Missionary who served as Idaho Legislature’s first female chaplain helped state recognize women’s right to vote
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IDAHO FALLS – When Rebecca Brown Mitchell arrived in Eagle Rock with her teenage daughter, Bessie, they had nothing but the clothes on their back and a few belongings.
It was June 5, 1882, and the 48-year-old Illinois woman who would one day become the world’s first female chaplain of a legislative body had come out West in hopes of being a missionary.
Her husband had died 26 years earlier, leaving her a widow at age 22 with two young sons.
Laws prevented women from owning property at the time, and when her husband died, it meant their home and everything else they’d acquired became the property of the state. This put Mitchell in a precarious situation.
With the exception of a Bible and a hymnal — her only possessions exempt from reclamation, according to her personal history — she was forced to buy back her own property from the state of Illinois.
She later married her husband’s brother. They had two daughters together, one of which died at age 5, before they ultimately separated.
Once her sons were grown, she attended a missionary training school in Chicago for a few months before heading west with her daughter.
In Mitchell’s personal history, she explains that she began her journey not knowing where she would end up.
“Led by God … I found myself in Idaho, in the town of Eagle Rock, now Idaho Falls, coming as a self-supporting missionary of the Baptist Church,” Mitchell writes.
Years before Idaho Falls became a thriving family community, Eagle Rock was a desert landscape with little more than a handful of shanties, a few company houses built by the railroads and multiple saloons.
With no money left to support themselves, Mitchell and her daughter stepped off the train that June morning into a “new world.” Mitchell had no way of knowing that in just a few years, her efforts would result in the town’s first church building and Idaho becoming one of the first states recognizing women’s right to vote.
Mitchell’s faith, ministry and teaching in Eagle Rock
It’s not clear what sparked Mitchell’s interest in pursuing a life of ministry, but Charles Barnes of Idaho Falls, who’s done extensive research about Mitchell for an upcoming book, says she felt called by God to be a missionary from a young age and had a desire to study theology.
“Various circumstances forced that to be delayed until she was nearly 40. Even when she did enroll in the Chicago Baptist Missionary Training School, it was only for one winter. She seemed eager to get out to the field to do what God was calling her to do,” Barnes says.
Author Sharon McMahon devotes a chapter to Mitchell in a new book. In an interview with EastIdahoNews.com, McMahon explains that Mitchell’s pursuit of education as a young adult in an era when women had limited access to education increased her opportunities for spreading the gospel. She eventually got a teaching certificate.
McMahon describes Mitchell as an “audacious woman” who found a place to live in Eagle Rock by going door to door and asking for help. Eventually, a man took pity on her and offered his shed for shelter.
“Rebecca and Bessie borrowed a broom, stuck a single candle in a beer bottle, spread their blanket on the floor and went to sleep,” McMahon writes in her book. “The next day, Rebecca went back to every house in town … inviting the townspeople to send their children to school.”
Mitchell started teaching school in the shed she was living in to make ends meet. She also taught Sunday School.
A passage from the New Testament she frequently shared with students kept her going when money was scarce: “All things are possible to them that believe.” (Mark 9:23)
Then one day, what she saw as a miracle came knocking on her door. Frank Reardon, a prominent railroad man in the community, had come to pay his son’s tuition. It took Mitchell by surprise because, as she says in her personal history, it wasn’t yet due. But she gratefully accepted it.
Mitchell considered this a sign from heaven of the importance of her efforts and she named her school Providence Mission in response.
For the next two years, Mitchell saved money to build the city’s first chapel. First Baptist Church was built on Ash and Eastern Avenue (where the Museum of Idaho now stands), according to a 1976 Post Register article. It also housed a school.
Later, Mitchell played a role in establishing a public library in the basement. This set the stage for a full-fledged public library in 1916 years after Mitchell’s death. The current building at 457 West Broadway was built in 1977. A plaque with a photo of Mitchell and other library founders hangs near the entrance.
Mitchell advocates for women’s rights
By 1886, Bessie was married, and Mitchell felt compelled to get involved in civic affairs. She joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and became president of a local chapter she helped organize.
As a member of the organization, she became an advocate for women’s suffrage and lobbied for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote.
Temperance, a campaign aimed at eliminating or reducing the consumption of alcohol, and suffrage were inextricably linked, McMahon says. Mitchell’s involvement was prompted by her own experience.
“She came from a situation in which women had no rights” and were subject to men, McMahon says. “She saw firsthand how women could be unfairly treated and abused by men who have too large of an affinity for alcohol.”
The goal behind temperance was the protection of women and children, says McMahon, and women needed the right to vote to make that happen.
Mitchell faced a lot of opposition on this issue for years. As the election approached, she and her supporters worked to win men over.
“They hired little boys to stand outside with signs that read, ‘Vote for your mother.’ They gave out free coffee, and met men with a kind word and an ask to please vote for the amendment,” McMahon writes in her book.
In 1896, 10 years after Mitchell joined the WCTU, Idaho became the fourth state to allow women the right to vote. It would be another 24 years before the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution — which prevents the denial of voting rights based on gender — went into effect.
The 18th amendment, which outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the U.S., took much longer to be implemented. It was ratified in 1920 and was overturned in 1933, according to Brittanica.
‘Why not do the unheard-of thing?’
Despite Mitchell’s success in advocating for women’s rights, it was missionary work where she felt most at home.
Not long after women’s suffrage was enacted in Idaho, Mitchell set her sights on serving as a chaplain in the Legislature and began lobbying for the position.
Once again, her gender proved to be an obstacle.
“When I first asked for the position of chaplain in the Legislature, the men said, ‘We never heard of such a thing,’ but I said, ‘Why not Idaho do the unheard-of thing and set the example for other States?'” writes Mitchell.
When the Legislature convened the following year, Mitchell stood in the Statehouse and offered a prayer for lawmakers. She had been elected the first female chaplain of a Legislative body anywhere in the world.
Letters poured in from women across the country congratulating her for the achievement.
“I was cheered by the honor given me in my old age,” Mitchell writes in her personal history. “The jeers of men were forgotten, the haughty looks of women who had all the rights they want, faded away as a cloud before the sun. Not for myself did I care so much … but for womanhood was the victory dear to my heart.”
Mitchell was 74 when she died of tuberculosis in 1908.
From her arrival in Eagle Rock as a self-supporting Baptist missionary to her election as the Legislature’s first female chaplain, McMahon says Mitchell’s own words serve as the greatest lesson from her life.
“Why not do the unheard-of thing?” McMahon says, quoting Mitchell. “I just love that idea. It’s people like Rebecca who had the courage to do what no one had done before … that changed the face of Idaho and the fabric of the country.”
WATCH OUR INTERVIEW WITH McMAHON IN THE VIDEO ABOVE.
