Isabella W. Blaney

Isabella Williams Blaney (1854–1933) was active in progressive politics and the women's suffrage movement in California and was a delegate to both the Republican and Progressive National Conventions in 1912.

Personal life Isabella Williams was born in 1854 in Chicago, Illinois, to John Marshall Williams and Elizabeth Caroline Smith of Evanston, Illinois. She married Charles D. Blaney (1854–1923) on September 6, 1877, in Evanston, and in 1883 they moved to a large ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California.

They had a child, Clarissa Butler Blaney, who died in 1901 of typhoid fever at age 17. After the daughter's death, the Blaneys helped pay for the construction of an isolation ward at O'Connor Hospital in her memory.

Her husband dealt in real estate and was chairman of the first California Highway Commission. He died on July 24, 1923.

Isabella Blaney was said to have "traveled extensively, is interested in foreign missions and is the principal promoter, if not the founder, of a medical hospital in Northern China."

Politics Catharine Waugh McCulloch, center, is flanked by Isabella W. Blaney and Frances Collins Porter, both of California, in this 1912 drawing by Marguerite Martyn. They were among the first women delegates to a Republican National Convention. Blaney was vice president of the Club Women's Franchise League. In 1910 she supervised and financed a house-to-house canvass of the Santa Clara Valley on behalf of women's suffrage in a California special election on October 10, 1911. She was on the executive board of the California Equal Suffrage Association. She was the "first woman in California to be given a post in a partisan political organization."

She switched to Theodore Roosevelt after Senator Robert M. La Follette quit the presidential race. but that distinction actually went to Therese A. Jenkins, a Republican delegate in 1892. Asked how it felt to be the "first of their sex to cast votes in a national convention," she replied, "I just voted, that's all, and did not let myself be carried away by emotion at the time." She and three other women were elected by women delegates to serve on the party's National Committee.

As a member of the Progressive Party, Blaney supported John M. Eshleman in his successful 1914 bid for California lieutenant governor.

Residences For a time the Blaneys had a summer home in Pasadena.

The Blaney home in Saratoga, California, which cost $300,000 to build on the crest of a knoll and held a theater and ballroom, attracted newspaper attention when it was completed in 1918. The residence was the site of three one-act dramas dealing with the lives of American Indians, written by Hartley Alexander and directed by Marion Craig Wentworth in August 1927. The outdoor benefit was for the Indian Defense Association of Northern and Central California. The house was threatened in a fire in January 1932 caused by a defective flue. It was "believed to be doomed" because of the lack of water to fight the flames.

Legacy In 1925 Blaney funded a memorial pipe organ in the Saratoga Federated Church in honor of her late husband.