Grace Gallatin Seton

Grace Gallatin was born in California in 1872 and raised in New York City. In 1896 she married the author, naturalist, and cofounder of the Boy Scouts of America, Ernest Thompson Seton and the couple relocated to the Connecticut suburbs of New York. 

The Setons drew from their own travels for the writing and Grace also illustrated some of her husband's books. The couple's experience hunting and horseback riding in the American West provided the source material for Grace's first two books, A Woman Tenderfoot and Nimrod's Wife.

Seton's suffrage activism began when she was still a teenager. In 1910, she was tapped by Katharine Houghton Hepburn (the mother of the actress) to join her in the leadership of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA), a once proud organization whose membership had withered over the preceding decade. Seton proved her worth by organizing an automobile tour of western Connecticut in 1911. A number of cars would roll into town, stop at the main square, and members of the caravan and local dignitaries would give speeches, circulate petitions, and sign up new members. 

The campaign achieved its goal of raising the profile of the organization and boosting membership. Its success inspired Hepburn to mount a much more extensive campaign the following year, using the trolleys of central Connecticut. These two actions succeeded in returning the CWSA to relevance in state politics.

Seton was herself a prolific speaker and her typescript speeches with manuscript edits range in topics from why the inherent differences between men and women necessitates extending the franchise to suffrage and the occult.