Who Was Mary Elizabeth Lease

Mary Elizabeth Charter

Mary Elizabeth Lease

Populist orator. Built-in: September 11, 1850, Ridgway, Pennsylvania. Died: October 29, 1933, Callicoon, New York.

Populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease probably didn't propose Kansas farmers to "raise less corn and more hell." She did admit that it characterized her fight. She was born Mary Clyens to Irish immigrant parents in Pennsylvania in 1850. In afterwards years she claimed she had been born in 1853.

At the age of 20 she came to Kansas to teach school in Osage Mission. 3 years later she married Charles L. Charter, a local pharmacist. Afterwards unsuccessful farming ventures in Kingman Canton and in Texas the Leases and their four children moved to Wichita where Mary Elizabeth took on a leading role in civic and social activities.

By 1890 her interest in the growing defection of Kansas farmers against high mortgage interest and railroad rates had placed her in the forefront of the People's (Populist) Party. She traveled throughout Kansas, besides every bit the West and the South, for the cause. She was a powerful and emotional speaker; Emporia editor William Allen White, who did not share her political views, wrote on one occasion that "she could recite the multiplication tabular array and set a crowd hooting and harrahing at her volition."

More an agitator than a practical politician, Lease separated from the suffrage motility and by 1896 had become alienated from the Populist Political party. She became less involved in politics. She divorced her husband in 1902 and spent the rest of her life with ane or another of her children in the East. She died in 1933.

Entry: Lease, Mary Elizabeth

Author: Kansas Historical Society

Author information: The Kansas Historical Gild is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.

Date Created: June 2003

Date Modified: Feb 2020

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