And, he also oversaw a successful insurance company that still exists today, Her husband, meanwhile, wasn’t quite as busy with nonprofits as Jessie, but then he was in politics from 1907 to 1949, having been elected as a ward supervisor, chairman of the Schenectady County Board of Supervisors, a state Assemblyman and a member of the Schenectady City Council. When she married Charles Merriam in 1921 and moved to Schenectady, she immediately became immersed in several non-profit organizations, including the YWCA, the American Association of University Women, the Schenectady Museum, the Old Ladies Home, the Thursday Musical Club and the Schenectady County Historical Society. Before she eventually finished her education back home in Colorado, Jessie attended both Oberlin and Denison colleges in Ohio before her time there was interrupted by sickness. She was the daughter of a Colorado mining town preacher, and endured a number of illnesses as a young woman, including tuberculosis. “The doctor objected, but then demanded that she take a nurse, so she did have a nurse on the plane with her.”īorn in Illinois, Jessie McGlashan was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Colorado College for Women. “My grandmother and I were very close, and when she had her heart attack, she not only didn’t pass, she ended up going back to New Guinea,” said Brian Merriam, a Schenectady resident who recently returned from a two-week trip to India with Rotary clubs from around the world. He says it was his father, Charles Merriam Jr., who instilled the Rotary motto, “Service Above Self,” in him, and his dad no doubt inherited that same sentiment from his parents. Her grandson, Brian Merriam, has that gene and with it a strong inclination to serve others. There’s evidently some kind of energy gene that runs through the McGlashan and Merriam families. had a partner whose inclination to help others never waned, even in her 90s. Stratton fought for women’s rights long before it became fashionable for middle-aged males, while, in Jessie, Charles Merriam Sr. Merriam, meanwhile, deserves plenty of credit because he and his wife, Jessie, fostered a commitment to community service like few families anywhere, and that legacy is very much alive today. The reason Stratton merits mention in a column commemorating women’s history is because he, more than any other politician, is the person most responsible for the 1975 legislation that allowed women into the armed service academies. Merriam, a Republican, also spent 40 years as an elected official before he was defeated by Stratton and the Democrats for a seat on the City Council in 1949. Stratton, a Democrat, became a mayor of Schenectady and later spent 30 years representing this area in the U.S. No, there weren’t, but there were two men, Sam Stratton and Charles Merriam Sr., who knew the importance of public service and also appreciated and understood the potential of the opposite sex. You might be thinking, “there were women running for political office in Schenectady in 1949?” AROUND THE COUNTY – March is Women’s History Month, and to help commemorate the occasion I thought we’d take a quick look at the 1949 election for City Council in Schenectady.
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