Zerelda Wallace

She had always been interested in politics and social reform, in 1873 she began her direct involvement in the temperance movements. In March 1874, she helped organize the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Indiana and was elected the union’s first president. WCTU is an international organization founded in Cleveland, OH in 1874 to reduce alcohol consumption and promote abstinence. In 1875, she testified before the Indiana General Assembly, presenting a temperance petition with over 21,000 signatures. When a state legislator told her that 10,000 mice might have as well signed her temperance petition since women couldn’t vote, she thanked him for making a suffragist out of her, something even May Wright Sewall hadn’t been able to do.

In 1878, she formed the Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis and was elected its first president. Now a suffragist, Zerelda testified before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1880. A year later she helped lobby the Indiana General Assembly to approve a women’s suffrage amendment to the Indiana State Constitution. Though two separate assemblies approved the suffrage amendment, in 1881 and 1883, the Indiana Senate refused to act. Following the failure to get a suffrage amendment passed in Indiana, Zerelda became convinced that the most efficient way to secure women’s suffrage was through a national constitutional amendment.

She corresponded with famous members of the national suffrage movement, such as Susan B. Anthony, and became a popular orator at suffrage conventions and meets. In 1887, Zerelda’s Equal Suffrage Society of Indiana became affiliated with the National Women Suffrage Society. In 1888, shortly before stepping back from public life, Zerelda spoke at the International Conference of Women in Washington, D.C.

Zerelda’s stepson Lew Wallace, author of Ben Hur and a Civil War General, called her “the sweet-tongued apostle of temperance and reform.”

Burial: Section 3, Lot 10; GPS (39.8176032, -86.1730399)