Teresa
Martin Klaiber
Nellie
Clara Kautz Martin & grandson John Geer Martin 1924
Women have stood up for civil rights for
decades. In 1838 Kentucky law allowed widows and female head-of-households to
vote in school elections. County records during that timeframe show only a hand
full of women appearing on tax rolls including Carter, Greenup, and Lawrence County,
thus the men’s vote far out-weighed any widow’s vote at school board elections.
But it was still considered progress.
By 1902 even that right was denied by the
Kentucky Legislature due to an outcry of gentlemen in Lexington after a large
group of African American women bravely registered to vote. This action would
give men less power and stirred racial bias. It would be eighteen more years
before voter discrimination because of sex would be prohibited.
The battle for women’s equality was at its
height and came to fruition in August 1920. Kentucky’s equal rights committee
sent pamphlets to ministers and churches across the state asking them to urge
the women of Kentucky to prepare for all the rights voting would entail
including the duty of sitting on juries. At the same time the Kentucky Equal
Rights Association changed their name to the Kentucky League of Women Voters.
Thirty-one-year-old Nellie Kautz Martin,
wife of John Shouse Martin, was a busy homemaker, residing in Ashland, Kentucky
on Newman Street. The daughter-in-law of a Christian minister, she was active
in her church, raising three sons. She epitomized the housewife of the times, and
would certainly have seen the pamphlets that flooded Kentucky. Standing just a
little over five feet tall she loved the national pastime of travel and
camping. Spending hours in the kitchen
she always wore her apron. Four months
after the historical women’s legislation Nellie was in the news for receiving
two electrical shocks from a washing machine while doing laundry. She most
assuredly had her apron on. Not only was she shocked but at least four other
families in the neighborhood had electrical trouble including the Ogden home
which caught fire but was quickly extinguished. The Lexington Herald Leader
led the story as “Electricity Runs Wild,” while an ad was running in
Louisville’s paper stating “if she has to choose between the two electricity
and servant – the wise housekeeper choses electricity every time.” The
occupation for women on census records was over ninety percent “housewife.” The
old adage “Women belong in the home,” was still being promoted by the male
population.
The Kentucky Commonwealth Attorney
Association recommended changes to the legislation in January, 1922 which
included the removal that women would have to be required to be housekeepers.
It would be a year before news carried
information on the first women on juries in Kentucky. Owensboro had distinguished
itself as having the first all-woman jury in April 1921. Boyd County women were elated when Mrs. Mary
Elliott Flanery was elected to the Kentucky General Assembly in 1921 and then
presided over the House Caucus of the General Assembly in January 1922. She is said to have urged women all over
Kentucky to contribute in activities in politics adding “…try to help the boys
do something for old Kentucky.” Flanery
well known for her work for suffrage was also a journalist for the Ashland
Independent newspaper.
The Lexington
Herald-Leader reran a seven-line article titled “Woman Jury Commissioner” from
the Ashland Independent 12 December 1922. Nellie Kautz Martin once again
had made the news. Published as Mrs. J.
Shouse Martin, she was given the “distinction of being the first woman juror
commissioner in Boyd County. She was also the first woman juror having served
at the January term in criminal court.” Nellie
may well have been at the courthouse January 5th when there was a
shooting while transferring a prisoner from the jail to the court. The jailer, Lon Hood was shot in his head and
arm. Papers say justice was swift as on
January 7th the court sentenced John Owens of Parkersburg, West
Virginia to 15 years in the state reformatory. Grand juries usually met in
secret in January in each of the counties.
With the superb help of Genealogy
Supervisor James Kettel, at the Boyd County Public Library, court records show
Nellie along with two other women appearing on the Petit Jury for April into
May 1922. She is listed along with Belle
Emirick and Mary, McLaughlin. Isabelle McCoy Vaughn Emirick, wife of John J.
Emirick died nine years after her jury duty and was buried in Ashland Cemetery.
Among the gentlemen was Lupton Ogden who three years later would be married to Ruby
Huffman Turner Martin. Each person on the jury appears to have taken turns as
foreman. Nellie was foreperson for a liquor case. Most cases involved either
transporting, keeping and selling illegal whiskey or for having a moonshine still.
One case was for gaming and another for forgery.
Nellie Clara Kautz Martin unassuming and
devoted to her family and home was born 2 August 1881 at Howard Siding,
Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of John and Elizabeth Groszholz Kautz. The
family moved to Normal, Kentucky where her father was working in the lumber
business in the early 1890’s. In 1897
they moved to Yale, Bath County where John continued to work both lumber and
stone. But Nellie was quickly sent back
to Boyd County to finish her education.
She was 16 and would travel between Catlettsburg, Salt Lick, Famers and
Yale. Nellie married John Shouse Martin 5 August 1900 at Farmers, Kentucky in
the Christian Church. They were married by Shouse’s father, minister of the
church, Henry Foster Martin. The family
moved to Ashland, Kentucky circa 1906.
This compiler can only visualize the
couples 50th wedding anniversary in black and white photographs
because while I was present, I was only one in 1950. By then the Martin’s had
moved to Ironton, Ohio. I do remember her in that apron spending a whole
afternoon baking and cooking for just me and my great grandfather as I grew a
little older. In the fourth grade I was just about her height and John Shouse
with his booming voice towered over both of us as he cranked an old victrola
for my entertainment. Nellie died 14 September 1964 and is buried with an unimposing
grave marker in Rose Hill Cemetery in Ashland. If family members knew about her
small contribution in history, they never talked about it leaving just a seven-line
piece of old news in archives. She instilled a lesson of humility and a
reminder that each of us make a little history every day.
