Abigail Scott Duniway: Rebel for Rights

Rebel for Rights. "When woman's true history shall have been written, her part in the upbuilding of this nation will astound the world." -- Abigail Scott Duniway, Path Breaking (1914)

The third in a family of fourteen, Abigail "Jenny" Scott traveled west in 1852. Her father assigned her the task at age seventeen to write a diary of the journey. Abigail's vivid word pictures captured the sights, sounds, and tragedies of the Trail - including the deaths of her mother and beloved youngest brother, Willie.

After arriving in Oregon, Abigail married Ben Duniway. His health problems and financial mismanagement thrust on her the role of "bread winner." She reared her family, taught, made and sold hats, and turned her Oregon Trail experiences into literature. She wrote Captain Gray's Company (1859) and numerous other novels.

A regional leader of the suffrage movement for 42 years, Duniway edited and published the New Northwest from 1871-87. She traveled, lectured, exhorted, and finally got the right to vote in 1912. Duniway died in 1915, a nationally acclaimed proponent of women's rights.

"Man without a woman is like one-half of a pair of dislocated shears." Abigail Scott Duniway, Speech to National American Women Suffrage Association, 1899. . This historical marker was erected by End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. It is in Oregon City in Clackamas County Oregon