Our History

     James A. Garfield circa 1858, age 27 years old; the year that the Union Chapel was constructed.

     Garfield was a student at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (now Hiram College) from 1851-1853 and rose to prominence through his intellectual ability and personal charisma. He took two years away to complete his collegiate degree at Williams College, then returned in 1856 to become first a teacher, then principal of the Institute while also serving as a lay minister in the Disciples of Christ Church. Although he left Hiram in 1861 to take up the Civil War command of Company A of the 42nd Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, his name appeared in the Institute’s catalogues until 1863. 

     Garfield was scheduled to speak at the Congregational “Brick” Church in December of 1857, but the invitation was withdrawn due to the controversial nature of the speech that was to include remarks on abolition and baptism by immersion. The South Newbury Union Chapel was erected in response to the cancelled speech, and was to be “…open and free for all denominations, but to be monopolized by no one or to the exclusion of anyone.”  

     Garfield resigned his commission in Dec. 1863 after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he served for 17 years. In January 1880, Garfield was elected to the U.S. Senate, but before his term began, attended the Republican Convention in Chicago as campaign manager for John Sherman of Ohio. Garfield, however, became the candidate for president, nominated on the 36th ballot.

     Ruth Fisher was born on January 25, 1809. She married William Munn in April 1833. Munn was an early proponent of the Ohio women's dress reform movement in Geauga County. She served as President of the Northern Ohio Health and Dress Reform Association, an early society for dress reform in the state, which celebrated dress reform and women’s suffrage every fourth of July by holding a picnic and sporting bloomers. 

     The Northern Ohio Health and Dress Reform Association was founded in 1870 and headquartered at South Newbury Union Chapel. The questions discussed at their meetings led to the 1874 formation of the Newbury Woman Suffrage Political Club, possibly the second such organization in Ohio and one of the earliest in the United States. Ruth Fisher Munn served as its first president. The Northern Ohio Health and Dress Reform Association and Suffrage and Political Club gathered at the South Newbury Union Chapel, also known as the “Cradle of Equal Suffrage.” In 1871, Munn was one of the nine South Newbury women to illegally cast a ballot in a local election at the Chapel, becoming one of the first female voters in Ohio’s history.

     This photograph shows Julia P. Green hanging a wreath on the Centennial Oak in South Newbury, Ohio, August 23, 1919. 

      Julia Porter was born May 8, 1847 in Mantua, Ohio and married Apollos Green on November 16, 1865.

     In 1874, she was Corresponding Secretary of the Newbury Woman Suffrage and Political Club and took part in the planting of the Centennial Oak tree on July 4, 1876. In 1879, Green relocated to Michigan to attend Hillsdale College, where she obtained her M.D. degree and practiced medicine until 1910. 

     In 1919, Dr. Green returned to northeast Ohio and became President of the newly organized Newbury Memorial Association. She was the only surviving charter member of the Newbury Woman Suffrage and Political Club to attend the August 23, 1919 procession at the South Newbury Union Chapel. She is pictured above hanging a commemorative wreath upon the Centennial Oak, which she helped plant forty-three years prior. 

     Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women’s suffrage movement.

     In 1848, a group of women held a convention at Seneca Falls, New York. It was the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States and began the Suffrage movement. Her mother and sister attended the convention but Anthony did not. In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two women became good friends and worked together for over 50 years fighting for women’s rights. They traveled the country and Anthony gave speeches demanding that women be given the right to vote. At times, she risked being arrested for sharing her ideas in public.  

     In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting. She was tried and fined $100 for her crime. This made many people angry and brought national attention to the suffrage movement. In 1876, she led a protest at the 1876 Centennial of our nation’s independence. She gave a speech—“Declaration of Rights”—written by Stanton and another suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage. 

     On March 8 and 9, 1879, Susan B. Anthony spoke at the Free Speech Chapel on her lecture circuit, devoting one lecture to “woman suffrage” and another to temperance in drink and tobacco. Each evening there was an audience large enough to burst through the walls.

