Sarah Knox-Goodrich


Sarah L. Knox-Goodrich was a women's rights activist who worked for women's suffrage in California in the late nineteenth century. Her first husband, William Knox, was a business man, banker, and state politician. Her second husband, Levi Goodrich, was an architect in Southern California. Knox-Goodrich used her wealth and her social position to push for equal employment, school suffrage, and voting rights.

Biography

Sarah Louise Browning was born in Culpepper County, Virginia, U.S., on February 14, 1825, the daughter of William Winston Browning and Sarah Smith Farrow. When Sarah was 11, her family moved to a farm in Lincoln County, Missouri.

Marriage to William James Knox

William James Knox was born October 20, 1820, near Hopkinsville, Christian County, Kentucky, and moved at an early age to Lincoln County, Missouri. He attended the Louisville Medical Institute in Louisville, Kentucky, and earned his medical degree in 1847.
Sarah Browning and William Knox were married on April 1, 1846. On April 12, 1850, they left Missouri, together with Sarah's sister, and traveled by wagon train to Nevada City, California. Knox and four partners built the South Yuba Canal and made a fortune selling water to gold miners during the California gold rush. In 1854, Knox was elected to the California Assembly.
In 1862, the Knox's moved to San Francisco and then to San Jose in 1864. Knox and his brother-in-law, T. Ellard Beans, opened Santa Clara County's first bank in 1866; it was called Knox & Beans, Bankers, then renamed Bank of San Jose. Knox served as the bank's first president.
In 1865, Knox was elected State Senator for Santa Clara county. He was an early supporter of women's rights and, in 1866, introduced Senate Bill No. 252 that gave married women the right to control their own estate. The bill read: "Any married woman may dispose of all her estate by will, absolutely, without the consent of her husband, either express or implied, and may alter or revoke the same in like manner". The bill was passed.
Knox died in San Francisco on November 13, 1867. William and Sarah had one child, Virginia, who married Cabel H. Maddox of San Francisco. Maddox was elected to the state senate in 1882.

Marriage to Levi Goodrich

Levi Goodrich was born in New York City on January 1, 1822. He studied architecture in the studio of R. G. Hatfield in New York before moving to San Jose in 1849. Goodrich was one of the first licensed architects in California. The buildings he designed include the Santa Clara County Courthouse and jail, the State Normal School, the Bank of San Jose, and the courthouses of Monterey and San Diego counties.
Sarah Knox and Goodrich married on January 15, 1879, and Sarah adopted a hyphenated form of both husband's names, Knox-Goodrich. Goodrich died in 1886 in San Diego.

Suffragist activities

Knox-Goodrich had wealth and social position, and used them both in state campaigns for equal employment, school suffrage, protests of taxation without representation, and voting rights. Clara Shortridge Foltz, the first female lawyer on the West Coast, said of her, "Mrs. Knox is a widow of commanding personal appearance, an abundance of bank stock, and a wealth of... common sense, which she displayed at the polls on last Wednesday by protesting against 'taxation without representation.'"
Knox-Goodrich worked with her first husband in getting the Senate Bill 252 passed in the state legislature. In 1869, she organized San Jose's first Women's Suffrage Association; by 1876, it had 200 members. On the Fourth of July in 1876, Knox, "determined to make a manifestation", filled her carriage with prominent friends carrying signs that read "We are the disfranchised Class", "We are Taxed without being Represented", and "We are governed without our Consent". She had requested a position at the back of the parade, next to the African-Americans but ahead of the Chinese immigrants, as an illustration of women's legal position, but the parade organizers insisted on her carriage being placed at the front.
In 1874, Knox-Goodrich spearheaded a bill making women eligible to run for educational office, such as school boards, even though they could not vote. She, and her co-lobbyists, traveled to Sacramento and stayed there for a month, supporting the passage of the bill in the State Assembly. In 1877, Knox-Goodrich nominated herself for an Assembly seat. In 1880, she petitioned the Assembly for relief from political disabilities:
The petition failed.
Knox-Goodrich was an officer in the California Suffrage Constitutional Amendment Campaign Association and the joint campaign committee. Both committees were formed to direct and support the campaign to amend the California state constitution, giving women the vote. Knox-Goodrich hosted Susan B. Anthony at her home, and then accompanied Anthony to Sacramento as a member of the woman suffrage delegation for the state Republican convention.
In addition to these activities, Knox-Goodrich donated money to women's rights causes. In 1888, she donated money for the founding meeting of the International Council of Women. She gave $100 to help clear the debt from the 1895 women's suffrage campaign and $500 to fund the 1896 constitutional amendment campaign. She also contributed to travel and expenses of other women working for women's suffrage. In 1889, Knox-Goodrich and Ellen Clark Sargent paid for Laura de Force Gordon, a journalist and leader of the California Women's Suffrage Society, to give a series of lectures in the Washington Territory.
Knox-Goodrich was a frequent contributor to Women's Journal, the San Jose Mercury, and the New Northwest.

Knox-Goodrich Building

Knox-Goodrich commissioned a building on property left to her by her first husband. The building, designed by George W. Page, was commercial on the first floor and a rooming house on the second and third floors. Its Romanesque Revival features include rusticated masonry walls, massive stone piers, carved stone detailing, and Byzantine capitals. There is a parapet over the third-floor windows with a carved 'G' and a 'K' intertwined, and the date '1889' is carved over the second story windows.
A plaque on the building states,
In addition to the Knox-Goodrich Building, the Goodrich quarry provided stone for the construction of Stanford University and an early San Jose City Hall.
Knox-Goodrich died on October 30, 1903, at her home, leaving an estate worth more than $500,000. She is buried between her two husbands.