Clara Ueland, organizer of the 1914 parade and president of the MWSA, c.1921. Minnesota Historical Society
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Clara Hampson Ueland was born in Akron, Ohio in 1860 and moved to Minnesota in 1869. In 1885 she married Andreas Ueland, a recent immigrant from Norway. In 1893 she joined a club called the Peripatetics, which was dedicated to the education of middle-aged women on a wide range of topics. Clara Ueland was instrumental in the establishment of kindergartens in Minneapolis, holding some of the first formal kindergarten classes in her home near Lake Bde Maka Ska (formerly Calhoun). In 1907 she helped organize the Women’s Club of Minneapolis, but in 1912 left that organization to focus her attention on women’s suffrage. In 1914 she organized a parade of almost 2,000 suffrage supporters in Minneapolis, which brought the attention of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) to the national stage and eventually lead to Ueland being elected president of the MWSA. She was president of the MWSA in 1919 when the 19th amendment was ratified by congress, and in 1920 was elected as the first president of the Minnesota League of Women Voters.
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