186.1054.1-5

This photograph of Rowena Edson Stevens is from the May, 1918, issue of the Alumnus, a publication of Iowa State College, in an article about her life. Rowena Edson was born in 1852 in Columbus, Wisconsin, and later lived with her family in Blairstown (Benton County), Iowa. She received her bachelor's degree in Iowa State College's second graduating class in 1873 and then taught school in Nebraska and Iowa from 1873 through 1876. In 1876, Rowena Edson married a college classmate, John L. Stevens (Iowa State College, from its first graduating class of 1872). The Stevenses lived in Ames from 1876 through 1893, when they moved to Boone, Iowa. They raised six children and Mrs. Stevens played a prominent role in the women's suffrage movement. She organized the Political Equality Club in Ames, serving as its president. She also served as president of the Boone Equality Club, where she organized the first woman suffrage parade in the United States for the annual convention of the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association in 1908. Stevens also organized political equality club chapters in other cities. She died on April 8, 1918, and is buried in the Ames Municipal Cemetery. The funeral was held in Boone with Iowa State College Dean Edgar Stanton giving the eulogy. The caption under this picture says "Mrs. Stevens of the Earlier Days," so the exact date of the photograph is uncertain. In 1931, Stevens was honored by the League of Women Voters as one of the 24 "women in Iowa whose courageous work opened the opportunities of complete citizenship to all women in the state." She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1995. (See also: 186.1055.1-5)