Alma V. Lafferty Explained

Alma V. Lafferty
Birth Name:	Alma V. Short
Birth Date:	October 12, 1854
Birth Place:	Pennsylvania
Death Place:	Glendale, California
Nationality:	American
Occupation:	Politician
Spouse:	William S. Lafferty

Alma V. Short Lafferty (October 12, 1854 – November 17, 1928) was an American suffragist, clubwoman, and politician. She served two terms in the Colorado House of Representatives, from 1908 to 1912.^[1]

Early life

Alma V. Short was born in western Pennsylvania, the daughter of David Short (a Scottish immigrant) and Martha Adams Short.^[2] She lived in Kansas before settling in Colorado.^[3]

Career

Alma V. Short was active in the suffrage effort in Colorado in the early 1890s,^[4] and in the leadership of the Woman's Club of Denver.^[5] She was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1908. She served two terms as a state representative, the only woman in the state legislature at the time.^[6] She chaired the chamber's education committee, and introduced legislation on juvenile justice, alcohol and tobacco sales to minors, teacher certification, and an eight-hour work day for women. "When it comes to making laws for the protection of our children and for the betterment of the conditions of women, who is more capable or better fitted to perform the task than the women themselves?" she wrote in 1909.^[7]

She ran for a seat in the Colorado Senate in 1912, but did not win her party's nomination. In 1914 she was president of the Women's Peace Association of Colorado,^[8] and with state senator Helen Ring Robinson led a vigil during the violence surrounding the Ludlow Massacre and Colorado Coalfield War.^[9] Lafferty also threatened to mobilize thousands of women to march in Denver if the women's organization's concerns about Ludlow were not addressed.^[10] In 1923 she attended the Western States Conference of the National Woman's Party.^[11]

Personal life

Alma V. Short married William S. Lafferty. They had two children, Herbert (1876-1898) and Edna (Mrs. Abell) (1880-1958). Her son died in the Spanish–American War.^[12] She died at her daughter's home in Glendale, California in 1928, aged 74 years.^[13]

Notes and References

1. James Alexander Semple, Representative women of Colorado (Alexander Art Publishing Co. 1911): 57.
2. John Woolf Jordan, ed., Genealogical and Personal History of Western Pennsylvania, Volume 1 (Lewis Historical Publishing 1915): 443.
3. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/10813278/alma_v_lafferty_a_kansan_1910/ "Woman Legislator Says Voting not Degrading"
4. Minnie J. Reynolds, "The Recollections of a Woman Campaigner" The Delineator (October 1909): 299.
5. https://books.google.com/books?id=sRUTAAAAYAAJ&dq=Alma+Lafferty+Colorado&pg=PA416 "Mrs. Alma V. Lafferty"
6. https://sites.google.com/site/coloradowomenscaucus/home/history-of-women-in-colorado-s-legislature/women-who-served-in-the-colorado-legislature "Women who served in the Colorado House of Representatives"
7. Alma V. Lafferty, "Being a Woman Legislator" The Delineator (September 1909): 204.
8. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/10813522/alma_v_lafferty_in_los_angeles_1915/ "Notable Woman Here"
9. Gail M. Beaton, Colorado Women: A History (University Press of Colorado 2012): 151.
10. Fawn-Amber Montoya, Making an American Workforce: The Rockefellers and the Legacy of Ludlow (University Press of Colorado 2014).
11. R. Todd Laugen, The Gospel of Progressivism: Moral Reform and Labor War in Colorado, 1900-1930 (University Press of Colorado 2010).
12. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/10813695/death_of_herbert_lafferty_1898/ "Cruel and Negligent; A Bereaved Mother Excoriates the Management at Camp Wikoff"
13. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/10813425/alma_v_lafferty_obit/ "Noted Suffrage Leader is Dead"