Meet Esther Elfreth!

At Wednesday’s meeting of the Haddonfield Rotary, Doug Rauschenberger, the retired director of the Haddonfield Public Library, gave a great talk on two Haddonfield residents who were nationally known leaders in the Women’s Suffrage and Temperance movements. It turns out that one of them, Esther Elfreth, was a member of our church! If you don’t know the name, let me introduce you to her, with a lot of help from Doug.

Esther Elfreth was born in 1861 and raised as a Quaker. By 1896 she was leading the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WCTM). In 1899 she left the Society of Friends to become a member of First Presbyterian Church.
The Temperance Movement strove for prison reform, public health, and women’s workplace safety in addition to alcohol cessation. It was also intertwined with the struggle for women’s suffrage. Temperance Movement members believed that women stood to gain the most from their efforts. If women had the right to vote, they’d surely vote to abolish alcohol sales and vote for other social reforms.

According to Doug, Elfreth addressed a joint meeting of the Haddonfield WCTU and the Haddonfield Suffrage Association and said, “Let us here in New Jersey buckle on the armor… as we work for a national constitutional amendment for prohibition [and] work also for the Susan B. Anthony amendment for woman suffrage.” Doug adds that many newspapers described Elfreth as a “charming, earnest, informative” speaker who was always “delighting the audience.”

Elfreth succeeded! The 18th and 19th amendments to the Constitution, which instituted Prohibition and Women’s Suffrage, respectively, were ratified in 1919 and 1920. But Elfreth was not finished. She caused a stir in 1922 when she called for the employment of female prohibition agents. Next, she turned her sights on the abolition of tobacco products. Elfreth ran for the U.S. Senate in 1930 as a Prohibition Party candidate and won more than 18,000 votes, nearly two percent of all votes cast.

During this Women’s History Month, let’s give thanks that Esther Elfreth’s legacy, voting rights for women, endures. Elfreth’s other cause, Prohibition, has a mixed legacy, to say the least. Looking back, we can applaud the passion that Elfreth and her allies had for improving their neighbors’ quality of life, while understanding that their means had unintended consequences. Perhaps this legacy can season our own work for justice and compassion in the public square with a measure of humility.

Photo credit: Camden Courier Post, July 9, 1932. Photo reprinted in the Historical Society of Haddonfield 68, no. 4 (2024): 4.