as they waited outside this building and others like it to register to vote,” said archivist and Mary Eliza Project volunteer Marta Crilly. “These lines were made up of all sorts of women, not just women born in Massachusetts or Boston, but women born in Eastern Europe, Ireland, the Caribbean, the American South and more.”
During the presentation, the speakers showed the registration records of the first nine female voters in Ward 22, three of whom were first-generation immigrants. Within this same set, at least four of the women worked for wages.
“At this building in Jamaica Plain, you would have heard women with Irish and Canadian accents, and you would have heard women chatting in Yiddish, Swedish, English, German and other languages,” said Crilly. “Some women were coming to register after a long day of factory work. Others were coming after a day spent raising children and keeping their homes running.”
One notable JP figure who registered at the Ward 22 site in 1920 was Judith Windsor Smith, who, at age 98, was the oldest woman in Boston to claim her right to vote.
During her life, Smith was an active suffragist who served on the executive committees of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, the American Women Suffrage Association and the New England Woman Suffrage Association. She also wrote for the Boston-based suffragist newspaper The Woman’s Journal. At age 93, Smith participated in the 1915 Boston Suffrage Parade.
Also in this group of early local voters was Smith’s daughter Zilpha Drew, who graduated from high school, an achievement uncommon for women at the time. She went on to work a variety of jobs, including serving as the Associate Director for the Boston School for Social Workers, while participating in charity work, such as advocating for Mothers’ Aid.
While Smith and her daughter were already known historical figures, a major part of the group’s work has been uncovering previously untold stories. The project members have shared many of these findings on their Instagram, including records of these women’s careers, which included everything from dental hygienists and telephone operators to classical musicians and even chocolate dippers at New England Confectionery Company.
“Each woman’s entry gives us a quick glimpse of who she was,” said Prieto. “Together, they also make up…a really interesting composite picture.”
At the end of the session, the speakers shared tips for how the public can utilize the data, from informing teachers’ curricula to conducting family research. They welcome anyone to look for stories, from searching for connections between people who stood in line together to finding names that intrigue them.
“We’re all coming at this from a different point of view,” said Prieto. “We’re a relatively small team of, I think, six or seven now, and….we’re all following our own interests, which are not necessarily the interests you all have in the data set, so we love hearing the interests other people have found.”
The team encouraged people to share their findings with the Mary Eliza Project via their Instagram, @maryelizaproject, or on Blue Sky @maryelizaproject.bsky.social.
