That time women in NJ could vote before the 19th amendment

And the outrageous reason they lost it

An 1880 engraving by Howard Pyle in Harper’s Weekly is titled “Women at the Polls in New Jersey in the Good Old Times." From the Washington Post.

Once upon a time in the land of New Jersey, women had the right to vote, well before the 19^th amendment of 1920. This was true during the years 1776 to 1807, a time in which marriages did not falter, women’s brains did not melt, children did not starve, the laundry still got done and the world did not end. The reason it stopped will make you scream. 

From Carrie Chapman Catt’s book Woman Suffrage & Politics: 

In New Jersey, tax-paying women were granted the vote by the constitution of July 2, 1776, two days before the Declaration of Independence was declared. In 1790 and 1797 legislative enactments confirmed them in the right. The vote was taken from them by the Legislature in 1807, and the explanation was that although qualified women had used the vote quite generally, they had not supported the right candidates in the election. The legislators therefore sought and won a party advantage by the disfranchisement of electors who had voted against them! 

The “right” candidates. The “right” voters. It would be funny if it didn’t seem a little too relevant.

Further reading: On the Trail of America’s First Women to Vote.