Elizabeth Bunnell Read
Elizabeth Bunnell Read, born Elizabeth Currence Bunnell on December 24, 1834, near Syracuse, New York, was an American journalist and suffragist. She grew up in a large family, taught school from a young age, and learned the printing trade. She worked as foreman of a weekly paper in Peru, Indiana, for four years. In 1861 she began publishing The Mayflower, a semi-monthly journal about literature, temperance, and equal rights—the only suffrage paper published during the Civil War.
In 1863 she married Dr. Samuel George Alexander Read. The couple moved to Algona, Iowa, in 1865, where she published The Upper Des Moines, a weekly paper for the region. She wrote about women in the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1872. By 1893 she was co-editor of the Woman's Standard, a Des Moines monthly for the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, with Carrie Chapman Catt and Evelyn M. Russell. She also served as vice-president of the Indiana State Woman Suffrage Society and later as president of the Iowa Woman's Suffrage Society. In 1897 she sent a letter of support for a suffrage campaign in Iowa from Elkins, Arkansas.
Read was active in many social issues, helped start the Woman's Congress, and lectured on temperance, education, and suffrage. She was known as Mrs. Lizzie B. Read and was a Methodist. In 1899 she donated $500 to the Algona Methodist Episcopal Church, planning a memorial window for her husband, who had been the church’s first president of trustees. The Upper Des Moines and the church were once housed in their home. She spent some years in the Ozarks of Arkansas before the turn of the century.
Elizabeth Bunnell Read died May 22, 1909, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at age 74. She is buried in Riverview Cemetery in Algona, Iowa. A note published after her death praised her as a strong advocate for women’s voting rights and for her intellectual vigor.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:27 (CET).