12 Facts About Ada James

Ada Lois James was a suffragist, social worker, and reformer.

Ada James was active in many of the reform movements of the 1920s including pacifism, the advocacy of birth control, and prohibition.

Ada James was chairman of the county children's board for many years.

Ada James fell in love with Charles Bingham Cornwall, a widower and the Richland County Clerk, and they were to be married in 1897.

Ada James never married and instead poured herself into a variety of causes, beginning with women's suffrage.

Ada James is remembered as Richland Center's and Richland County's most prominent suffragist and for her work with disadvantaged children and women.

Ada James came to the suffrage movement naturally because her mother, Laura, in 1882 was one of the founders of the Richland Center Woman's Club that worked tirelessly for women's suffrage.

Ada James used unprecedented tactics, hiring a motorboat to distribute leaflets along the Wolf River and employing an airplane to drop brochures on county fair crowds in the campaign.

However, women's suffrage went down in a resounding defeat, by 90,000 votes; a trouncing Ada James blamed primarily on the lavish spending by the brewing interests that feared women voters would support temperance.

In 1912, after the ill-fated campaign, the Political Equality League and the Wisconsin Suffrage Association merged under the latter's name and Ada James became a vice president.

Ada James became keenly interested in the latter cause when she began bringing poor children from Chicago to Richland County in the summers.

Ada James poured her energy and money into this cause.