Heritage \ People \

Mrs. May (Mariette Stocking) Knaggs (1847 - 1917)
Prominent advocate in the women's suffrage movement in Michigan.

by Joni Hubard-Golden (April, 2010)

Note - This article was originally published on the author's website [Michigan's Womens Forum].

Equality ruled in the home of May Stocking Knaggs, a Bay City suffragist who spoke around the country and testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Suffrage in 1896.

While she traveled in her work on behalf of women's suffrage, Stocking Knaggs' husband stayed home with their children. A native New Yorker, she spent most of her adult life in Bay City and often wrote articles about suffrage for the local newspapers.

President of the Michigan Equal Suffrage Association from 1895 to 1899, she served as the chairperson of the press committee for the convention of the National Women’s Relief Corps held in Detroit and on the board of Lewis Hospital in Bay City.

Testifying before a Congressional subcommittee, Stocking Knaggs gave a stirring speech on behalf of "nearly 600,000 women of the age of 21 years and upward in the great State of Michigan." At the time, about 100,000 were employed and 76,000 were property owners, paying over $2,000,000 in taxes on property with a combined value of $34,000,000.

And still, they could not vote.

"Our forefathers rebelled against British domination upon the principle that 'taxation without representation is tyranny' ; and if it is tyranny for men it is tyranny for women also," Stocking Knaggs said, also pointing out that while idiots, lunatics and criminals had their right to vote protected, women did not.

"In the Kansas Building at the World's Fair, many of you saw a notable picture, a portrait of Frances E. Willard, her face the enthronement of intellectual and spiritual power. At one corner was a driveling idiot, at another a frantic maniac, at a third a low-browed criminal, and in the fourth a painted and befeathered Indian; and this picture was called 'Woman and her political peers'. But if that picture were brought into our State it would have to be rechristened, 'Woman and her political superiors'," she pointed out.

"Gentlemen, it is humiliating; it is unjust. We therefore appeal to you in behalf of the wives, daughters, and sisters of the loyal men of Michigan to do what lies in your power to remove from us this stigma, Senator Peffer. And it ought to be done."

Sources:

[Michigan Women's Hall of Fame] / [Library of Congress]

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Additional Comments:

From the Stocking Ancestry [Electronic Library] :

Mariette (May) Stockings was born in 1847, in New York, was the daughter of George B. Stocking and Cornelia Ellis. In 1869 she married John Wesley Knaggs, and their children were:

• Walter Wesley - born Aug. 7, 1871; married Mabel A. Bernard on May 3, 1898 .
• Roy Stocking - born Sept. 14, 1874; married Mary Allen Whitney.
• Duneis Camilla - born Apr. 6, 1875; married Henry E. McLennan.
• Mary Stocking - born Aug. 2, 1876.

Mariette Stocking Knaggs resided in Bay City, Mich. Her ability as a writer, fluency as a speaker, and her organizing and administrative abilities have placed here in the forefront of intellectual, reform, and philantropic movements. She is the first woman to be honored with membership in the board of education in Bay City; was president of the Home of Industry for Discharged Prisoners at Detroit, by appointment of Governor Bliss, and member of the Board of Guardians of the State Industrial Home for Girls at Adrian, Mich.

John W. Knaggs was born in Rainsinville, Mich., August 28, 1839. He is in the fire insurance business in Bay City, Mich.

From article by Dee Dee Wacksman written in a 2007:

"May Stocking Knaggs and Mrs. G. B. Jennison were members of the Bay County Equal Suffrage Association. Bay City had a visit from seventy-eight year old suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony in 1893 when she spoke at the Universalist Church.

"May Stocking Knaggs went on to become president of the Michigan State Equal Suffrage Association and was the first woman elected to the Bay City Board of Education. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.