Annette Parmelee

Annette Watson Parmelee, born in 1865 in Washington, Vermont, taught school and began a nursing career before her 1889 marriage to lawyer and accountant Edward J. Parmelee of Enosburg Falls. As one of Vermont’s primary suffrage organizers, her activism focused on the Vermont temperance movement and its influence on woman suffrage. She was active in the United Methodist Church, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Ladies Village Improvement Society, Library Club, and Vermont Equal Suffrage Association. When women won the right to vote in 1920, she joined the Vermont League of Woman Voters and served as chair of the research committee. Annette Parmelee lived here from 1889 until her death in 1924. Annette Parmelee was renowned for her ardent pleas for women’s equal citizenship. Her polite yet satirical political commentary and her ubiquity at the State House earned her the nickname “Suffragette Hornet.” It was largely due to her activism that Vermont’s taxpaying women were granted municipal suffrage in 1917. In 1920, Parmelee represented Franklin County as one of 460 women lobbying Governor Clement for a special legislative session to ratify the federal woman suffrage amendment. The governor was opposed and delayed by arguing approval of a national amendment should be a public vote and not left to the legislature. The 19th Amendment was ratified in August 1920, without Vermont.