Search All Items

A Brief of Respondent is filed in the appellate court by the party who won in the previous trial and defends the lower court’s original decision. Ellen Van Valkenburg began an important legal battle for women’s enfranchisement in California on July 21, 1871, when she requested that Santa Cruz County Clerk Albert Brown enter her name in the Great Register of voters. After Brown (a willing accomplice in helping her bring the case to court) refused to register her, Van Valkenburg and her lawyer, Santa Cruz Judge Albert Hagan, began legal proceedings by requesting a writ of mandamus, a judicial remedy used to compel agencies to perform ministerial acts, such as registering voters. Van Valkenburg and Hagan argued her case by citing the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The new amendment, ratified 3 years earlier in 1868, defined all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. as citizens protected by civil rights. Van Valkenburg and Hagan asserted that American women were considered citizens under this amendment, and that citizenship automatically granted absolute rights, including the right to vote. The case first went to California’s Third District Court. Many of America’s most prominent suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were with Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz when the lower court ruled against her on August 16, 1871. Van Valkenburg and Hagan swiftly appealed this decision through the Supreme Court of California. In the end, the Supreme Court of California upheld the lower court’s verdict under the reasoning that as a white American woman, Van Valkenburg already had citizenship and civil rights prior to the passage of the 14th amendment, and that the 14th amendment did not provide her with any additional political rights, such as the right to vote. While Van Valkenburg lost her case, and subsequent lawsuits failed to secure women's suffrage nationwide, the case stands as a critical early example of legal advocacy for women's political rights in California.

Date: October 2, 1871

Gold Seal Dry, Nonpareil, Gold Seal Extra Dry

Date: 1890

Mrs. Green's Vegetable Dinner Pills

Date: 1875

Lion Brand

Date: 1894

[Picture of Camel]

Date: 1879

Lone Jack

Date: 1880

Lucca Olive Oil

Date: 1900

Regina Brand

Date: 1898

Caption: "Cliff House #2." View of the third Cliff House, of Victorian-style architecture, that was built on that site in San Francisco, c. 1906. The original Cliff House was built in 1858. The second was built in 1863 and was destroyed by fire on Christmas day in 1894. The third Victorian- style Cliff House (pictured) was completed in 1896, and although it survived the 1906 earthquake and fires, it burned to the ground in 1907. A fourth Cliff House was then built with steel-reinforced concrete and opened in 1909.

Date: 1906

Caption: "Hermits Rest - Grand Canyon," c. 1925. Grace McCarthy poses at the entry arch of Hermit's Rest at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Hermit's Rest, a rest area for tourists, is located on the Grand Canyon's south rim, at the westernmost point accessible by paved road.

Date: 1925