Former Pueblo activist Elizabeth Wells to be inducted into Colorado Women's Hall of Fame

Pueblo’s representation in the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame is about to get even richer.

Elizabeth Georgiana Barratt Wells, a staunch advocate for mothers and children during her time in Pueblo, is part of the hall's class of 2022 and will be posthumously inducted in March 2023. She is one of 17 honorees in this year’s class and will join a list of 172 women enshrined since 1985.

“I feel it’s wonderful,” said Linda Johnson of her great-grandmother’s selection. “I wish I had more family to share it with.”

Wells was an activist in Pueblo between 1910 and 1921, according to Johnson, who spent at least 10 hours a day for six weeks in 2019 combing through records at the Rawlings Library for information on Wells. She said she was motivated to learn more about her great-grandmother after reading her obituary on a genealogy website.

Johnson spent at least three months in 2021 compiling documents and newspaper clippings with information on her great-grandmother’s actions and accomplishments to submit to the hall of fame for consideration.

Through her research, Johnson, 84, discovered that in 1910, Wells founded the Pueblo chapter of the Mother’s Congress and Parent Teachers Association (MC and PTA). It became one of the most active and largest chapters in Colorado, she said.

Wells frequently traveled to outlying Colorado towns to speak about the Pueblo chapter. The hall of fame, in its excerpt on Wells, wrote that child welfare and infant hygiene were concerns of hers and that some of her articles highlighting the deplorable conditions people were facing at the time appeared in the La Junta Tribune.

Wells’ major focus was on the welfare of mothers and children. She was so successful through her work and leadership with the Child Welfare Committee that it became a permanently funded department within the city of Pueblo, according to the hall.

Her work and advocacy extended beyond the Mother’s Congress and welfare committee. Johnson's research found that Wells was highly educated and a member of about two dozen local committees.

“She instinctively knew how to bring people together and how to make them work together,” Johnson said. “She knew how to lead.”

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Johnson opined that although the MC and PTA likely wasn’t designed to help the advancement of women at the time, it did just that, as its programs helped women learn organization, how to speak in public and to start and finish a project.

According to a Chieftain article from April 2017, the MC and PTA convinced the city to plow at least two vacant lots for community gardens. In another Chieftain article nearly a century earlier in 1920, the organization arranged a supervised restroom for women at the Colorado State Fair, giving them and their children a comfortable space.

“Elizabeth was focused, organized and passionate about the causes she viewed as important in the raising and health of children and their mothers,” Johnson said.

Wells was born in Middlesex County, England in 1854 and lived there for 16 years before immigrating to Canada with her parents, Joseph and Mary Ann Barratt, according to Johnson. She later married Frank A. Wells, a New York native and property owner in Pueblo and Blackhawk.

The Wells’ had 11 children, though three reportedly died as infants and another died from typhoid fever as a sophomore at Centennial High School, Johnson said.

Johnson isn’t certain, but she suspects Wells' motivations to advocate for the health of children partially stemmed from the deaths of her own children — all four of whom died before Wells founded the Pueblo chapter of the MC and PTA.

“She just accomplished so much,” Johnson said. “I thought she must have been working 20 of 24 hours a day after she started Mother’s Congress, not that she was lazing around before that with 11 children.”

According to a Chieftain article from September 1912 unearthed by Johnson, Pueblo’s Mother’s Congress contributed to widespread advancement within children’s culture in the city. The Chieftain wrote that the Mother’s Congress in Pueblo “perhaps accomplished more in the short period of its existence than any similar organization that was ever effected in Colorado.”

Johnson said Wells originated the idea of a monthly council meeting, which, according to a report from the Chieftain, brought "forty or fifty women together from all classes and parts of the city to discuss child welfare.” The idea was adopted by several states and the national chapter of Mother’s Congress, Johnson said.

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Mother’s Congress in Pueblo campaigned for window screens in classrooms, appropriate wages for teachers, improved communication between teachers and parents, the teaching of proper hygiene and health care and supervision on city playgrounds. It also led campaigns against cigarettes and soft drinks.

Johnson said Wells' accomplishments are all the more impressive considering some of them came during the backdrop of World War I and the influenza pandemic.

But by late 1920, Wells' health was declining. She and Frank left Pueblo for California shortly after the Great Flood of 1921, according to an article in the Chieftain. That left the family with minimal lineage in Pueblo as none of the children stayed and many followed Elizabeth and Frank to California or moved elsewhere.

Wells died of esophageal cancer on Dec. 22, 1921, in San Jose.

A tribute to Wells was published in the Chieftain a few weeks after her death. It was written by Rose Jay, a woman who worked closely with Wells and wrote weekly reports in the Chieftain about Mother’s Congress, Johnson said.

More than a century later, Wells is being honored with another tribute and will join Arlene Kramer, Erinea Gallegos and Capt. Katherine Keating as women representing Pueblo in the hall.

Chieftain reporter Josue Perez can be reached at JHPerez@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @josuepwrites.

This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Pueblo activist to be enshrined in Colorado Women's Hall of Fame