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Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery Park
Among the people in this cemetery, Albert A. Manning was one of the earliest to make their way out to the Washington territory, coming along with Asa Mercer on the second Mercer Expedition in 1866. While living in Washington, he assisted in the movement for women's suffrage in Washington and hosted influential women's suffrage advocate Susan B. Anthony. Through Manning's life, we can get a peek into the early days of the settlement of Washington and the fight for women's suffrage.
Albert A. Manning was born on an unknown date in 1821 in Indiana. Around 1850, he relocated to Middlesex, Massachusetts, where he later joined the Union army in 1862. Manning was a corporal in the 6th Massachusetts Infantry, a unit best known for its involvement in the Siege of Suffolk. After the conclusion of his military service in 1863, Manning and his family relocated to Boston. It was here he saw an ad for Asa Mercer's second expedition to the Washington Territory, and sought him out. The Manning family came to Seattle long with Mercer and the women famously known as the "Mercer Girls," who were brought out to Washington to increase the female population of the territory. Manning and his wife Olive soon made a name for themselves in Olympia, and were active in the social scenes of Olympia and Seattle. Albert Manning was shoemaker in Olympia, as well as a director of the Washington State Industrial Association, and a leading early member of Stevens Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. The Mannings were steadfast supporters of women's suffrage, and hosted Abigail Scott Duniway and Susan B. Anthony when the two activists visited Olympia in 1871. He died in Olympia on April 26th, 1890.
Continue reading below to learn more about the Mercer Expeditions, women's suffrage in Washington, and Albert Manning's life.
Detail of a 1866 illustration of the second Mercer Expedition from Harper's Weekly.
Image property of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection.
Mercer Expeditions
In the early days of the settlement of the Washington Territory, a large majority of the population was made up of men, many of whom came out to Washington alone. Washington's lack of women presented a problem in the eyes of these early settlers, and served as the inspiration for the Mercer Expeditions. Spearheaded by Asa Mercer, the first president of the then Territorial University of Washington, these expeditions set out to bring women, primarily school teachers, from the East Coast to Washington to improve education and increase Washington's population. Mercer put ads in several papers in Massachusetts and New York, and campaigned to encourage women and families to join his expedition. Mercer found success in Lowell, Massachusetts, due to its precarious economic situation. Lowell was a major hub for textile mills, and due to the secession of the Southern states, cotton was no longer easily accessible, throwing the town of Lowell and many other Northern manufacturing cities into an economic slump. Below is a notice seeking out teachers and promoting a meeting for interested parties in Lowell, Massachusetts from the January 23rd, 1864 issue of The Lowell Courier.
Notice of Mercer's search for teachers.
Image property of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell Libraries.
Asa Mercer in Seattle, circa 1875.
Image property of the University of Washington Special Collections.
Ten single women, two single men, and a father and his two young daughters, joined Mercer on this first expedition in March of 1864. This arduous journey by steamship, train, and sailboat lasted over 2 months, with the party finally arriving in Seattle on May 16th, 1864. These women would come to be known as the "Mercer Girls."
After the Civil War concluded in 1865, Mercer began gearing up for a second expedition, this time focusing his efforts primarily in New York City and Boston. In 1866, Albert A. Manning saw one of Asa Mercer's ads in The New York Tribune. Thanks to an 1888 article from The Seattle Post Intelligencer marking the return of Asa Mercer to Seattle, you can hear the story of Manning's journey to Seattle in his own words:
"At the close of the war, I settled in Boston, and one day I read a flaming advertisement in The New York Tribune, in regard to Mercer's proposed expedition. The date that he would be in Boston was mentioned, and when he got there I hunted him up. He was lying on a [lounge] reading the Bible, and I at once became prejudiced against him, but he is a good talker and I agreed to come with him. Our party consisted of my wife and two daughters, Ed. Stevens, L.A. Treen, and myself. Stevens was my wife's son, and Treen married one of the daughters, and John F. Gowey the other. We sailed from New York on the ship Continental, Captain Winsor, in January 1866. There were about 80 women and girls and about 25 men. We had one or two deaths and a birth or two on board, and enjoyed fine weather on the entire trip. From San Fransisco we came on the old brig Tanner, and we experienced a novel reception when we reached Seattle."
- Albert A. Manning, 1888.
"The Gilman of His Day: Interesting Reminisces Regarding A.S. Mercer," The Seattle Post Intelligencer, September 16, 1888, page 6.
Details of a 1866 illustration of the second Mercer Expedition from Harper's Weekly.
Images property of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection.
In total, Asa Mercer personally brought a little over 150 people to the Washington Territory, a number that doesn't seem overly significant by today's standards, but was a notable population boost to the developing territory. The individuals on these expeditions eventually spread out all over Washington. The Mercer Expeditions brought school teachers to Whidbey Island, farmers to the Skagit River Valley, tradesmen and lawyers to Seattle, and many more who shaped the early days of American settlement in Washington Territory.
