[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 85 (Tuesday, May 21, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H4054]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     CELEBRATING PATRIOTISM OF AMERICAN WOMEN EARNING RIGHT TO VOTE

  (Mr. PALMER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PALMER. Madam Speaker, almost from the day that I have been 
elected to Congress, I have looked forward to the opportunity to honor 
my wife's great-grandmother.
  She was able to vote in the 1920 election. Prior to that election, in 
Boston, they distributed sample ballots. This document that I have with 
me today has been in my wife's family for almost 100 years. On the back 
of the document, Miss Abby Mayhew Cushing wrote this note: ``November 
2, 1920. Cast my first vote for President of these United States.''
  You can feel the pride and the patriotism in those words that she 
experienced for the first time. Abby Mayhew Cushing was 67 years old.
  With all due respect to my Democrat colleagues, she wrote: ``Voted 
straight Republican ticket. Smashing victory for Harding and 
Coolidge.'' Then she added this: ``President Harding died very suddenly 
August 2, 1923, in California. Burial in Marion, Ohio, Friday, August 
10.''
  This is, for the Cushing family, a historic document that celebrates 
the patriotism of American women earning the right to vote.

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