Rogers County Woman Voting For First Time 100 Years After Her Ancestor Registered

This year marks 100 years since the 19th Amendment granted women across the country the right to vote.

One young woman in Rogers County recently discovered that a century after her ancestor registered, she will get to vote for the first time.  

The Rogers County Election Board is home to voting record books dating from 1914 to 1975.

Because this is the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Secretary Julie Dermody went looking for books from 1920, to see what she could find.

Carefully flipping through the pages full of history, Dermody showed some of the century-old books to three women in a Rogers County family, taking them back to the days when the women in Rogers County started registering to vote.

"She signed up to vote on July 16 of 1920," Dermody said while pointing to Eva Prather's voter registration record.

Prather was 38 when she registered, about a month before the 19th Amendment was ratified. Now some of her descendants are seeing Eva's registration record in person for the first time, 100 years later.

"It's just incredible," Danette Campbell said.

Campbell is Eva's great granddaughter.

"It just makes me really proud - that this is our lineage," Campbell said.

Oklahoma was one of the 36 states to help ratify the 19th Amendment in 1920. The Oklahoma Historical Society said Oklahoma women already had the right to vote in 1918.

Records from the Oklahoma Department of Libraries show State Question 97 removed the word "male" from the section on suffrage in the Oklahoma Constitution, granting women the same voting rights as men in every election.

"They worked really hard to make this happen,” Dermody said. “And they knew it wasn't going to be just for them - they knew it was going to be for their daughters and their granddaughters.”

"I'm so excited to vote," Prather's great-great-great granddaughter, Sydney Allen, said.

Allen turned 18 last December.

"To see that my ancestors were a part of that, and I can actually see it and touch it, it's awesome," Allen said.

The new voter said she spent time doing her own research and feels empowered to cast her ballot.

"I've formed who I want to vote for and I'm very passionate about who I want to vote for," Allen said.

Carrying with her the same eagerness to vote Eva had a century ago, Allen is ready to head to the polls on Tuesday.

"Voting on Election Day - make sure you vote!" Allen said.

For more information on the history of women's suffrage, visit the Oklahoma history website here or learn more on this website here.