History has a way of passing over important people who play less than a starring role in notable accomplishments. As we commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of Utahn George Sutherland’s U.S. Supreme Court service, we should also remember the unique and independent accomplishments of his wife, Rosamond Lee Sutherland.

Rosamond Lee called Beaver, Utah her home. Her parents – one a “close kinsman” of Confederate General Robert E. Lee who married “a member of a distinguished Florida family” – moved to the Utah Territory early in their married years for reasons lost to history. In 1880, at age 15, she became secretary to a section of an academic society at Brigham Young Academy of which George Sutherland was chairman. In June 1883, they would marry – a companionship that would produce more than 50 years of “love and helpfulness” as well as three children.

Rosamond Lee Sutherland would distinguish herself in ways that would extend well beyond her home. While George served as Utah’s congressman and then as U.S. senator, a Los Angeles Times article described her as “a charming conversationalist and in appearance…one of the most impressive figures in official society…[who] retains the charm of youth both in appearance and manner.” Rosamond was in some ways a unique – perhaps even bold – socialite in the nation’s capital, being “among the well gowned of Washington,” but with “a style peculiarly her own…not always well dressed but appropriately garbed.”

Rosamond’s significant accomplishments included her home, her social reputation and her constructive influence in the sphere of politics. In particular, she exerted a significant influence in advocating for and helping support federal passage of what became the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing all American women the right to vote.

She was listed in the “Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1914-15”, with her entry noting that she was “very much interested in woman suffrage, having voted for many years” in the state of Utah, which protected women’s right to vote going back to more than a decade prior to statehood. Rosamond became a personal friend of national women’s suffrage leaders like Alice Paul and also “hosted the delegation of a women’s suffrage convention in [Washington,] D.C. in 1902.” She was chosen in 1909 to represent Utah at a United States Senate committee focused on the issue of woman’s suffrage and submitted written testimony to a similar Senate committee in 1913.

Rosamond’s most powerful entry into the foray of women’s suffrage politics may have been her article “The Appeal of Politics to Woman,” published in 1910 in the country’s oldest literary magazine, the North American Review. The article is an argument for women’s suffrage that captures Rosamond’s intelligence, wit and pride in women.

Rosamond’s intelligence was often on display when addressing the absurdities of the opposition to women’s right to vote. For instance, she responded to the argument that participation in political matters would degrade women by turning that logic on its head:

It has sometimes been suggested that it is not quite womanly for women to insist upon the right to vote, that women are too good for politics, that in some mysterious manner the exercise of the high and sovereign rights of citizenship at the ballot-box is degrading. If women are too good for politics, it might not be altogether illogical to suspect that politics need bettering even for men, and, as “a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” may it not be just possible that, instead of women being brought down by contact with politics, politics might be lifted up a little by contact with women?

While arguing against the argument some put forward of the inferiority of women, she appealed to the strength of common sense contained in cultural aphorism:

During the impressionable plastic years of childhood every boy as well as girl is under the direct management and influence of some woman and subject to the atmosphere and environment she provides. The great and good men of the world are eloquent witnesses of the tender wisdom which molded them and secured the environment necessary to their development. It is worthy of note…that when a boy goes wrong, it is often said that he had the unfortunate example of a bad father before him, but when a great man is being eulogized the last word usually is, “He had a remarkable mother.”

Her eloquence was perhaps strongest when she reasoned from basic American values and civic virtue of women to call for women’s right to vote:

It is because women of America are loyal and patriotic citizens…because they want good schools and the children protected from every evil that they may become good citizens in the future; because they believe that they can do infinitely more toward attaining these things if they stand on the same plane with their husbands and brothers, with the same interests and hopes that they are asking to be treated like reasonable human beings and given a ballot.

Rosamond also had a sharp wit when it came to addressing specific men in places of power who opposed women’s suffrage. For instance, when arguing against a professor opposed to suffrage, she wrote:

According to Professor Heydeman, of London, women are morally, mentally and physically inferior to men and but a shade in advance of the chimpanzee. (I trust the professor is an orphan and a bachelor.)…All his wonderful discoveries have been made by the simple method of measuring a few skulls….With all due respect to the learned professor with the tape-measure, I have seen some very dull men with large heads.

And in response to the argument of a judge opposed to suffrage, she said:

Judge Grosscup, of Chicago…admits that he knew one successful woman lawyer, but that, unfortunately, she began her career by throwing an ice-pitcher at an offending judge. If she rounded out a successful career, and only threw one ice-pitcher at one judge, does it not speak well for the forbearance of the individual and of the sex?…Fights between men lawyers in our court-rooms find passing reference in the local columns of the newspapers and are forgotten, but if one woman lawyer throws an ice-pitcher at a judge – he was probably exasperating and deserved it – the incident goes down in history, not as the idiosyncrasy of an individual, but as a black mark against the sex.

Rosamond also illustrated great pride in her sex in her argument for women’s right to vote. Noting the impact women have had despite legal obstacles standing in their way, she wrote:

The women of America will win out by patience and persistence rather than by the resort to more spectacular methods, and they will carry these characteristics with them when the gates they now assail are opened and they enter the political arena….Even in her restricted sphere woman’s talents have wonderfully beautified and enriched the world, and they will continue to beautify and enrich increasingly as her field of usefulness broadens.

She continued in this vein later in her article:

Men cannot realize as women do, through generations of effort from their obscured position, how hampered is their every word and act by their political inferiority. The wonder is that they have kept their courage and accomplished so much already without the recognition which they manifestly deserve…. Woman is everywhere today in all the arts, the sciences and the professions; and her activities in every field of endeavor wonderfully illustrate her power and flexibility of mind and suggest that all that is needed for her ultimate success in whatever she elects to do is opportunity.

Couching her pride in women in patriotic terms, she wrote that “no man or woman cognizant of the facts and capable of giving serious consideration to them can reasonably deny that the voice, the mind, the influence of women, would be vastly helpful in the development, the preservation and material advancement of our country.”

Through her many accomplishments as a woman, Rosamond Lee Sutherland left an indelible mark on her family, social relations and her nation. She was a formidable and influential advocate for women’s rights, separate and apart from her efforts to help and support her husband in his decades-long support for women’s equality under the law. As we note the remarkable life of Utahn George Sutherland, Rosamond deserves remembrance for her own accomplishments.