New Britain’s Notable Women: Lena Candee Bassette, Suffragette and Political Leader

Best known for her work as a suffragette and local political leader,  Lena Candee Bassette (1872-1957) was born in Oran, New York on June 18, 1872. She was one of five children of Ralph Candee and Anne Sarah Housley, and from the age of eleven was raised in Houston, Texas by her aunt and uncle. She graduated from Houston High School in 1890, and went on to major in civics and economics under Arthur L. Livermore, a lawyer and professor of economics. His wife, Henrietta Wells Livermore, was an early suffragette and the founder of the Women's National Republican Club. They became close friends, with Henrietta proving to be a strong influence on Bassette’s career.

She married Buell Burdett Bassette on June 21, 1893 in Houston, Texas.They had three children:  Elizabeth Felton, Harold Burdett, and Ruth Candee. From 1905 to 1907 they resided in Washington, D.C., where Bassette went to the Capitol every day to observe Congress in session. In 1907, Buell, previously the manager of an oil company, took a position as cashier of the Stanley Rule & Level division of Stanley Works and the family relocated to New Britain. She became the first society editor of the New Britain Herald, writing under the pen name “Patricia”. Her home quickly became a gathering place for political activity in New Britain, Connecticut, including campaign rallies for Mayor George A. Quigley and other local politicians. She was a proponent of the Temperance movement (a prominent social movement in the United States from about 1800 to 1933 that criticized the consumption of alcohol and believed alcohol intoxication was immoral), and ran for the Board of Education on the Prohibition ticket, on which her husband was also a candidate for Governor.

Bassette regularly went to New York, Boston, and Hartford to march in suffrage parades. She was a founding member and served as the first president of several women’s political clubs and organizations, including the New Britain Suffrage Association, the New Britain League of Women Voters, and the New Britain Women’s Republican Club. Recalling one such march in New York City down 5th Avenue during a speech to the League of Women Voters in 1947, Bassette said that “Proudly carrying our banners uplifted, we felt like Christian soldiers marching as to war.” Her work for women’s political rights continued even after the passage of the 19th Amendment in August of 1920 and she became the first woman to vote in the city of New Britain.

Bassette went on to advocate for women’s rights to serve on juries throughout the 1930s with the League of Women Voters, who demanded the right to be considered for jury duty in the name of “female equality and citizenship”. In 1933, she also became the first woman to run for a seat in the Connecticut House of Representatives. Her campaign slogan was ‘For the Common Good of our Cosmopolitan City’, adapted from the Commonwealth Club motto, of which she was also a member. Bassette ran on a platform unaffiliated with any other member of the Republican party, and hoped “to surround herself with all groups representative of all the wards in the city.”

She continued her political advocacy and activism until her death, and was remembered by friends and community members as a hard-working, bold, and purposeful pioneer of women’s rights.

Lena Candee Bassette died March 10, 1957.

Citations

Kirby, A. M. (2014). Hometown Heroes and World Changers. In Legendary locals of New Britain, Connecticut (p. 112). essay, Arcadia Publishing Incorporated.

Newspaper clippings on Lena Bassette's political career, 1929-1933, Folder 48, Box 161, Gilbert Family Papers Collection, AC-159, Tyrrell Historical Library, Beaumont, Texas

Speech to League of Women Voters, 1947, Folder 57, Box 161, Gilbert Family Papers Collection, AC-159, Tyrrell Historical Library, Beaumont, Texas

Obituaries of Lena Candee Bassette, 1957, Folder 72, Box 161, Gilbert Family Papers Collection, AC-159, Tyrrell Historical Library, Beaumont, Texas

Miller, M. Catherine (2001-12-01). "Finding "the More Satisfactory Type of Jurymen": Class and the Construction of Federal Juries, 1926–1954". Journal of American History. 88 (3): 979–1005.

Further Reading

Pankhurst, E. S. (2013). The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals - With an Introduction by Dr Richard Pankhurst. United Kingdom: Read Books Limited.

Raeburn, A. (1974). The Militant Suffragettes. Victorian (& Modern History) Book Club.

Marlow, J. (2013). Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes. Virago.

Nicholls, et al. (2018). Make More Noise!: New Stories in Honour of the 100th Anniversary of Women's Suffrage. Nosy Crow.

Newspaper clipping c. 1933 announcing Lena Candee Bassette’s candidacy for a seat in the Connecticut House of Representatives, the first woman to do so.

Image courtesy of the Tyrrell Historical Library.