One hundred years after Alma Nash signaled the downbeat and her band began to play, quieting the unruly crowds gathered at the Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, a group of Maryville High School young women will present a program to celebrate the achievement.

The Nodaway County Historical Society will host a Ladies Band Program at 2 pm, Sunday, March 3, at the museum, 110 North Walnut, Maryville.

The program will highlight the Missouri Ladies Military Band of Maryville who marched on March 3, 1913, the only all-women band to march and perform in the suffrage parade that day.

The event will feature 11 MHS students performing music as well as the opportunity to see a new exhibit at the museum on Nash.

Women’s Suffrage Parade

As the parade began in front of the Capitol Building on that day in early March, a crowd of heckling and resentful men refused to let the marchers move forward. The crowd, estimated at around 250,000, overwhelmed the police in the area.

That’s when Nash and her band began to play, quieting the crowd, and the parade moved ahead without incident.

Nash later told a Maryville reporter: “We did not have time to stop and think about the really important thing we did do when our band led the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. We were not right in the lead when the parade started; a number of women escorts, a number of walking officers of the National Equal Suffrage Association, with our band following, was the order when we first started.

“We had gone but a short distance when the crowd started closing up toward the line of the parade, and men blockaded a place in the street a short distance ahead. One of the suffrage officers came rushing back to us and told us to march on ahead and lead; that it would be necessary for the band to open the way proved true.

“We were not molested in the least, and although the march was slow on account of the crowds, no one offered to stand in our way down the avenue.

“These women were part of one of many remarkable stands for women’s suffrage.”

Ladies Band

Several years before the parade, in 1905, Nash opened the Maryville School of Banjo, Mandolin and Guitar. Five years later, she organized an all-ladies concert band and then transformed that band into the first all-ladies marching band.

During this time, as women were strongly petitioning for suffrage, the leaders of several women’s groups decided to organize a parade in Washington to call more attention to their cause. The parade on March 3 was to precede the inauguration of President-elect Woodrow Wilson the following day.

The Maryville band members jumped at the opportunity to join in the suffragette cause.

A new discovery

An old, worn picture has been in Joyce Holt’s possession for many years, although she didn’t realize its significance until recently.

“It’s been in my old album forever, but I didn’t know what it was,” the 87-year-old Maryville resident said. “It just said Alma Nash and the Maryville band.”

Then a couple of weeks ago, Holt ran into Melissa Middleswart, a longtime friend and volunteer at the museum who had been busy planning the Ladies Band Program. And while discussing the event, the conversation soon turned to the photo.

They began to wonder if Holt’s mother, Edith Davenport, had been a member of the band since she was in possession of the photo.

After doing some digging, it was discovered that Davenport was a member of the band and involved in the local suffragette cause. However, for some unknown reason, she did not make the trip to march with the women in Washington.

Edith Davenport

Holt knows very little about her mother, just stories her grandmother and others have told her, because she died a few weeks after giving birth to her.

Davenport was born on April 15, 1895, and grew up in Maryville. She was a country school teacher and was a part of Nash’s band in her late teenage years.

“I always knew she played the piano beautifully,” Holt said.

In addition to the photo of the band, Holt also has a postcard her mother sent to her grandmother on February 13, 1914, when she was 18 years old. She wrote that she would not be home that night as she was “debating women’s suffrage.”

“Grandma never talked about suffrage being a big deal,” Holt said. “But she was trying to eek out a living and raise five kids.”

But it was obviously of great importance to Davenport. Holt also has a photo of her mother standing on a rock that’s painted with the words “Votes for Women.”

Suffragette Cause

In the book “Suffrage Comes to the Women of Nodaway County, MO,” Martha Cooper wrote: “The Missouri Ladies Military Band of Maryville did not initially set out to be the nation’s first all-female suffragist marching band, but the young women were in the right place at the right moment to take this place in history.”

It would be seven more years after the Missouri Ladies Military Band marched in the Women’s Suffrage Parade that women were finally granted the right to vote.

One member of the band, Maye Shipps Corrough, on hearing the good news while at the Arkoe general store, said: “I got up on the counter and danced!”

Corrough’s trombone is on display at the museum and will be available for viewing following the Ladies Band Program on March 3. The event is free, but donations are welcome. Refreshments will also be served.

The museum reopens from its winter closing on March 5 with regular hours of 1 to 4 pm, Tuesday through Friday, or by appointment.

For more information about the program, call Middleswart at 660.582.8687.

Information for this article came from a 1966 Kansas City Star article, “Tribute to a Music Teacher: Her Ladies Band Helped Suffragette Cause,” a 1984 KC Star-Times article, “Woman played to beat the ban on vote,” “Suffrage comes to the women of Nodaway County, MO” by Martha Cooper, and the Missouri Women blog. Special thanks to Melissa Middleswart and Joyce Holt.

“All rise,” the bailiff bellows, echoing throughout the dark and dated courtroom. “The court is now again in session.”

Members of the jury file in slowly and take their seats in the jury box.

Draped in a long, black robe, the judge asks everyone to please be seated.

The long, wooden benches creak as those in the audience try to get comfortable once again.

Lawyers shuffle papers and whisper with one another, comparing notes before the bantering begins.

“It’s inherently dramatic,” Nodaway County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rice said. “Sometimes you’ll work six months or over a year on a single case. And then you get 12 people who have never heard anything about it and they have to make a decision that impacts (a person’s) life. There are significant consequences.”

Right…to a jury trial

The jury system in the United States can be traced back to 12th Century England when King Henry II used a jury for their knowledge of a particular case. It evolved in the 15th century when Henry VI turned the jury into the trier of the evidence.

The colonists brought these ideals with them to America and the right to a jury trial was included in all 13 of the original states’ constitutions and in the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution.

The Missouri Constitution grants everyone the right to a trial by jury in both criminal and civil cases (see the adjacent box, Jury Service Glossary). With criminal cases, this right only applies to serious crimes, which carry a potential sentence of more than six months.

Right…here in Nodaway County

The Nodaway County Courthouse sits in the very center of Maryville on the downtown square and very nearly the center of the county.

Built in 1881, the red brick structure, trimmed in sandstone with a renovated cupola and clock tower, stands as a beacon of the county and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Once visitors make the climb up the large marble stairs to the second floor, they are advised to turn off cell phones and pagers and have no food or drink before entering either one of the Nodaway County Circuit Court courtrooms.

On this particular fall day, a civil case is being heard by Circuit Judge Roger Prokes and jurors have just returned from a lunch break.

Five men. Seven women. Ranging in age from their early 20s to their 70s. One alternate. A man in his 30s.

Yellow badges identify each juror with a number, not their names.

Some look around at the audience. Some grab notepads to resume notetaking. Some look out the windows to the world outside.

And then the case resumes once again.

Right…time for civic responsibility

Serving on a jury can be seen as a civic responsibility. For Thomas Jefferson, it was more important than all other civic duties including voting.

“I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

Today, the jury system continues to depend on the service of American citizens.

While a jury trial can be inconvenient for many, Rice believes it’s important for a community to have them.

“A jury trial is a lot of people putting in a lot of time and it’s inconvenient for a lot of folks,” Rice said. “But I think we do that, though, so people are kept accountable whenever they do wrong.”

Editor’s note: this is the first in a series about jury trials. In the coming weeks, we’ll explore the role of jurors, the trial process and more. Some information for this article came from the Missouri Bar Association, mobar.org, and the Missouri Courts System, courts.mo.gov.