Biography of ELIZA DOUGLAS KEITH

 

By Shannon Bennitt

 

          Eliza Douglas Keith was born in 1854 (disputed; may be 1859) in San Francisco, California to William Henry Keith, a prominent chemist and deputy collector of the port, and Sarah Keith. Her grandfather was a music publisher in New York City who moved to California in 1949. She was an educator, author, journalist, and a social reformer and activist. She contributed to newspapers around the Bay Area and the United States.

          By the time Keith was six years old, she could write and read well, and by the time she was seven, she had decided to make literature her profession. She graduated from San Francisco Girls’ High School, and shortly thereafter became a contributor to the daily and weekly press while also becoming a teacher and member of Golden Gate Kindergarten Association in San Francisco. While completing her education, she sent poems to papers, a habit she continued while teaching. The first of these poems was “Our Flag,” which she published at the age of 13 during the Civil War. She began her career as staff writer for the San Francisco News Letter, and quickly became connected with The Daily Alta California, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Call as a space writer and contributor of special articles. She usually published without a signature before adopting the pen names “Erle Dougas” and “Di Vernon.” Throughout her life, she also wrote for Demorest’s Monthly Magazine and Good Housekeeping, as well as being a special correspondent of the San Francisco Recorder-Union, the Journalist, and Kate Field’s Washington. She represented the San Francisco Record-Union at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. She was also a member of Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association & Illinois Press League. Her best-known work was the “Snap Shots” department in the San Francisco News Letter and weekly letters on California matters to the Boston Journalist. Her style was described as “bright and sparkling, full of satire without bitterness” as well as “terse and vigorous,” with “quick perceptions, acute powers of observation and a keen sense of the ridiculous.” She was a leader of the Woman’s Press Association, where she was reportedly “a brilliant conversationalist, and a witty speaker.”

            Keith was extremely active in many social reform efforts. She was a deeply religious person who taught in a mission Sunday school and stoutly supported the temperance movement. She also served as the grand president of Native Daughters of the Golden West, and was honored with a bronze medal by San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. She took her job as a teacher very seriously, and eventually became principal of the Sherman School. In 1920, she led the campaign against Amendment 37, which would transfer from the voters to an appointive Board of Education the right to select a superintendent in schools. She campaigned for Amendment 25, which would create a fund to carry on the work of the school department and “thereby eliminate bond issues and permanently establish the civil service merit system of appointment of teachers.”

             One of her most prominent social reform efforts was her patriotic work. She fought to rescue the US flag from desecration, and was the first teacher to introduce a salute to the American flag as part of the regular opening exercises each day in the classroom. In a column of the San Francisco News Letter, she emphasized to San Francisco the necessity of teaching patriotism in classrooms and particularly the celebration of Columbus Day by school children. To her credit, in 1894 the Board of Education in San Francisco passed a resolution that the last hour of the last Friday of each month would be given to patriotic exercises. In recognition of her patriotic work, the National Council of Women appointed Keith to the committee of patriotic instruction, and invited her to deliver an address at the Atlanta Exposition in October. She was also requested by International League of Press Clubs to read a paper at Atlanta in November

           Some of Keith’s most important work had to do with suffrage. She was an original member, secretary, and treasurer of the Susan B. Anthony Club, which was founded after the defeat of equal suffrage in California in 1986. She was also a member of the California Equal Suffrage Association, and wrote extensively promoting the suffrage cause. In her article, “7,000,000 Women Bread Winners Need the Ballot” in the San Francisco Call and Post in August of 1911, Keith stated that “It has never seemed to me that the question of equal suffrage—votes for women as well as men—calls for any argument. It is self-evident.” She continued, “[the vote] belongs to [women] as human beings, as individuals, as citizens taxed to support a government in which they have no representation…[Equal suffrage] is no longer the request of a woman for a favor—it is the voice of the American people demanding for the American woman the same political equality that we offer the immigrant soon after he reaches this land of the free.”

Keith never married or had children. She died on November 6, 1939 in San Francisco, and is buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.

 

Bibliography

"About: Eliza D. Keith." DPpedia. https://dbpedia.org/page/Eliza_D._Keith.

 

Current Literature, Volume 18. Current Literature Publishing Company, 1895. Accessed October 15, 2024.           https://books.google.com/books?id=L6dXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA289#v=onepage&q=eliza%20keith&f=false.

 

"Eliza Douglas Keith in the California, U.S., Voter Registrations, 1900-1968." Ancestry Library Edition. https://www.ancestryclassroom.com/discoveryui-content/view/12560865:61066?tid=&pid=&queryid=2cb35948-2eaf-43e5-9d44-d73378f83f75&_phsrc=Lyk25&_phstart=successSource.

 

"Eliza Douglas Keith in the U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current." Ancestry Library Edition. https://www.ancestryclassroom.com/discoveryui-content/view/34526830:60525?tid=&pid=&queryid=f63dc87c-e0a3-4f5f-b8f7-c656f9d80e44&_phsrc=Lyk27&_phstart=successSource.

 

Herringshaw, Thomas William, ed. Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography: Contains Thirty-five Thousand Biographies of the Acknowledged Leaders of Life and Thought of the United States. American Publishers' Association, 1914. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://books.google.com/books?id=EjABAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA379#v=onepage&q&f=false.

 

Keith, Eliza Douglas. "7,000,000 Women Bread Winners Need the Ballot." The San Francisco Call and Post (San Francisco, CA), August 7, 1911, 5. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/82707844/.

 

———. "Teachers Fear Politics in Schools Appointed Superintendent Opposed Failed in Other Cities, Is Claim." The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA), September 9, 1920, 5. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/457393840/.

 

Mighels, Ella Sterling. The Story of the Files: A Review of California Writers and Literature. Cooperative Printing Company, 1893. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://books.google.com/books?id=QZQOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA388#v=onepage&q=eliza%20keith&f=false.

 

The San Francisco Call and Post (San Francisco, CA). "News of the Fraternal Societies." February 3, 1907, 35. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/87804903/.

 

The San Francisco Call and Post (San Francisco, CA). "Women in Literature: Prominent Members of the Women's Press Association." March 15, 1891, 3. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/92938716/.

 

San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA). "Di Vernon at Atlanta." September 3, 1895, 9. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/27359044/.

 

The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, CA). "Mayor Urged to Oust School Board in Report to Defense Society." October 16, 1920, 5. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://basic.newspapers.com/image/459467499/.

 

"Some of the Prominent Suffragists at Rest at Cypress Lawn." Heritage Newsletter, Fall 2018, 4-5. PDF.

White, J. T., ed. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Permanent series, Volume 2. Forgotten Books, 1899. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://books.google.com/books?id=M50wIEPC_X8C&pg=PA425#v=snippet&q=eliza%20douglas%20keith&f=false.