Partner Mabel E. Griswold
Queer Places:
Lincoln Cemetery, Whitehall, Wisconsin 54773, Stati Uniti
Elsie May Wood was born on 21 September 1893 in Whitehall, Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, the daughter of Archie Wood and Jessie Maria Dissmore. She died on August 1972, in Stuart, Guthrie County, Iowa. She was the longtime partner of Mabel E. Griswold.
Mabel Griswold was a suffragist and a member of the National Woman’s Party. Having been a suffragist, and especially having been jailed, gave her status within the NWP. She wrote that people in her city flocked to see and hear a party speaker because she had been in prison: "The work for suffrage is now far enough in the past to cast glamor and appeal on those who worked for it." (Mabel Griswold to Agnes E. Wells, August 4, 1950) When Griswold, executive secretary of the Woman’s Party, died in 1955, a family member suggested that the Party send the telegram of sympathy to Elsie Wood, the woman with whom Griswold had lived. (Alice Paul to Dorothy Griswold, February 2, 1955) Wood commented after the serious auto accident that eventually killed her companion that Griswold "could bear the broken bones but the breaking up of her life's work was far harder to take." (Elsie M. Wood to Alice Paul, February 1, 1955) Elsie Wood was on the staff of Sen. John J. Blaine of Boscobel from the time he was Attorney General of Wisconsin in 1919-1921 as was his secretary, Griswold. Griswold was also Executive Clerk to Blaine when he was 24th Governor of Wisconsin from 1921 to 1927. In 1930 Griswold and Wood returned to Eau Claire where Wood became a law clerk in the law firm of Bundy, Bundy, Heach, and Holland.
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