Stewart, Ella Seass

In 1910 Ella (Elvira) S. Stewart ran on the Prohibition Party ticket for one of three positions as University of Illinois Trustee. She lost, receiving only 21,592 votes (0.85). Fifteen candidates campaigned for these three positions. Stewart, like a number of anti-liquor activists, believed that alcohol was "inherently threatening" to women. Catherine G. Murdock writes in "Domesticating Drink," (p. 37) that a thousand dollar ad from the Illinois Brewers' Association was refused by the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association because Stewart and others felt that "combating liquor and saloons" was more important, in this instance, than freedom of the press or showing that suffrage women were broad-minded. Ella Seass (Stewart) was a member of the Eureka College class of 1890. This institution offered degree programs to women on the same basis as men early in its existence. Ella Seass married Oliver Wayne Stewart, who also graduated from Eureka College. She was active in the suffrage movement, becoming a leader in the National American Woman Suffrage Association where she held the positions of secretary and comptroller. She spoke across the United States on behalf of woman suffrage. In 1914 she published an article "Woman Suffrage and the Liquor Traffic."