From collection Candidates
Emily M. Johnson was elected to the school board of Fredonia, New York in 1890. Johnson ran successfully for a second term in 1893. The local Political Equality club was supportive of Johnson's campaign in 1893. Plus, over half of the voters in that election were women, which newspapers claimed insisted in her victory, and that of another woman running for School Board Clerk. Her husband, Oscar W. Johnson, a successful lawyer in the town, had been a Village Trustee in the 1860s. He was instrumental in making sure that Fredonia was the site of one of the four New York state Normal Schools established soon after the Civil War.
