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Anna Amelia (Churchill) Wait

Born: Medina County, Ohio, on March 26, 1827. Married: Walter Scott Wait, December 13, 1857. Died: Lincoln, Lincoln County, Kansas, May 9, 1916.

Anna Amelia Churchill was born to John and Lovina (Grimmons) Churchill in Hinckley, Medina County, Ohio, on March 26, 1827. She attended the Richfield academy and Twinsburg institute in Ohio.

She married Walter Scott Wait in Summit, Medina County, Ohio, on December 13, 1857. The Waits moved to Missouri the next year where their only son, Alfred Hovey Wait, was born in 1861. Walter served as a captain in Company H of the 50th Illinois Volunteers during the Civil War. While he was away, Anna turned to school teaching to support herself and her son.

After the war, the Waits decided to move west. They arrived in Salina, Kansas, in 1871; then on to Lincoln in Lincoln County. The Waits settled in a 10 by 22 feet one-story, one-room house that also served as Walter’s law office. Anna continued to contribute to the family’s support as Walter’s health declined. It was also where Anna taught school in Lincoln beginning in 1873. The Waits began a normal school in 1877 to prepare others to teach in the classroom. The county lacked enough teachers to qualify for state compensation so the Waits organized businesses to contribute to a savings plan that would train new teachers, building the county’s educational program from 23 to the needed 50.

The Waits purchased the Lincoln Beacon in 1880. as an acceptable solution to earn a living. The newspaper’s beginning editorial based represented Republican, prohibition, antimonopoly and woman’s suffrage ideologies.

Is woman a citizen? (From her present anomalous position before the law, there is cause for reasonable doubt.) If she is a citizen, has she in her present political status the power to exercise the rights and perform the duties of a citizen? If not, why? If she answers that she is not, because she is denied the privilege of exercising those rights and perming those duties, then who is responsible? And many kindred questions are of greater moment to the women of to-day, than how to construct a cotton flannel rabbit, or work worsted puppies on footstools. We hope the women of Lincoln County will do their part toward solving what is by far the most important problem in American politics to-day: viz, making women in reality what they are only in name—citizens.
--Anna C. Wait
Lincoln Beacon
March 25, 1880

Since the earliest agitation of the subject of equal rights for women, prominent among the arguments addressed against it. (If indeed it be proper to dignify by the term argument that which has no foundation either in reason or justice) is, that only old maids, discontented wives, etc. are advocates of what is popularly termed “Woman’s Rights;” more properly human rights, for who does not know that in proportion as the mothers are educated, elevated, and ennobled, so is the race.

—Anna C. Wait Lincoln Beacon
April 15, 1880

Anna, as the editor of the newspaper, was fearless as a voice of the public conscience. Her husband’s name provided the newspaper its necessary authority and propriety. Their son Alfred H. Wait eventually became editor and publisher. That ideology began to change as the newspaper moved away from its Republican base. The newspaper office was destroyed by fire in 1901.

The Lincoln Suffrage Association was formed in 1879, with Anna as the major driver of the organization. The Kansas Equal Suffrage Association formed in 1884 with Anna as vice president. The women of Lincoln and the Lincoln Beacon were important contributors to the discussion of woman’s suffrage in the state legislation. Anna and three women in Lincoln spoke in favor of woman’s suffrage at the Independence Day celebration on July 4, 1880. Their minutes noted they held a fair in 1885 to raise funds for the state organization. These activities eventually led to municipal votes for women in 1887. Anna served as president of the sixth district suffrage association in 1911, during the campaign to secure a statewide woman’s suffrage amendment. She died in Lincoln on May 9, 1916.

Entry: Wait, Anna Amelia (Churchill)

Author: Kansas Historical Society

Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.

Date Created: November 2024

Date Modified: January 2025

The author of this article is solely responsible for its content.