Missouri T B Saunders (1857 - 1926)

Born 17 Feb 1857 in Galveston, Galveston, Texas, United States

Ancestors

Died 14 Jun 1926 at age 69 in Edmonds, Snohomish, Washington, United States

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Biography

Missouri was born in 1857. She was the daughter of Judge Levi Best Sanders and Martha Jane Sherrod. She passed away in 1926.

Missouri was born in Galveston, Texas, though at the time her family were living in Greenville, Hunt County Texas, northeast of Dallas.^[1] She grew up in the Greenville area until the age of 10 in 1867 when she moved with her parents to Berryville, Arkansas. She studied at Clarke's Academy in Berryville before marrying Jeremiah C. Hanna, an aspiring merchant and fellow student at the Academy, in 1872.^[2] Jeremiah continued his education at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. They had a son Kirke (b 1873) and two daughters Florence (b 1876) and Mercy (b 1879).^[3]

In 1882, the Hanna family moved to Spokane Falls in the Washington Territory to pursue a mercantile business. The family suffered several tragedies over the following years. In 1887, while on a business trip, her husband and 5 others drowned in the Coeur d’Alene River in Idaho when their small excursion steamer river boat hit a snag of logs and capsized. In 1893, her then 19-year-old son Kirke died from an accidental morphine overdose that had been prescribed by his doctor to medicate a bowel obstruction. That same year, her youngest daughter Mercy was permanently handicapped from a bicycle accident and became something of an invalid for the remainder of her short life. Throughout all this, Missouri very successfully managed the family business and maintained a respected and prominent position in local social and business communities. She engaged in real estate and home building in the burgeoning Spokane market, demonstrating what one short biography called “unremitting energy and fine judgment of values”.^[4]

She later disposed of her Spokane land holdings and sought help for Mercy at several health resorts. Her move to the Puget Sound mill village of Edmonds in 1904 was apparently inspired by the hope that sea air and salt water might benefit the young woman. In January 1905 she purchased the weekly newspaper Edmonds Review. Missouri is acknowledged as the first female newspaper publisher in Washington. Her paper chronicled the early phases of Edmonds’ growth. As the first woman in her field, Hanna faced many obstacles on the basis of her gender. She was not listed in the Edmonds Chamber of Commerce membership roster, for instance, and was mocked by her competitors. She ran the Review for over five years before selling in 1910 to a rival Edmonds paper, the Tribune, which was launched in 1907 by Will Taylor. The paper then merged into the Tribune-Review and served the Edmonds community until the early 1980s.^[5]

Hanna published two successive journals on behalf of woman suffrage. White women could vote in Washington Territory through a decree in 1867. This right was taken away through subsequent court decisions. Hanna had begun publishing the Votes for Women journal in 1909 championing the suffrage movement. She increased that activity after selling the Review. Votes for Women advocated for women to vote in Washington State and was the official organ of the Equal Suffrage Association, headed by Emma Smith DeVoe. The journal was instrumental in gaining white male support which, on November 10, 1910 led to an amendment of the state’s constitution to extend the right to vote to Washington women.

Hanna began publishing a successor journal, The New Citizen, in late 1910. This publication recognized the role of the newly enfranchised women and relayed notes from the state and local meetings of the suffragist association in Washington as well as news of regional, national, and international activities. The journal's policy was to bring "the attention of the public to the general question of woman's political enfranchisement and to the special consideration of the amendment granting suffrage to women which is to be voted on in this state in November, 1910." The last issue, in January 1911, after woman suffrage became part of the State Constitution, admonished women to "use the ballot that has been given to you." At this point, the publication converted to The New Citizen, recognizing the new role of newly enfranchised women and published with her daughter, Florence Hanna Hamilton; Abigail Scott Duniway served as Oregon editor. Hanna stopped publishing The New Citizen in 1912, due to high publishing costs.

Missouri was a major land developer in Edmonds and developed the Hanna Park neighborhood, which still bears her name. She was also a founder of the Snohomish County Press Association. Upon her death in 1926 she was heralded as the "Mother of Journalism" in Washington State by The Seattle Times and local Edmonds and Snohomish County newspapers. In 2017, My Edmonds News publisher Teresa Wippel honored Hanna in a heritage competition run by the Edmonds Historical Museum because she was "blown away" by Missouri’s accomplishments and invisibility in the history of the City of Edmonds.

Sources

1. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_T._B._Hanna
2. ↑ "Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957." Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2009, 2011. "Arkansas County Marriages, 1838–1957," database, FamilySearch; from Arkansas Courts of Common Pleas and County Clerks. Digital images of originals housed at various county courthouses in the State of Arkansas. Marriage records.
3. ↑ Year: 1880; Census Place: Prairie, Carroll, Arkansas; Roll: 40; Page: 274B; Enumeration District: 029
4. ↑ Charles P. LeWarne, Hanna, Missouri T. B. (1857-1926), Posted 6/21/2009 HistoryLink.org Essay 9029, https://www.historylink.org/file/9029
5. ↑ Lloyd Spencer and Lancaster Pollard, A History of the State of Washington, Vol. 4 (New York: American Historical Society, 1937), pp 776-777.