Amelia Stone Quinton
Amelia Stone Quinton was an influential figure in the temperance movement and Indian rights activism in the late 19th century. Born in Jamesville, New York, she was raised in a devout Baptist family and began her career as a teacher. Quinton's work extended beyond education; she became a prominent organizer for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union before marrying Rev. Richard L. Quinton and relocating to Philadelphia. There, she co-founded the Women's National Indian Association (WNIA), advocating for the rights and welfare of Native Americans, particularly focusing on the education and empowerment of Indian women. Despite the group's lack of understanding of cultural pluralism, Quinton worked tirelessly to promote reforms and gather support for Native American issues, including the passage of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, which aimed at land allotment for individual Indians. Throughout her life, she remained dedicated to improving conditions for Native Americans, leading numerous initiatives and establishing a wide-reaching network of support. Quinton passed away at the age of ninety-two, leaving behind a legacy of activism and advocacy for marginalized communities.
Subject Terms
Amelia Stone Quinton
- Amelia Quinton
- Born: July 31, 1833
- Died: June 23, 1926
Temperance and Indian-rights worker, was born in Jamesville, New York, one of four children of Jacob Thompson Stone and Mary (Bennett) Stone. She grew up a devout Baptist in Homer, New York, in an area heavily settled by New Englanders and rocked by religious ferment. Her maternal grandfather had been a prominent Baptist deacon and revivalist. After attending Cortland Academy in Homer, she became a teacher at an academy near Syracuse. While teaching in Madison, Georgia, she married the Rev. James Franklin Swanson. After his death in eighteen she taught for a year at the Chestnut Street Female Seminary in Philadelphia. She then moved to New York City, where she did volunteer work in charitable and correctional institutions.
After working from 1874 to 1877 as New York State organizer for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, she traveled to Europe to regain her failing health. While in England she gave a series of temperance lectures and married the Rev. Richard L. Quinton of London, whom she had met on shipboard. In 1878 the Quintons settled in Philadelphia and joined the First Baptist Church, of which Mary L. Bonney, principal of the Chestnut Street Female Seminary, was also a member. From 1879 to 1881 the two women gathered more than 100,000 signatures on petitions to Congress protesting the opening of the Indian Territories to whites and proposing reforms in federal policy concerning Indians. In 1881 they formed an organization first called the Indian Treaty-Keeping and Protective Association and later the National Indian Association. The name was changed to the Women’s National Indian Association (WNIA) in 1883. Bonney was the group’s first president and Quinton its organizer and secretary.
Like most other Indian-reform organizations of the day, the WNIA was ignorant of cultural pluralism, looking confidently to the day when Native Americans would be absorbed into American society by means of education, equality before the law, adoption of Christianity, and economic self-sufficiency derived from individually owned property. Having announced its intention to leave politics to the men’s groups, the WNIA took as its particular sphere the training of Indian women in domestic responsibilities according to the contemporary ideals of middle-and upper-class society.
Quinton participated in the WNIA program throughout her long career, speaking to groups of Indian women and working for the prohibition of liquor, polygamy, and “immoral” ethnic dances and customs. She helped to establish missions and libraries and supervised the WNIA’s loan program for building “neat civilized homes.” She also worked to provide teachers, to subsidize the higher education of especially promising youths, and to develop markets for Indian handicrafts. Despite the WNIA’s disclaimer concerning political activity, Quinton concentrated on developing a national WNIA network—by 1891 she had established more than 120 branches across the country—and coordinating the efforts of various reform organizations to get Congress to pass a severalty bill that would apportion tribal lands among individual Indians. The passage of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 was regarded as a victory by Quinton and her associates, who did not foresee that the act would bring about the deterioration of Indian life and the acquisition of Indian land by whites.
Quinton’s husband died in 1887. In that year Quinton became president of the WNIA and for eighteen years thereafter continued her attendance at the annual conferences at Lake Mo-honk, New York, her travels to Indian reservations, her committee work, her speech-making and writing, and her trips to Washington to lobby for better conditions on the reservations. In 1901 the organization was opened to men and renamed the National Indian Association. Its headquarters shifted to New York City in 1904, and Quinton moved there at the same time. She resigned as president the following year but continued as head of the missionary department. In 1907 she moved to California, where she spent several years organizing and obtaining relief for landless California Indians. Returning East in 1910, she settled in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, and for years thereafter attended occasional WNIA meetings. She died in Ridgefield Park of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of ninety-two and was buried in her hometown of Homer.
Quinton wrote many articles for the WNIA publication Indian’s Friend and was the author of several pamphlets, including Suggestions for the Friends of the Women’s National Indian Association (1886), a guide to pressure-group tactics. Her article “Women’s Work for Indians” appeared in L. H. Farmer, ed., The National Exposition Souvenir: What America Owes to Women (1893). For biographical material see Notable American Women (1971) and M. E. Dewey, A Historical Sketch … of the Women’s National Indian Association (1900). R. W. Mardock, Reformers and the Indian (1971), and L. B. Priest, Uncle Sam’s Stepchildren (1940), put Quinton’s Indian work in context. For her temperance work see F. E. Willard and M. A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century (1893; reprinted 1967).