Espousing traditional roles for women in the home, she quickly gained notoriety for her opposition to the women suffragists working the temperance circuit, many of whom were Spiritualists originally from the east coast. 1870Īfter learning the ropes, Anna went on the road as a solo act, speaking to small-town residents in every Northern California county except Modoc, traveling either on horseback or by stagecoach, accompanied by only her younger brother Eddie. Reed performing as a young woman on the temperance speakers circuit, c.

Anna learned from Judson the formula for an entertaining presentation, combining speaking, poetry recitations, music, and dancing. Judson, a recovering alcoholic and the originator of the western “dime novel,” who later started Buffalo Bill Cody on the path to fame. To support her family, Anna joined the temperance lecture circuit as the opening act for her mother’s cousin, Col. Perry’s Seminary in Sacramento, but had to withdraw after two months and return home to take care of her parents and three younger siblings, who were all afflicted with malaria. At seventeen, she began teaching in a rural school and writing articles for the local press. Homeschooled by her mother, Anna demonstrated an early talent for poetry, publishing her first poems in local newspapers when she was fifteen. In 1854, four-year-old Anna and her mother boarded a ship in New York for California, where they reunited with her father, who was working the mines in remote Butte County. Shortly after her birth, her father departed with a wagon train bound for the California and the gold rush, leaving behind his wife and child. By the time she reached middle age however, Reed had become one of California’s leading suffragists as well as a spokesperson for beer and wine industry.Īnna Moreda Morrison was born in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1849. Anna Morrison Reed dressed in a Greco-Roman tunic for the Circus Maximus event at the State Agricultural Society Fair, 1893 (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)Ī charismatic poet and journalist, Anna Morrison Reed captivated the nation as a young woman with her electrifying lectures on temperance and a woman’s place in the home.

Papyrus reed