Shoemaking & Suffrage: The Mannings in Olympia and Beyond
After their initial arrival in Seattle, the Mannings eventually settled in Olympia. Albert Manning was a shoemaker there for much of his life, while his wife Olive Manning ran a boarding house. In Olympia, Albert and Olive Manning were incredibly influential, and are considered one of the city's founding families. They were active with the Stevens Post of the Grand Army of the Republic and Women's Relief Corps, and Albert was one of the post's early leading members. He was also a director of the Washington Industrial Association. Little is known about this organization, but it appears Manning helped plan an industrial exhibition put on by the organization in Olympia in 1877. The members of the Manning Family were also firm believers in women's suffrage, and were instrumental figures in the fight for women's rights in Washington.
An ad for the Washington Industrial Association's 7th Annual Fair in The Seattle Post Intelligencer, Oct. 6th, 1877.
Image property of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell Libraries.
In 1854, Arthur Denny, one of Seattle's founders, proposed a resolution at the first session of the Washington Territorial Legislature that would have given white women the right to vote. Denny's proposal lost by a single vote, and though the reasoning behind the opposing votes are unclear, there is speculation that some of the men voting on this took issue with the exclusion of Native American women from this proposal. As evidenced by the Mercer Girls and other elements of Washington's development, women played a massive role in the development of the state, and remained so despite their inability to vote. Once again an attempt was made to give women the vote in 1871, when Daniel Bigelow proposed that women be allowed to vote to decide if they would like the right to vote.
Later in that same year of 1871, women's rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Abigail Scott Duniway embarked on a tour of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, where they eventually stopped in Olympia to address the Washington Territorial Legislature on the subject of Bigelow's recent proposal. Duniway and Anthony's party traveled by carriage from Portland, Oregon to Olympia, an incredibly rough journey to make in those days. Based on Susan B. Anthony's diary entries, it sounds like this journey by carriage was so rough passengers got out and walked for much of the distance. Once they had reached Olympia, Albert Manning came to meet the weary travelers and brought Anthony and Duniway to his home.
October 17th, Tuesday
Olympia, Washington Territory
"...Dark Dark - lanterns only to see by - rode 14 miles walking every step to breakfast - then 18 to dinner - dreadful roads and long mountains - passengers all walked miles of it [...] Mr. Manning met us and took me to his house - in double quick time took hot bath and was in bed."
- Susan B. Anthony, 1871.
Diary entry, accessed via the Library of Congress.
Signed portraits of Abigail Scott Duniway and Susan B. Anthony from 1870, a year before they came to Olympia.
Images property of The Library of Congress.
Notice of the 1871 Olympia Women's Suffrage Convention in The New Northwest, Oct. 27th, 1871.
Image property of the Library of Congress.
On October 19th, 1871, Susan B. Anthony addressed the Washington Territorial Legislature, becoming the first woman to ever do so. After this address, Anthony and Duniway remained in collaboration with the suffrage advocates of the Washington Territory, and once again returned to Olympia for a Woman's Suffrage Convention in Olympia in November of 1871. Among the organizers of this convention were Olive Manning, and Ann Elizabeth Bigelow, wife of Daniel Bigelow. This ended up being a long fight in Washington, as it was in the rest of the United States. Women in Washington Territory were finally given the right to vote in 1877, but this only applied to school board elections. In 1883, a bill granting both Black and white women the right to vote and serve as jurors in Washington Territory passed, making Washington the third territory or state to ratify a women's suffrage bill, just behind Wyoming and Utah.
However, it wasn't long before these hard won rights began to be stripped away. In that same year of 1883, the suffrage bill was revoked thanks to a legal dispute over the bill's title, a decision that enraged many Washingtonians. In January of 1888, another suffrage bill was passed, but in August of 1888, Washington's women lost the right to vote once again due to a Territorial Supreme Court Case known as Nevada Bloomer v. John Todd et al. that called into question the constitutionality of women's suffrage, leading to women's suffrage being excluded from Washington's state constitution when it gained statehood in 1889. It wasn't until 1910 that women in Washington could vote again, once and for all.
As for the Manning family, Albert and Olive remained in Olympia for the remainder of their lives. Albert died in 1890, and Olive died in 1898 and is buried in Tumwater. After Albert and Olive's deaths, their daughter Nina Manning and her husband Lewis Treen moved to Seattle and lived in the University District, near where Condon Hall of the University of Washington stands today. Lewis, who traveled with the Mannings on the expedition, later became a well known merchant and telegram operator. In Seattle, Nina was an active member of the Stevens Post of the Women's Relief Corps, the female auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic. Olive's daughter from her first marriage and Albert's adopted daughter, Georgiana "Annie" Stevens, eventually traveled to Japan with her husband, Washington State Representative John F. Gowey, who had also accompanied the Mannings on the expedition. However, Gowey died while the couple was in Yokohama, Japan, leaving Annie widowed. After returning to Washington and marrying Reverend Rufus Chase, Annie and her new husband moved to Pasadena, California, where they remained until both of them died in 1935.
Albert and Olive Manning's journey from the war-torn East Coast to the rugged terrain of the Washington territory is one of many undertaken by families affected by the Civil War. Their story illustrates the circumstances that brought so many people out West, as well as the political influence these individuals had on Washington as a developing territory. It is so easy to think of the Civil War as entirely separate from Washington's state history, but through the life of the Mannings and so many others, we can see the critical influence Civil War veterans and their families had on the social, physical, and political development of Washington.
For a complete source list, please see bibliography.