Mandy Newham-Cobb illustration
Lilly was not a white-gloved lady.
“An independent woman with no means” more aptly describes my grandmother. She entered the world in 1890, the same year the National Women Suffrage Association and the Women Suffrage Association merged. As a young girl, women’s fight for rights captured her imagination and maintained its hold through her 82 years of life.
Married at age 17, Lilly birthed her first son nine months later. Over the years she added four more boys to the family, and they in turn added nine grandchildren to the mix—not to mention their total of nine wives. Most of the women who married into the family felt the sting of constant competition with their politically active mother-in-law, as did her husband, my grandfather.
In 1913, leaving her three sons at home with their grandmother, Lilly and her younger sister, Mamie, traveled to Washington, D.C., to join the suffragettes in their march on the nation’s capitol, demanding women’s right to vote. Her husband never knew she was going until he came home from work and found her gone. My grandfather, a strong-willed man unable to control his wife, was happy to learn that within a month of her return, Lilly was pregnant with their fourth son, my father.
Did a matter as serious as four children to feed and care for deter Lilly from her political passion? In a word, no. With cunning, she permanently moved her widowed mother into her house under the guise of “needing another pair of hands” to manage the rambunctious boys. She also managed to coerce Mamie into assisting their mother while she, Lilly, went about the business of collecting signatures to petition Congress on behalf of the Women’s Rights Movement. Even as she gathered these signatures, her home state, Pennsylvania, defeated the measure.
Her husband was also defeated. He moved out of their home, a place over-run with two uncontrollable women and four out-of-control sons. In today’s world, Lilly might have been expected to find a job, but it was 1915. Men were expected to carry the weight of financially caring for their family, and my grandfather did just that; which allowed Lilly to be a political gad-about.
My grandparents did reconcile in 1920, the same year Lilly cast her first vote in a national election. She also produced one more son in 1925. For Lilly, having the right to vote encouraged her to believe she had the right to do as she pleased. She was wrong. My grandfather filed for divorce six months later, leaving her the house and the boys.
Over the years, I learned Lilly’s door was always open. During the depression of the late 1920s and on into the 30s, she turned her home into a boarding house. Some of the boarders stayed long enough to be recognized as family. Yes, my grandmother had boyfriends, but never remarried; my grandfather visited frequently, but never returned with a suitcase. To me, his visits signaled a deep love, though one not strong enough to weather the social changes moving throughout our country.
While growing up, my cousins and I waited all week for Saturday nights at her house, the night when she held open house to family and friends. A large pot of potato soup, with pretzels and bread as side dishes, filled the stomachs of all, including musicians or local politicians. It seemed everyone Lilly knew passed over the threshold sometime between 5 p.m. to midnight. No one came empty handed, nor did they leave empty hearted.
My cousins and I stayed awake as long as we could; not wanting to miss the music, singing, off-color jokes, or watching Lilly thrive on the unlikely collaboration of eclectic people. Of course, there was plenty of beer and whiskey to fuel these gatherings—as I said, no one came empty handed. It wasn’t until I got older that I managed to stay awake for the political discussions, to hear my grandmother voice her deep-held convictions on women’s rights versus the status quo.
Lilly was no Susan B. Anthony or Carrie Chapman Catt; she wasn’t educated enough to rise to their standard. However, she did enlighten her granddaughters about the power of the determined individual. As teenagers and on into our early womanhood, Lilly regaled us with tales of her work and her persistence to get the women’s rights plank on the party platform.
As a grandmother, she never gave me a recipe for soup but, instead, presented me with a bouillabaisse of ideas about the art of living. Nor did she teach me to sew. Instead, she sowed the common threads of acceptance and courage into my mind. Her stories instilled in me the responsibility to understand our government, to know local candidates running for office, and never miss a chance to cast a vote.
Was Lilly an ordinary grandmother? Definitely not. But in revisiting the past years and her sphere of influence on her granddaughters, I’d say we’ve carried her torch and followed closely in her footsteps. Ordinary was not a word in her dictionary, nor has it found an entry in ours.