Missouri T.B. Hanna (1857-1926) was heralded as the Mother of Journalism in Washington state.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Our local legend today was heralded as the Mother of Journalism in Washington state. She was an accomplished entrepreneur, suffragist, journalist and publisher. She helped to develop a whole neighborhood of her hometown in the rapidly growing Pacific Northwest. Let’s talk about Missouri T.B. Hanna.
Missouri Saunders was born on February 17, 1857, in Galveston, Texas, and grew up in Berryville, Arkansas.
There, Missouri attended Clark Academy where she not only received her education, but also found herself a husband. Missouri married a man named J.C. Hanna and she moved with him when he enrolled at the University of Arkansas and then Fayetteville University.
Missouri and J.C. had three children. In 1882, the family decided to head west. They moved to the town of Spokane Falls, in Washington Territory. Washington would not become a state for another 7 years.
Missouri and J.C. quickly became involved in their new hometown. J.C. served as City Clerk and was part of many a local organization.
Missouri and J.C. also made savvy real-estate investments, buying land in the rapidly growing town.
Then on April 4, 1887, Missouri’s life was struck by the first of a series of tragedies. J.C. died in a boat accident. Not long after, one of Missouri’s daughters, Mercie, was badly injured in a bike accident. Then in 1893, Missouri’s son, Kirke, died at the age of 19.
Throughout, Missouri continued her involvement in the community, and her business interests, acquiring property and building homes. But by 1904, she decided it was time for the family to move away from Spokane Falls. Her daughter, Mercie, had been permanently injured from the bicycle accident and Missouri thought perhaps a move closer to the sea would help Mercie’s health. So the family moved to Edmonds, Washington.
Edmonds was a very small town of around 600 people when Missouri and her daughters arrived. Over the subsequent six years its population would nearly double.
Missouri once again put her savvy eye for real estate to good use. She acquired land north of the business district, on a bluff above the ocean. Missouri sold lots there in a neighborhood that would come to be known as Hanna Park.
In Edmonds, Missouri’s business endeavors extended beyond real estate. She fervently believed in the need for a good local newspaper for the rapidly changing town. In 1905, she bought the Edmonds Review, becoming its editor and publisher. This was particularly notable because the publishing industry was very male dominated at the time.
In the paper’s intro column, Missouri wrote, “A newspaper is part of a city, help it along, read it, criticize and help pay for it, but don’t kill it.”
The Edmonds Review covered a huge range of topics, from local to international news, though its main focus stayed close to home. Edmonds was growing at a remarkable clip. A new wharf was built, streets were paved, telephone service was improved, and electric street lights installed. A railroad station was built to service new industries and more people in need of better transportation to neighboring areas. A new bank, city park, high school, and library cropped up.
Two years after the paper’s founding, a new guy in town started a rival newspaper, the Tribune. In February 1910, five years after acquiring the Edmonds Review, Missouri sold it to her rivals, thereby leading to the creation of the Tribune-Review.
Missouri wrote that she was sad the era was ending. Still, she had her sights and focus set on another project: women’s suffrage. Women in Washington Territory had been able to vote until a court decision disenfranchised them. Missouri was not going to stand for that.
In 1909, the women’s suffrage movement saw an opportunity for progress. That year, Seattle hosted a world’s fair called the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Throughout the fair’s months-long run, suffragists held events and worked the crowds, ensuring the issue of women’s suffrage was top of mind in the state.
By October of 1909, Missouri had begun to split her time between Edmonds and the Exposition in Seattle. That month, she and fellow suffragists launched Votes for Women, a monthly magazine. Missouri was listed on the masthead as editor and proprietor. The publication’s goal was to rally support for women’s suffrage ahead of a 1910 vote for a state-constitutional amendment giving women the vote.
In November of 1910, Missouri and her fellow suffragists were victorious. The magazine took credit for having significantly influenced the results. The January 1911 edition deemed Votes for Women, “The Magazine that Won Equal Suffrage in Washington.”
Missouri then turned her attention to educating the newly expanded electorate. In February of 1911, Votes for Women was renamed The New Citizen. Missouri’s daughters joined the effort as advertising manager and assistant editor.
The New Citizen covered political races and issues dominating conversation in Seattle, the state of Washington, across the country, and around the world.
In January 1912, Missouri took a step back from the magazine to spend more time caring for her ill daughter. Missouri said she had been solely responsible for financing the Votes for Women magazine and she sought to make The New Citizen an independent business. That didn’t happen. The January 1912 issue was the magazine’s last.
On June 14, 1926, Missouri died at her home in Hanna Park. She was 69 years old. In Edmonds and Seattle, Missouri was celebrated after her death as the Mother of Journalism in the state. She made her mark on an industry otherwise dominated by men by chronicling the exciting development of a new region of the country and burgeoning social movements that would forever change the United States.
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