DUNIWAY, Abigail Scott

Born 22 October 1834, Groveland, Illinois; died 11 October 1915, Portland, Oregon

Daughter of John T. and Ann Roelofson Scott; married Benjamin C. Duniway, 1853

The second daughter among 12 children, Abigail Scott Duniway grew up on the Illinois frontier. At seventeen, she accompanied her family on the overland trail to Oregon, keeping a journal of their 1852 crossing that is one of the best of the genre. Her mother and baby brother died of cholera on the way, and the family arrived virtually destitute in Oregon.

Duniway's first novel, Captain Gray's Company (1859), is a fictionalized account of her wagon trail journey to Oregon and her early life in an Oregon town. It reveals as much about its author and her attitudes as about her milieu. Agrarian as well as feminist in principle, Duniway was writing for "the world's workers, the stay and strength of our land," and hoped her book would "be instrumental in causing the sterner to look more to the welfare of the weakest of the tried and suffering of the weaker sex." More realistic than many other women's novels of the time, the book was nevertheless criticized by Duniway's political and religious opponents for being too romantic. It remains of interest for its pervasive wit and its historical detail.

Between May 1871 and January 1887, Duniway published and edited a weekly newspaper called the New Northwest. It advocated both women's rights and human rights and circulated throughout the Pacific Northwest and to women in other parts of the country. Its lively style, strong opinions, revelations of political and social scandals, and fervent advocacy of legal reforms and woman suffrage made it a particularly influential and controversial publication. In it Duniway also serialized 16 more of her own novels. These were essentially polemical, featuring strong, mistreated female heroines who suffer numerous adversities and finally triumph over refined ladies and antisuffragist enemies. Though flawed as literature, the stories include extraordinary details of frontier family life and social relationships. Many passages show a fine gift for writing dialogue and humor.

Duniway also lectured extensively, bringing her message to isolated women and men with fervor and courage. Each year she averaged 200 lectures, and traveled 3,000 miles by steamboat, mud wagon, stagecoach, horseback, and railroad. She lectured her way across the country six times and became vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1884. Duniway's "editorial correspondence" now constitutes a unique historical record of the people and places she saw.

Though Duniway almost succeeded in winning woman suffrage in Oregon and Washington during the 1880s, the closing of the frontier led to changes that delayed it for another generation. From 1887 until her death, Duniway continued to write and lecture, publishing in the Portland Oregonian, the Pacific Empire (which she edited), and the Coming Century. When woman suffrage was declared in 1912, she wrote the official proclamation of victory and became the first woman voter in Oregon.

Duniway's ambition and achievement as a writer was undoubtedly affected by her lack of formal education. Her historical role is more significant than her literary achievements because she never had the leisure, economic means, or intention to write for art's sake. Nevertheless, the quality of Duniway's vigorously amusing polemics is worthy evidence of her strong convictions and forceful, talented personality.

Other Works:

My Musing (1875). David and Anna Matson (1876). From the West to the West: Across the Plains to Oregon (1905). Path Breaking (1914).

Bibliography:

Bandow, G. R., "In Pursuit of a Purpose: Abigail Scott Duniway and the New Northwest" (thesis, 1973). Capell, L., "Biography of Abigail Scott Duniway" (thesis, 1934). McKnight, J., and J. M. Ward, "Abigail Scott Duniway, 1834 to 1915" (TV script, Wilderness Women Project, University of Montana, 1978). Morrison, D. N., Ladies Were Not Expected: Abigail Scott Duniway and Women's Rights (1977). Moynihan, R. B., Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon (dissertation, 1979). Roberts, L. M., "Suffragist of the New West: Abigail Scott Duniway and the Development of the Oregon Woman Suffrage Movement" (thesis, 1969). Richey, E., Eminent Women of the West (1975). Ross, N. W., Westward the Women (1944). Smith, H. K., The Presumptuous Dreamers (1974).

—RUTH BARNES MOYNIHAN