Biography
Annette Watson Parmelee was an early twentieth-century suffragist. Parmelee was born in Washington, Vermont in 1865 and moved to Enosburg after marrying Edward Jones Parmelee, a lawyer.
Parmelee had gotten involved in the suffrage movement through the temperance movement. She became a member of the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association in 1907 and was nicknamed the "Suffragette Hornet" because of her "noisy, persistent agitation of the cause of women's suffrage." She lobbied before the Vermont Legislature and her speeches convinced many members of the Vermont Legislature that women deserved the right to vote.
One of her more notable speeches was given on October 26, 1910 when she addressed the House committee considering the women's suffrage question. She insisted that she was not asking for universal suffrage, but simply for the right of taxpaying women to have a say in how their money was spent. Thanks in part to her work, the Legislature passed a law allowing women who paid taxes to vote in municipal elections in 1917.
When women were given the right to vote in all elections in 1920, Parmelee joined the League of Women Voters and served as the chair of the research committee.Occupation
Suffragist
Chair of the research committee of the League of Women Voters