Doctor, state senator, suffragist: Utah’s statue of Martha Hughes Cannon heads to D.C.

A statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, who was elected to the Utah Senate in 1896 making her the nation’s first female state senator, is pictured in the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, ahead of its move to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Cannon was also a physician, suffragist and advocate for women’s rights. (McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)

The statue of Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon — a famed leader in the women’s suffrage movement and the first U.S. female state senator — is finally headed to Washington, D.C.

Her send off, celebrated Wednesday evening at the Utah Capitol, comes more than six years after the Utah Legislature voted to send the statue to the National Statuary Hall Collection at the nation’s capital. 

Every state is represented by two historical figures in the collection, and Utah’s two statues are currently Brigham Young, the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who led the Mormon Pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley and served as the state’s first governor, and Philo T. Farnsworth, an inventor whose discoveries were integral to the development of the television. 

Martha’s ticket to Washington

In 2018, the Utah Legislature passed SCR1, a resolution requesting the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress approve replacement of Utah’s Farnsworth statue with one of Cannon. 

The statue of Farnsworth, an inventor and television pioneer who was born in Beaver, has been on display in D.C. since 1990. It will now be moved to Utah Valley University. Utah’s resolution described Cannon as a “renowned woman of Utah” and a “national champion for women’s rights,” noting that her election to the Utah Senate 1896 came 24 years before all women in the U.S. were granted the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. 

Cannon — who was also a doctor and a public health advocate — ran as a Democrat and defeated her own husband and other candidates to win her Senate seat. After she retired from the Legislature in 1901, “she continued to fight for public health improvements, women’s rights, and other important policy improvements until she passed away in 1932,” SCR1 states. 

The resolution, which called for “no public funds to be used for any cost related to the creation and replacement of the statue,” set a deadline for the statue to be unveiled in D.C. in August of 2020 to commemorate the month of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, would delay the statue’s journey to Washington. It’s been waiting at the Utah Capitol, where it’s been on display since 2021.

In 2019, the Martha Hughes Cannon Oversight Committee and the Legislature announced artist Ben Hammon was selected to sculpt the statue, and that it would be funded through private donations and in-kind support. 

In September 2020, her bronze statue was unveiled, but her arrival to the U.S. Capitol was at the time postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic. 

Now, the wait is over. 

Last month, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson announced the statue’s long-awaited departure to its new home. In a prepared statement, Henderson harkened back to her time as a Utah state senator, and she said “no legislation brought as much excitement and public engagement” as the resolution to send Cannon’s statue to D.C.

“After six long years, I am thrilled to finally see this trailblazing pioneer of women’s equality assume her rightful place in the halls of our nation’s Capitol building.” Henderson said. “The impact Utah women had on the national women’s suffrage movement has for too long been overlooked.”

“Martha’s statue is more than a reminder of her individual accomplishments,” Henderson continued. “She symbolizes the contributions of all the Utah women whose persistent and righteous efforts not only secured their own equal rights, but also ensured ours.”

The life of Martha Hughes Cannon

Cannon was born in 1857 in Wales, United Kingdom, and immigrated with her family to Utah Territory to join members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints there. By age 16, she had enrolled at University of Deseret (now the University of Utah) studying chemistry. She went on to earn her medical degree from the University of Michigan and a degree in pharmaceuticals at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the only woman in the program, according to the Better Days project’s Utah women’s history website. 

She went on to marry Latter-day Saint church leader Angus M. Cannon, a polygamous union that made Martha Cannon a target as the nation cracked down on the practice. The National Women’s History Museum wrote that, as a polygamous wife herself and a doctor who delivered babies that the federal government saw as evidence of polygamy, Cannon was considered an important witness in prosecuting people in polygamous marriages. To protect her husband and her patients, she at different times of her life fled to England and California, where she lived in exile.

In Utah, Cannon was a powerful voice in the state’s suffrage movement, arguing for equality in a territorial suffrage meeting in 1889.

“No privileged class either of sex, wealth, or descent should be allowed to arise or exist; all persons should have the same legal right to be the equal of every other, if they can,” Cannon said in that meeting, according to the Better Days website.

As soon as Utah women secured the vote, Cannon became the first woman in Salt Lake City to register to vote and in 1896 was elected to the state Senate. During her two terms in office she authored bills creating the first state board of health, improving sanitation systems in the state, improved working conditions for women and girls, and advocating for speech-and-hearing-impaired students, according to Better Days. 

In 1899, Cannon gave birth to her third child, nine years after Latter-day Saints had disavowed polygamy, which made national headlines and led her not to seek another term in office. She spent the rest of life primarily in California, where she worked at the University of California Graves Clinic and became the vice-president of the American Congress for Tuberculosis.

A celebratory send-off

To commemorate the Cannon statue’s send-off, the Utah Historical Society and Better Days hosted a celebration at the Utah Capitol on Wednesday evening. The festivities were open to the public and included music, food from local food trucks, and activities for children and families. 

After years of waiting, Utahns were more than ready to celebrate the move, climbing up to pose for a photo with the statue on the C.R. England flatbed trailer that will carry Cannon to her new home, free of charge. Behind the truck, the Capitol steps were decked with purple and yellow banners, the colors of the suffrage movement, and oversized letters declaring “Martha goes to Washington.”

When it came time for the statue’s departure, the crowd lined the way and waved suffrage-color flags, some chanting “Martha! Martha!” as the American Fork High School marching band played.  

The program included a telling of Cannon’s history, an original song, and remarks by Utah Lt. Gov. Diedre Henderson.

A former state senator herself, Henderson noted that when she took office, 116 years after Cannon, she was only the 27th woman to hold a seat in the Utah Senate chamber.

“So we have a little ways to go,” Henderson told the crowd.

Henderson also recalled a trip to Washington, D.C., before the Cannon statue campaign began where she noticed that if she spotted a statue of a woman, it was generally an allegorical woman representing a principle or virtue. 

“I am so happy today that we are finally sending a statue to represent our state of a real woman,” Henderson said.

As they mingled awaiting the sendoff, visiting tables set up by groups like the League of Women Voters, Utah Civics Project and Daughters of Utah Pioneers, the crowd, mostly women, could be heard marveling at Cannon’s legacy. “She was a doctor,” one woman told another. “She ran against her husband.” Many wore yellow flowers, commemorating the time Cannon scattered yellow blooms on the desks of male legislators in her campaign for votes for women.

Stephanie Lutz, a Lehi resident and professor in Utah Valley University’s public health department, had tears in her eyes as she grinned up at the statue. A longtime Martha fan, she has been counting down the days until the statue takes its place in Washington, D.C.

“I just admire her so much, her desire to educate herself at a time that women really weren’t necessarily allowed to seek education,” Lutz said. “It’s such a testament to the power of women, when they have the passion and the drive. They’re going to make it happen.”

Lutz is also inspired that Cannon accomplished all she did while caring for her family. Wearing a T-shirt declaring “A woman’s place is in the House and the Senate,” Lutz said that as a mother of five, raising her children more than 120 years after Cannon and hoping for a better future for her own daughters, she has often been criticized for working outside of the home. 

Lutz noted that Cannon’s statue will be placed in the U.S. Capitol at a time when Congress is debating reproductive rights, affordable child care, paid leave and other issues impacting women today. 

“With her heavenly help and her senator ways, change will happen when she’s in D.C. She’s what we need. In the past. present and in the future,” Lutz said.

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