Lessie Stringfellow (1891-1971)

Lessie Stringfellow Read was an early Arkansas suffragist. She used her experience in journalism to promote women’s rights both within the state and globally. An unabashed spiritualist, her life is an example of how the suffrage movement and spiritualist movement influenced one another.

She was the youngest child of William and Lillian Staples. When she was born in Temple, Texas, on January 3, 1891, her parents named her Mabel Staples. They both died while she was a toddler, and the Stringfellows adopted her upon her mother’s request.

Henry and Alice Stringfellow were an upper-class family living outside Hitchcock in the Gulf Coast region of Texas. Henry had established Stringfellow Orchard, the first pear orchard in the state, which can still be visited to this day. In 1886 their son Leslie had died, but they communicated with him nightly using a planchette. After hearing her adopted parents speak to and about Leslie, Mabel began saying, “Me Lessie,” so the Stringfellows changed her name to Lessie.

Once she became a teenager, Lessie was tutored by a professor from Leland Stanford University. She showed much interest in writing and drawing. Her writing samples show concern and sympathy for other people. She also began writing a society column for the Houston Chronicle.

She married pharmacist James Read in 1910. Shortly afterwards the newlyweds moved with the Stringfellows to Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 1912 Henry died; James disappeared the same year. The couple remained estranged while James lived with his mother in Texas before joining the army. He also spent 1919-1921 in the penitentiary for embezzlement before returning to Texas but never back to Lessie’s life. This gave Lessie the social status of a married woman – which she took full advantage of - without the responsibilities.

By 1915 she helped found the Washington County Women’s Suffrage Association and served as president of the Fayetteville Equal Suffrage Association. She helped coordinate the biennial national convention of General Federation of Women’s Clubs that was held in Hot Springs in 1918. She became the editor for the General Federation News and later the chairman of press and publicity for the GFWC. In this position she traveled all over the nation and became acquainted with a variety of people including notable figures such as Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, who once stayed in her home in Fayetteville. She also became one of the first women in Arkansas to attend the Democratic Convention.

Lessie was uniquely suited for her role in the GFWC Press Department due to her journalism experience. She began writing columns on World War I for the Fayetteville Democrat in 1918. When the editor of the paper, J.D. Hurst, enlisted, she filled in as editor. After the war Hurst returned as business manager, and Lessie remained editor until she retired in 1945. She also wrote articles for national publications such as Good Housekeeping. She used her inside knowledge on how press offices were run to write a pamphlet for the GFWC called Little Lessons in Journalism and Pointers on Publicity. This pamphlet included information on how to report for clubs, duties of club press chairmen, and how to establish an effective relationship with your local press.

Her friend and owner of the Fayetteville Democrat, Roberta Fulbright, mother of Senator William Fulbright, described Lessie as “a person who could see by her own headlights, and she was capable of running herself.” She remained active in community organizations such as the League of Women Voters and on the board of Girl Scouts Councilors. She was a member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, the Democratic Party, and the Rosicrutian Philosophical Society, holding meetings in her home on Washington Avenue until 1966. She was admitted to the Fayetteville Hospital after she became senile where she spent the rest of her life, which ended on May 28, 1971. She now rests in Evergreen Cemetery in Fayetteville.