Scope and Content Note
The papers of Maud Wood Park (1871-1955) detail the personal life and civic involvement of a prominent feminist and social reformer who became the first president of the National League of Women Voters. Spanning the years 1844-1979, the papers are concentrated in the period between 1886 and 1951. The early material is essentially that of Park’s father, James R. Wood, Sr. Posthumous papers contributed to the collection by Edna Lamprey Stantial in the form of correspondence, notes, and miscellany relate to such figures of the suffrage movement as Florence Ellinwood Allen, Jennie L. Barron, and Carrie Chapman Catt. The collection is organized into five series: Family Papers , Correspondence , Subject File , Speeches and Writings , and Miscellany .
The bulk of the family material consists of correspondence between Park and her second husband, Robert Freeman Hunter. The exchanges begin in 1886, twenty-two years prior to their marriage, and extend to Hunter’s death in 1928. Park’s role as a leading organizer in the suffrage movement required extensive travel throughout the country, and Hunter’s career in the theater made him equally nomadic. Students of women’s history will find this correspondence particularly useful, for it contains remarks by Park on tactics, strategy, and the ideology of reform. Furthermore, the differences as well as the distances that separated Park and Hunter lend a special character to these exchanges as sources for exploring the evolution of the women’s movement. The correspondence with her husband was particularly important to Park. She considered publishing it, and much of the material is represented only in the form of transcripts. For a quarter century following Hunter’s death, she continued to write him anniversary letters on the occasion of their marriage, birthdays, and New Year’s day.
Other family correspondence supplements these themes in helpful ways, such as a revealing analysis of Park’s personality in the Hunter file that he prepared for a mutual friend, Helen Maria Biscoe. The Family Papers also include Park’s correspondence with her first husband, Charles Edward Park; the Civil War memoirs of her father, James R. Wood, Sr., a Union scout during the war; and miscellaneous Hunter and Wood family material.
The Correspondence file, particularly the special correspondence with such individuals as Florence Ellinwood Allen, Helen Maria Biscoe, Alice Stone Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Inez Haynes Gillmore, Mary H. Page, Mary Gray Peck, Pauline A. Shaw, Belle Sherwin, Ann Webster, and Mabel Caldwell Willard, documents personal friendships between Park and many of the women involved in the suffrage movement. Many of these correspondents are also represented in the Subject File because of their contributions to the various organizations and events of the period. Included also in the Subject File is information relating to Park’s lecture tours for the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (Boston League of Women Voters), as well as papers and material relating to the activities of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and legislative activities of the National League of Women Voters, 1922-1925.
The preservation of the papers of the woman’s suffrage movement was very important to Maud Park, and she devoted considerable energy during her retirement to securing the documentary legacy of the suffrage movement and creating conditions to sustain scholarship. Radcliffe College was at the center of her efforts and the papers illuminate her contributions to the development of the Woman’s Rights Collection and her work in establishing a series of fellowships to permit younger scholars to study there. In addition, there are materials on the development of manuscript holdings in woman’s history at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. Of special importance is her correspondence with W. K. Jordan and Edna Lamprey Stantial, as well as Stantial’s correspondence relating to the presentation of records and papers.
After retiring from an active role on the national level with the National League of Women Voters, Maud Park returned to Maine and wrote several plays and novels. Only a small representation of her literary work is present in this collection. Typescripts of the unpublished novel “Lisa” and the published play Play Stone, with correspondence, publicity folio, and some technical information relating to the production of the play by the Federal Theater Project in 1939, are a part of the writings file.
Edna Stantial indicates in her notes accompanying the collection that for a number of years Park carefully reviewed her personal papers, because her ultimate plans were to write an autobiography. Her efforts toward this goal are autobiographical notes that cover the various phases of her life from pre-school days to approximately 1946.
The Park papers conclude with an autograph collection containing letters and autographs of many prominent political, social, and literary figures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Louisa May Alcott, Clara Barton, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, William Cullen Bryant, Frederick Douglass, Robert Frost, William Lloyd Garrison, Jeannette Rankin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Booker T. Washington.