In the summer of 1910 a woman farming in Bannock Valley (today's Arbon Valley), Mrs. Jennie Price of Arbon, won the Republican nomination for treasurer of Oneida County. The valley was still part of Oneida County then, governed from Malad; Power County was not formed until 1913.
Four women for treasurer
On August 13, 1910, the American Falls Press printed the county auditor's official notice of a primary election to be held across Oneida County on August 30. It listed every candidate who had filed, by party and office, with their home towns. Under the Republican county ticket three names stood for treasurer: Mrs. Lucy Davis and Maggie Wilks, both of Malad, and Mrs. Jennie Price of Arbon. The Democrats had one candidate for the office, Cora Dudley of Malad. Every candidate for county treasurer, in either party, was a woman. Maggie Wilks was the treasurer then in office, as the county commissioners' proceedings of the following spring show.
Idaho women had won the vote in 1896, and the same list carried women's names in the state race for superintendent of public instruction.
It was also a new way of choosing candidates. Under Idaho's new direct primary law the voters, not party leaders, chose each party's nominees, and an editorial from the Boise Statesman that the Press reprinted that week reminded readers that the law was on trial in the state. Less than three weeks before the vote, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that where more than two candidates sought the same office, each voter had to mark a second choice as well as a first. If no one won a majority, the first and second choices were added together. The three-way Republican race for treasurer was one of these contests.
"Entirely competent"
The primary figures have not been found, but Mrs. Price won. On September 17, 1910, the Press reported a visit from the nominee:
Mrs. Jennie Price, nominee for treasurer on the Republican ticket, was here from her home at Arbon Saturday. She came down to bring her daughter to the railroad, the latter leaving for her home at Twin Falls. Mrs. Price is much gratified at the vote she received at the primaries. She is deserving of every consideration at the hands of the voters of the county, being entirely competent, and struggling under adverse circumstances to make a living on a new farm in a new locality.
The paper did not name the daughter, and it did not say what the adverse circumstances were.
The November election
Mrs. Price did not become treasurer. The Press printed the county's corrected returns, precinct by precinct, on November 26, 1910, but the scanned text of that table cannot be read, so her vote is not known here. The outcome shows in the county commissioners' proceedings, which the Press printed on April 29, 1911. The board accepted the report of Maggie Wilks, now the former treasurer, and ordered the balance in her office's bank account transferred to Cora Dudley, county treasurer. Cora Dudley, the Democrat, had won the office.
Who was Jennie Price?
The Press called her only Mrs. Jennie Price. She was probably Jennett Daniels Price, a daughter of the Welsh pioneer Thomas Daniels of Malad, whose family is told in the Daniels family history. Family-tree records gathered for this site's research call her Jennie. On March 12, 1901, she made the first homestead entry recorded for the West Fork township, giving her residence as Arbon. She later proved up, showing that she had lived on and farmed the land as the homestead law required; the patent for the land, issued in her own name, is dated May 4, 1909 (see Valley firsts). One of those family-tree records says she served as Oneida County treasurer for several years. The papers read for this post show her running in 1910 but not holding the office.
The match is not certain. Malad had more than one Price family, and the Press's "new farm in a new locality" fits her only loosely, since she had filed on her West Fork land nine years before, though her patent was little more than a year old. The Press still placed a "Mrs. Jennie Price of Arbon" in the valley five years later: on July 22, 1915, it noted that she was in town the first of the week and went home on Tuesday morning.
On this site: the Daniels family history follows Jennett, her brothers and the next generation on the West Fork, and the Pauline and West Fork area history describes the Big Meadows where the family took up land.
Sources
- American Falls Press, August 13, 1910, page 1
- American Falls Press, August 13, 1910, page 11
- American Falls Press, August 13, 1910, page 12
- American Falls Press, September 17, 1910, page 6
- American Falls Press, November 26, 1910, page 7
- American Falls Press, April 29, 1911, page 4
- American Falls Press, July 22, 1915, page 5
- Women's suffrage in the United States, Wikipedia