100 years ago in The Saratogian

Saturday, April 6, 1918. One of the first women to win an election in New York State is a former Saratoga Springs High School teacher, The Saratogian reports.

Mary A. Bargar is the new city clerk of Jamestown, Chatauqua County, after winning the local election on the Prohibition party ticket. A Jamestown native, the 38 year old spent two years on the Saratoga High faculty earlier this decade before returning home.

In an interview with the Jamestown Evening Journal, Bargar says she was taken totally by surprise when the local papers reported that she’d received the Prohibition endorsement. Before accepting, she asked city officials if they thought a woman could handle the clerk position. One man told her, “no woman is physically able to do that work, and besides, it is terribly embarrassing for a woman.” Another said, “That is all bosh … I guess if a man with one arm can do it a woman with two arms and good health can do it.’

Bargar went with the second opinion and agreed to run. “I did not work very hard but maybe my friends had to,” she says, “I did not lose any sleep over it and the only money I paid out was for newspaper advertising.”

After her victory, Bargar was “glad because I represented the women’s first success” and “glad on my mother’s account.” Her late mother was an early leader of the women’s suffrage movement in Jamestown.