Dates
- 1917-1945
Collection Description
Much of the Lena Anthony Robbins papers is composed of correspondence and news clippings, mostly concerning her activities in the New Jersey Federation of Women's Clubs, the League of Women Voters, and the American Association of University Women. The papers were originally given after her death by her husband, Leonard H. Robbins, who had partly organized them, to the League of Women Voters New Jersey. When the LWVNJ donated its records to Special Collections at Rutgers in 1960, the Lena Anthony Robbins papers were included with them.
With the papers that Leonard H. Robbins labeled "Lena's Rogue Gallery," containing news clippings, obituaries, and other information relating to friends of Robbins most of whom were active in the women's movements of the times, little can be gleaned from this collection about her personal life. Her decades-long interest in the role of women in politics, however, is amply documented, and her views on the place of women in politics and the greater society after suffrage are made clear. She believed that as keepers of the home and women had a special role to play in politics, and that what she saw as their special interest in family and children would make a positive change in the workings of government.
Documents in this collection are very diverse; they include correspondence with other women active in women's clubs, the League of Women Voters, and other organizations in which Robbins played a prominent role, and in other organizations in which women were active. Robbins spent a lot of time lobbying for various causes, and the-collection contains many bills from the State legislature, some of which are annotated with notes in her own hand, and copies of speeches Robbins made to women's organizations. Robbins saved many clippings, both from newspapers and from newsletters and other publications, all related to her current interests. She also saved programs and other publications from meetings and conventions, particularly those from the Women's Centennial Congress held in 1940.
Of particular interest are the notes and results of a questionnaire sent out after a "Get-Out-The-Vote" campaign that Robbins organized in 1925; as a suffragist, Robbins was determined that the newly won franchise be exercised by women. The collection contains just one photograph, undated, that of a friend, Mrs. Elizabeth A Harris, and a small collection of buttons and ribbons apparently worn by Robbins when she served as an official challenger at elections, and when she held committee posts at conventions of Women's Clubs.
The collection originally contained a book, Victory: How Women Won It, A Centennial Symposium 1840-1940 (The National American Woman Suffrage Association. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1540) #264 of a limited edition of 300, which was presented to Robbins by Carrie Chapman Catt on November 26, 1940. This book has been transferred to the rare book collection at Special Collections and University Archives.
Extent
1.2 Cubic Feet (3 manuscript boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Abstract
Organizations files pertaining to Robbins' participation in the New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs (materials dated 1920 and 1925-1931), a New Jersey Commission on Rutgers and the State University (materials dated 1928-1930), the New Jersey Committee of the Woman's National Committee for Law Enforcement (materials dated 1926-1932), the New Jersey League of Women Voters (materials dated 1919-1922 and 1937-1942) and the New Jersey State Division of the American Association of University Women (materials dated 1939-1945), together with miscellaneous other papers, most of which also pertain to Robbins' interest in or activities on behalf of various women's groups. Correspondence and press clippings make up the bulk of the papers, but legislative bills (some annotated), speeches (given by Robbins), publications (including meeting and convention programs for events such as the Woman's Centennial Congress) and a small collection of buttons and ribbons (received as a poll worker and as a convention attendee) are also present, as are materials (notes, correspondence, questionnaires, etc.) from a 1925 "Get-Out-The-Vote" contest conducted among members of the state's women's clubs. Among the correspondents represented by letters received are: Margaret Buttenheim (1 letter : 1928); Carrie Chapman Catt (1 form letter : 1940); Mabel S. Douglass (1 letter : 1928?); Harold G. Hoffman (1 letter : 1937); A. Harry Moore (2 letters : 1928 and 1938); Thelma Parkinson Sharp (2 letters : 1943); and John Martin Thomas (3 letters : 1928). Other correspondents include former New Jersey suffragists Lillian Feickert (as an officer of the New Jersey Republican Women's Club) and Miriam Lippincott (as a New Jersey representative of the Woman's National Committee for Law Enforcement).
Biographical Sketch of Richard P. McCormick
Lena Anthony Robbins was born in the late 1870s in a covered wagon in Colorado, and grew up in Lincolns Nebraska. She graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1901, at a time when very few women attended college. In that year, she married another Nebraskan, Leonard H. Robbins, and the couple shortly thereafter moved to Newark, New Jersey. Leonard had taken a job with The Newark Evening News, and later became a staff writer for the New York Times. They later moved to Montclair, and attended the Unitarian Church there. The Robbinses apparently had just one child, a daughter. Lena's hobbies included reading summer months, she often retired to the Robbins' summer place at Lake Winnepesaukee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
In New Jersey, Lena became very active in both the suffrage movement and in the women's club movement. She served as president of both the Irving Club of Irvington and the Contemporary of Newark in the late teens. Serving on the executive board of the Women's Political Union, Lena lobbied in the New Jersey Legislature for women's suffrage at the state level.
After passage of women's suffrage, Lena's activities in women's organizations increased, and by 1926, she became the Chairman of the Legislative Committee of the New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs. Her interests included legislation concerning child labor, education, and teachers' training. She strongly influenced the lobbying efforts of the SFWC by her articles and columns in the New Jersey Clubwoman and the Civic Pilot, and by speeches before many women's organizations. Her work on this committee drew the attention of then Governor Harry A. Moore, who appointed her in 1928 as the only woman member of the commission to study the relationship between Rutgers and the State of New Jersey.
Lena's other interests during the 1920s included temperance and world peace. She became the secretary of the executive board of the New Jersey Women's Committee for Law Enforcement, essentially a group formed to enforce the prohibition laws. Lena's lobbying work included encouraging the United States to join the World Court. Around 1930, Lena became the Chairman of the Essex County Speakers Bureau. Lena had been active in the New Jersey League of Women Voters from its origin in 1920 as the successor to the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association. In the 1930s, Lena put most of her energies into the activities of the LWV. She became vice president of the LWV in 1930, and president in 1935. During her most active years, the New Jersey League of Women Voters took a leadership role in the movement to revise the state constitution, worked to reduce patronage in the political system, and lobbied for the use of voting machines.
Lena retired from the presidency of the LWV in 1942, and became more active in the New Jersey branch of the American Association of University Women, and put more of her efforts into issues concerning the position of women in the greater society. Although she actively opposed the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, she lobbied for women's right to equal opportunity in employment irrespective of marital status. Lena became ill in 1943, and her failing health meant less involvement. She died in September 1945.
- Title
- Inventory to the Lena Anthony Robbins Papers MC 1204
- Status
- Edited Full Draft
- Author
- Nancy Torok
- Date
- May 1998
- Language of description note
- Finding aid is written in English.
- Sponsor
- Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State.
Part of the New Brunswick Special Collections Repository