Mary "Molly" Ella Bakewell

In her 40s, while living with her sister Euphemia in Sewickley, she became an active suffragist. She co-founded the Allegheny County Equal Rights Association, served as president of the Equal Franchise Federation of Western Pennsylvania, was a member of the Pennsylvania Women Suffrage Association, and was the Western district Vice President for the American Woman Suffrage Association.^[2] She also protested outside the White House with the Silent Sentinels, during Woodrow Wilson's presidency with Alice Paul.^[5]

She also worked with Lucy Kennedy Miller and Jennie Bradley Roessing to develop a plan for suffragist training known as the "Pittsburgh Plan" which offered classes on "practical politics" at the University of Pittsburgh.^[2][5] To draw attention to the cause, they organized major public events like a May 2, 1914, parade that marched from the Monongahela Wharf to Schenley Park. Notably unlike many suffrage activities elsewhere, this parade was integrated.^[6]

In her 50s, she studied theology at the Hartford Theological Seminary with the goal of becoming an Episcopal minister. Though she struggled to find a church that would employ her because of her gender, she traveled and spoke in support of female clergy and eventually led a parish church in Wyoming. She also published several additional works including a fictional account of her time as a minister, What woman is here? The Autobiography of a Woman Pioneer in the Rural West (1949)^[7] and an autobiography Of Long Ago; The Children and the City (1949).^[8] Her personal papers, which include an unpublished monograph about the suffrage movement, Ourselves the Suffragettes, are housed at the Heinz History Center Archives.^[1] She died at the age of 92 in 1960^[2] and is buried with her family in Allegheny Cemetery.