Historical Bluffton

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Question: When did Bluffton High School first offer a girls’ basketball team?
Answer: We aren’t certain, but we are getting closer to the answer.

We’ve pushed it back to 1911, thanks to a photo in the collection of Rose Harvey, whose grandmother, Clara Fett Andrews, was on the team.

Here’s the sophomore girls’ basketball team from that year. We know this because the basketball reads “Soph – 1911.”

And, 1911 was the first year that Bluffton had its own high school building. Prior to that all 12 grades were housed in one building on Jackson Street.

This team played games either in the 1911 BHS building, where the gym eventually became the band room. Or, they played games in a building behind The Food Store which was also a roller rink. We know that boys teams played in both locations.

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

The 19th amendment guaranteed all American women the right to vote on Aug. 1920.

Despite that date, a brief notation in my grandmother’s diary reads: “I went to vote and Margaret and Florence went with me. Margaret is one year old, Nov. 2, 1915.”

The note with the 1915 date confused me. I knew that women did not receive their constitutional right to vote until the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.

So, how could she vote in 1915?

CONTINUES