In honor of Women’s History Month, I am visiting local sites that honor influential women. This week, I share the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial, located in Market Square, Downtown Knoxville. The memorial honors the women who campaigned for Tennessee, the final state to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote.

The life-size statue honors Lizzie Crozier French, Anne Dallas Dudley and Elizabeth Avery Meriwether.

Lizzie Crozier French was the organizer of the Knoxville Equal Suffrage Association, president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association, president of the Tennessee Federation of Women’s Clubs, and state chair of the National Woman’s Party. She was the daughter of John H. Crozier who represented Knox County in the Tennessee House (1837-39) and served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1845-49).

Lizzie Crozier French was also grounded in education movements: founding Ossoli Circle, named for Margaret Fuller Ossoli, in 1885 and establishing the Woman’s Educational and Industrial Union in 1896.

Lizzie Crozier French became ill while attending the Baltimore Conference of the National Woman’s Party and died on May 14, 1926.

Anne Dallas Dudley was born into a prominent Nashville family and one of the most prominent leaders in the Southern suffrage movement.

Married to a banker and mother of three, Dudley ignored the limits assumed with being a wealthy woman of high social standing by co-founding the Nashville Equal Suffrage League and leading several suffrage parades. She not only included her children in these parades, but also circulated a photo of her with her children in order to show that suffrage was a respectable cause.

In her role as president of Nashville Equal Suffrage League, Dudley led a march of 2,000 women in Nashville in May 1914, resulting in her being elected president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association the following year.

In 1917, Dudley was appointed vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

After the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Dudley became the first woman delegate-at-large at the Democratic National Convention and remained active in Tennessee politics.

Dudley died on September 13, 1955.

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether was born in Bolivar on January 19, 1824, to a physician farmer and daughter of a Virginia planter.

After her parents unexpected deaths, Elizabeth operated a school for some 25 students in the family’s dining room.

In 1852 she married Minor Meriwether, a railroad civil engineer. Carrying out the wishes of Minor’s late father, the couple sold part of Minor’s inherited land to free his slaves and repatriate them to Liberia.

She published a small-circulation newspaper, The Tablet, during part of 1872. It featured her views on woman suffrage, divorce law, and pay equity for women teachers. Both she and her sister-in-law were active in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and belonged to the National Woman Suffrage Association and Elizabeth served as a national officer of NAWSA.

Elizabeth Meriwether died November 4, 1916.

History of the 19th amendment from History Channel Website.

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