Catt, Carrie Chapman, 1859–1947, American suffragist and peace advocate, b. Carrie Lane, Ripon, Wis., grad. Iowa State College (now Iowa State Univ.), 1880. She was superintendent of schools (1883–84) in Mason City, Iowa. In 1885 she married Lee Chapman, a journalist (d. 1886), and in 1890, George Catt, an engineer (d. 1905). From 1890 to 1900 an organizer for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she became its president in 1900. She led the campaign to win suffrage through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), she organized the League of Women Voters League of Women Voters, voluntary public service organization of U.S. citizens. Organized in 1920 in Chicago as an outgrowth of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, it had as its original nucleus the leaders of the latter organization.
..... Click the link for more information. for the political education of women. At the Berlin convocation of the International Council of Women she helped organize the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, of which she was president from 1904 to 1923. After 1923 she devoted her efforts chiefly to the peace movement. With Nettie R. Shuler she wrote Woman Suffrage and Politics (1923).

Bibliography

See study by R. B. Fowler (1986).

Catt, Carrie Chapman

orig. Carrie Lane

Carrie Chapman Catt.

(credit: Courtesy of the League of Women Voters of Illinois)

(born Jan. 9, 1859, Ripon, Wis., U.S.—died March 9, 1947, New Rochelle, N.Y.) U.S. advocate of woman suffrage. A graduate of Iowa State College (1880), she became a high-school principal in Mason City, Iowa, in 1881 and superintendent of schools two years later; she was one of the first U.S. women to hold such a post. She married Leo Chapman in 1884. After his untimely death in 1886 she devoted herself to organizing the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association (1887–90). Her marriage to George W. Catt, an engineer, in 1890, was unusual in its prenuptial legal contract providing her with four months of free time each year to work exclusively for woman suffrage. In 1900 she was elected to succeed Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Between 1905 and 1915 Catt reorganized the NAWSA along political district lines. By then an accomplished public speaker, she served as the group's president from 1915 until her death. After ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted voting rights to women, she reorganized the NAWSA as the League of Women Voters to work for progressive legislation, including the cause of world peace. See also woman suffrage movement.