Alva Belmont 1853–1933

Pictured here in her home, Alva Belmont had become involved in suffrage in 1909, when leaders were struggling to finance their campaigns for the vote. As the ex-wife of the railroad heir William Kissam Vanderbilt, she was one of the richest social- ites of New York City during its famed Gilded Age. Following her scandalous divorce in 1895 and her remarriage to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont in 1896, she was eager to learn more about women’s rights.

Belmont first met Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriot Stanton Blatch, and other members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) at the prestigious, women-only Colony Club in New York in 1908. For several decades, NAWSA benefited greatly from Belmont’s generous donations that totaled many hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 1929 her gifts helped them secure a headquarters building near the Capitol for the National Woman’s Party, an organization that continues to fight for women’s equality today.

National Woman’s Party, Washington, D.C.