From left, Russell Diethrick Jr., former city parks commissioner; Art Osterdahl, Jamestown Historic Marker Committee member; Karen Livsey, Jamestown Historic Marker Committee member; Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist; Ashley Senske, city historian; and Traci Langworthy, Jamestown Historic Marker Committee member; during the dedication ceremony of the new historic marker honoring local and national suffrage leader Edith Ainge. P-J photo by Dennis Phillips

Sept. 4, 1917, was the first time Edith Ainge was arrested for her right to vote.

It also wouldn’t be her last.

On the 103rd anniversary of Ainge’s first arrest, the Jamestown Historic Marker Committee dedicated the 76th historic marker to the local and national suffrage leader. The marker is located at the corner of East Fourth and Pine streets, near where Ainge lived in Jamestown.

Ashley Senske, city historian, said Ainge played a prominent role in getting the 19th Amendment ratified, which prohibited states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.

Traci Langworthy, Jamestown Historic Marker Committee member, said Ainge is a native of England and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was 10 years old.

She said Ainge’s father, William, helped start the Art Metal company in the city and established an accounting office at the corner of Fourth and Pine, with the family living adjacent to his practice.

Langworthy said Ainge first started locally in the suffrage movement and eventually went to Washington, D.C. She said Ainge’s first time being arrested protesting for a women’s right to vote was because she silently held a banner. Following her first arrest, Ainge would be arrested four more times during the next two years.

Following Ainge’s first arrest, she was sentenced to serve 60 days in workhouse in Virginia where she worked long hours and was served rancid food, Langworthy said. Ainge, who refused to work, was placed in solitary confinement for the last two weeks of her sentence in Washington, D.C. Langworthy said that is where Ainge met Alice Paul, an American suffragist, feminist and women’s rights activist, and one of the main leaders and strategists of the campaign for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Ainge was later elected treasurer of Paul’s National Woman’s Party in 1922 and continued to serve on the organization’s national council until 1930. Langworthy said as a member of the National Woman’s Party, Ainge helped draft the Equal Rights Amendment, which is a proposed amendment designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. In 1923, Paul first proposed the amendment, which seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment and other matters.

“Edith is a local treasure … she played a role in shaping our nation’s history,” Langworthy said.

Ainge continued to make her home in Jamestown into the 1930s. When she passed away in 1948, her death was noted in the New York Times as well as the local papers. She was laid to rest in Jamestown’s Lake View Cemetery, alongside her parents, William and Susanna, and six of her siblings.

Mayor Eddie Sundquist thanked the marker committee for their work in selecting and researching the Ainge’s life.

“This summer our country celebrated the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment,” he said. “It is timely and appropriate to be unveiling this marker that recognizes a local woman’s efforts to work toward making the right to vote more of a reality for women.”

The marker committee thanked B. Dolores Thompson, former city historian who was unable to attend the ceremony, for her work on historic marker.

Senske also thanked former Mayor Sam Teresi, who supported the marker’s selection before leaving office.