In 1920, the suffragist Molly Dewson sat down to write a letter of congratulations to Maud Wood Park, who had just been chosen as the first president of the League of Women Voters, formed in anticipation of the passage of the 19th Amendment to help millions of women carry out their newfound right as voters. “Partner and I have been bursting with pride and satisfaction,” she wrote.
Dewson didn’t need to specify who “partner” was. Park already knew that Dewson was in a committed relationship with Polly Porter, whom she had met a decade earlier.
The couple then settled down at a farm in Massachusetts (where they named their bulls after men they disliked). Dewson “made every political decision, career decision based on how it would affect her.