Nichols, Clarina Irene Howard

Clarina Irene Howard Nichols was a journalist and newspaper editor in Kansas

during the major reform movements of the mid-19th century. She is an important

historical figure in women’s rights and in the formation of the state.

 

She was born and raised in Vermont. As a single, working mother she began writing

for the Windham County Democrat in Vermont and married the publisher. When he became disabled she took over the paper.

 

She moved from Vermont to Kansas with her family in 1854, hoping the emerging state would offer an opportunity to create laws that benefited women. The

family settled near Lawrence in the Kansas Territory.

Clarina’s husband died the next year, and in the spring of 1857 she and the children moved to Wyandotte County.

 

She contributed articles on women’s rights to the Lawrence Herald of Freedom and the Topeka Kansas Tribune. She soon became associate editor of the Quindaro Chindowan, an antislavery newspaper published from May 1857, through June 1858. Today, we know Quindaro as a neighborhood located in north Kansas City, Kan.

 

Clarina was the only woman invited to the Wyandotte Convention in 1859, which resulted in the writing of the Kansas Constitution. The final version of the new

Constitution included three provisions that she had fought fervently for: The right of women to vote in school elections, new educational opportunities for women, and increased rights to their property and equal standing on child custody matters in cases of divorce.

 

Clarina left Kansas in 1871 to be with two of her children in California. She died there in 1885 at age 75.