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Concept
Frances Munds
Summary
Frances Lillian Willard Munds (June 10, 1866 – December 16, 1948) was an American suffragist and leader of the suffrage movement within Arizona. After achieving her goal of statewide women's suffrage, she went on to become a member of the Arizona Senate more than five years before ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution granted the vote to all American women. She lived in Prescott, Arizona and represented Yavapai County in 1915. She was a Democrat.
Munds was born Frances Lillian Willard in Franklin, California, on June 10, 1866, the eighth child of Joel and Mary Grace Vinyard Willard and a granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton Willard (1777–1865) who had been a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Her family were ranchers who moved to Nevada before moving on to the Arizona Territory. Willard was educated at the Central Institute in Pittsfield, Maine, graduating in 1885.
After graduation, Willard joined her family in the Arizona Territory, where her four brothers operated a ranch in the Verde Valley with her father's former business partner, William Munds (Joel Willard had died in 1879). She worked as a school teacher in the communities of Pine, Payson, and Mayer before marrying John Lee Munds, youngest son of Willard Munds, in 1890. The couple moved to Prescott in 1893 where John Munds was elected Yavapai County sheriff for two terms beginning in 1899. The couple had one son and two daughters.
In 1898, Munds was elected secretary for the Territory of Arizona Women Suffrage Organization. Together with organization president Pauline O'Neill (1865–1961), she reached out to Mormon women within the territory. This marked a change from the practices of earlier suffrage leaders, such as Josephine Brawley Hughes, who had shunned the Mormon community. This outreach enabled the organization to lobby Mormon members of the territorial legislature to support legislation supporting women.
Munds also attended legislative sessions personally to lobby for women's issues.
Official source
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