Originally a farmhouse built around 1840, the Osborne Homestead Museum is now one of fifteen distinctive historic sites in Connecticut.  Frances Eliza Osborne (1876-1956) was the last of the Osborne family children and deeded the 350-acre property to Connecticut to preserve it as a state park for future generations.

Every December for more than 30 years, local garden clubs have prepared lavish holiday decorations following an annually chosen theme.  The theme for the 2021 Holiday Season was “Holiday Tribute: Celebrate the Suffragists.”  The Olde Ripton Garden Club decorated the Living Room and Solarium in the spirit of the “Connecticut Women Suffrage Association Parade.”

Committee members from l to r:  Judy Wise, Ruth Pesavento, Committee Chair Judy Pavone, Dee Blewett and Janet Spann.

Committee members worked hard at making the decorations for the “Connecticut Women Suffrage Association Parade.”

The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right.

On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Following Emancipation, Black people were theoretically equal before the law, including theoretical suffrage for Black women from 1920.  However, in reality, most Black men and women were effectively barred from voting from around 1870 until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Through mid-December, the Osborne Homestead Museum features special holiday twilight tours in additional to its regular daytime hours.  For more information on the “Holiday Tribute: Celebrate the Suffragists” program, museum hours, and guided tours, please visit the Osborne Homestead Museum Holiday Tours and Programs webpage.

We hope you get to visit the museum this holiday season and enjoy the decorations!