     Elisabeth Fisher was born on September 13, 1813, in Canton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts.  Orphaned at 18, she never married, but rather lived with her sister Ruth, brother-in-law William Munn, and niece Ellen Munn in Newbury.  She taught school in Auburn, Burton, Chagrin Falls, Newbury, and Russell for much of her life, later becoming a nurse, then turning her hand to farming and weaving.

    In the 1870s, she became known as the first suffragist in Newbury. Because she tried to vote and was refused, she in turn refused to pay taxes. According to local legend, a piece of her property was sold to pay those taxes.

     Elisabeth died on November 1, 1893 in Newbury, and was buried in the South Newbury Cemetery. She left her real estate, select personal property, and household items to her niece, Ellen Munn in her will.

      Ellen Munn was born on February 18, 1833 to Ruth Fisher and William Munn. Like her mother and Aunt Elisabeth, she became well known as a suffragist and reformer, serving as the first recording secretary of the Newbury Woman Suffrage Political Club. She also gained notoriety in Geauga County for wearing bloomers, decorated with ruffles and rickrack.

     Ellen was such an ardent advocate of daily cold water showers and bathing that her parents built her a bathhouse of her own on their property. She also promoted temperance and assisted Willette Allen in leading a local chapter of the Cold Water Army where local boys pledged never to imbibe alcohol.

     Ellen died on May 23, 1908 in Newbury, and buried in South Newbury Cemetery.

      Sophia Ober was born in 1830 in New Hampshire.  She and her husband Darius Mann Allen had one child, Willette Alona Allen.  Sophia became known locally as a “leader in every good and progressive cause” and was one of the suffragists who tried to vote and was refused.

      Irma Redfield McIntyre later reminisced that “Beside the lane at the north and on the east side of the road was the beautiful Allen home. D.M. Allen and his wife Sophia Ober Allen were highly educated, wealthy Bostonians, who followed other kin folk to South Newbury. I think it is true that they had more to do with the educational and cultural development of South Newbury, than any other resident. Their home, a stately brick house, was on a rise of ground. Well kept, terraced lawns and stone steps led to it from the road. It fairly breathed hospitality. Every room had an open fireplace. The home was an expression of culture and good taste. They both had a rare trait of being able to bring out the best in people without giving offense. They had a large library of fine books and loaned them to anyone who wished to read them.” 

      Sophia moved to Georgia, following her daughter who had retained a teaching position in Atlanta by 1890. She died of consumption in 1908 in Fulton County, Georgia, and was buried in the Douglasville Cemetery in Douglasville, Douglas County, Georgia. She and her husband Darius also have a gravestone in the South Newbury Cemetery.

      Mary Collister was born on July 14, 1834, in the Isle of Man. She and her husband James H. Hodges had three children: Eva J., James H., and George N.  Mary was one of the Geauga women who tried to vote and was refused. She also served as the treasurer of the Newbury Woman Suffrage Political Club.

      Irma Redfield McIntyre later reminisced that Mary was known as an "excellent cook. No one made pickles to equal one kind she made. They were first put in a brine, then freshened, then packed in a deep crock, the vinegar solution poured over them and grape and horseradish leaves on top. Good to the last crisp pickle!”

      Mary died on March 10, 1905, in Newbury, Ohio, and was buried in the South Newbury Cemetery.

      Eva Pinney was born in 1851 in Connecticut.  She may have attended the preparatory course at Oberlin College in 1870 and was listed in the 1870 census as a teacher living in Newbury with her mother Paulette/Purleyett Burnett (a postmistress) and two younger sisters Florence (age 15) and Cora M. (age 12). By 1878, she was being paid as an organizer for Newbury Woman Suffrage Political Club, lecturing throughout Ohio on suffrage and temperance. In 1879 and 1880, she served as delegate to National Women’s Suffrage Association meetings and on the 1880 census is listed as a lecturer with residence in Newbury, Ohio

      Eva later returned to Glastonbury/Hartford, Connecticut and may have worked as a dressmaker before being listed as a mail messenger on the 1910 census. She died on November 17, 1916, in Connecticut and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, East Granby, Connecticut.