The Drawing Room
Narrated by Volunteer Museum Tour Guide Paula Sussman
The Drawing Room c. 1910. Courtesy Stephan Hart Library, History Colorado
In an account given by daughter Helen in 1957, she wrote that this Drawing Room was only used for grand occasions and receiving visitors. She recalled how she would put her best dolls in this room for safekeeping, and how she and her brother Larry once snuck in and they broke their mother’s marble table from Italy - they both pretended they had no idea how it happened!
Looking around you’ll see several paintings, including one of a mountain scene above the fireplace done by Helen Henderson Chain, a female artist painting in Colorado during the Brown’s time. On the fireplace mantel is a Japanese tray which the Brown’s brought back from their world tour. Japan was a country both of the Browns enjoyed visiting.
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Margaret advocated passionately for women’s rights by supporting artists like Helen Henderson Chain, who struggled to make a living in a society that viewed outdoor painting as unfeminine. Suffragists faced the same criticism as Chain: women were not meant to leave the home to become artists, politicians or voters.
South Platte Landscape Painting. Helen Henderson Chain. Credit: Tom McClure
Souvenir Tray. On Loan from History Colorado.
THE FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO VOTE
Women of Colorado had achieved the right to vote in 1894 as the first state to pass women’s suffrage by popular vote, following the Wyoming and Utah territories. Margaret became entangled in the national suffrage movement, joining the Political Equality League and Congressional Union for Women’s Suffrage. She participated in suffrage meetings and rallies, including the Conference of Great Women at Alva Vanderbilt Belmont’s Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island.
Margaret was asked by members of the suffrage movement to run for U.S. Senate in 1914. Never before had a woman entered the United States Senate, and the fact that Margaret was being urged to do so was a big deal. Headlines saying ‘Mrs. Brown for Congress’ flooded newspapers across the country.
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‘If I do go to the Senate,” Mrs. Brown told a reporter, “I shall naturally be specifically interested in all matters relating to women and children. In general, I shall stand for the human side of every question.’ Following the advice of several here in CO, including peer State Senator Helen Ring Robinson, Margaret dropped her campaign run for US Senate.
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The efforts of generations of women were finally victorious in 1920 with the ratification and passage of the 19th Amendment, granting most women the right to vote. It would take the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, however, to ensure women of color could also have unrestricted access to the ballot.
