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Women's suffragist is dead at 110

 
Published May 4, 1991|Updated Oct. 13, 2005

Abby Crawford Milton, a leader in the women's suffrage movement more than 70 years ago, died Thursday (May 2, 1991). She was 110. "There was no sickness or disease," said Geraldine Cherneski, a nurse who cared for Mrs. Milton for more than two years. "She just died of old age."

Mrs. Milton died at Antietam Gardens, a north Clearwater adult congregate living facility that had been her residence off and on for the past three years, administrator Dottie Carlson said Friday.

"It's a blue day here for us today," she said.

For Mrs. Milton's 110th birthday in February, a group of third-graders from Lakeside Christian School visited, gathering around her wheelchair to sing Happy Birthday and Jesus Loves Me, changing the last word to "you."

They also prayed in unison: "Dear God. Please bless Mrs. Abby and give her grace today. Help her to know you care for her this happy 110th birthday. Amen."

Mrs. Milton, a Clearwater resident for more than 40 years, made her mark in Tennessee when the women's suffrage movement was young.

"Oh, we had a lot of original situations, all right," she said in 1977, recalling the campaign to gain the vote for women. "The Republicans swore the movement was a Democratic machine, and the Democrats swore it was a Republican machine.

"We disregarded the old rules and worked to make some new ones. Those people that follow rules don't make them, you know."

As president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association, she helped lead the fight for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote in 1920. She then became the first president of the Tennessee League of Women Voters.

Four years after women got the vote, Mrs. Milton went to the Democratic National Convention in New York City and delivered a seconding speech for the presidential nomination of William Gibbs McAdoo. The Democrats eventually gave the nomination to John W. Davis, who lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge.

A few months earlier, her husband, George Fort Milton, former editor and publisher of the Knoxville (Tenn.) Sentinel and then the Chattanooga (Tenn.) News, had died of a heart attack after speaking in Tennessee in behalf of McAdoo.

Despite her historic fight for women's suffrage, Mrs. Milton opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.

"Women have already attained the summit of their rights," she said in 1977. "Every door of opportunity is open to them. The ladder of success is waiting for them to climb."

Abby Crawford was born into an old and respected family in Milledgeville, Ga. One of her grandfathers was Maj. Joel Crawford, a noted Indian fighter and unsuccessful candidate for governor of Georgia (twice) and for Congress and surveyor for a railroad line from Atlanta to Chattanooga.

Her other grandfather, Richard McAllister Orme, was editor and publisher for 50 years of the Southern Recorder, based in Milledgeville and read throughout the South.

Young Abby attended Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College, a co-educational school that her father, a lawyer and former Confederate artillery captain, helped found in Milledgeville.

"My father was a firm believer in equal education for boys and girls," Mrs. Milton said in 1982. "He knew a boy wouldn't want to make a mistake in his lesson if his sweetheart was looking on."

After graduating in 1898 from the school, which became Georgia Military College, she went on to earn a degree from Chattanooga College of Law, following in her father's footsteps.

Mrs. Milton was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. For more than four decades, she belonged to the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Survivor include a daughter, Corinne Moore, Clearwater; six grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandchild.

Her two other daughters died late last year, Frances Walker in Clearwater, and Sally Van Deusen in Tennessee.

A graveside service will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park, 2860 Sunset Point Road, Clearwater. Moss-Feaster Funeral Home, Dunedin Chapel, is in charge of arrangements.

The family suggests memorial contributions go to the Salvation Army.

_ Some information in this obituary came from stories by Christina K. Cosdon, Amelia Davis and Bob Henderson of the St. Petersburg Times.

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