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Woman Suffrage Association to push for universalenfranchisement. As of 1892, however, Wyomingwas the only state in which females couldvote. When the general assembly in Sacramentopassed a suffrage bill in 1893, California lookedas if it might become the second state. Thegovernor’s ruling against the constitutionalityof the legislation forced suffrage proponents toregroup. Three years later, they succeeded in placingon the ballot an amendment to California’sconstitution granting women the franchise. Itwon favor with the male voters of Los Angeles,where Caroline had helped to lay the groundworkfor acceptance, but went down to overwhelmingdefeat elsewhere in the state. 64A decade passed before the suffrage issuereemerged in California. By this time, womenhad been granted the right to vote in Colorado,Utah, Idaho, and Washington State. Caroline wasnow in her mid-eighties. To show their appreciationof the inspirational leadership she had previouslyprovided, her younger colleagues appointedher to honorary presidencies in suffrage andequity leagues formed to push again for the franchise.This time, suffrage proponents carefullyforged alliances with labor organizations andProgressives. At a special election on October 10,1911, California became the sixth and largest stateto enfranchise women. 65Caroline Maria Seymour Severance, who diedin 1914 at the age of ninety-four, would not liveto see national suffrage achieved with passagein 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment to theConstitution prohibiting the states and federalgovernment from denying any American citizenthe right to vote on the basis of gender. But shehad savored victory, casting her first vote in apresidential election in 1912. In recognition ofher fragility, she had been allowed to register athome, whose name Caroline had changed to ElNido following T.C.’s death. 66The registration ceremony, according to areporter who witnessed it, took place a weekafter the special election, perhaps on El Nido’sshady veranda screened by Japanese curtains andfurnished with easy chairs and two hammocks.Then in her early nineties, Caroline passed mostof her time reclined in a hammock, dictatingto her secretary or listening to her read aloudfrom “serious and instructive books.” Becauseof the importance of the occasion, Caroline was“allowed to sit up” to sign the registration book.In the space provided to list one’s occupation shewrote “Mother of Clubs,” an honorific that hadbeen bestowed on her by the activist women ofLos Angeles. Describing the day as among herproudest, she declared, “At ninety-two I havegained my majority.” Her formal statement,issued the day after the special election, showedthat, despite her physical infirmity, she retainedher spitfire: “We have come to the dawn of a glorioustomorrow! A landmark in the most sacredcrusade of the ages, when woman is heroicallyreleased from the bondage and superstition ofthe past, and liberated from the political blacklistin our own free country. . . . Your loving comrade,C. M. Severance.” 67Diana Tittle, a former magazine writer and editor, is theauthor of The Severances: An American Odyssey, from PuritanMassachusetts to Ohio’s Western Reserve, and Beyond. In 1997she received the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature for hernonfiction books on regional history and urban affairs. California History • volume 88 number 1 2010