Abigail Scott was born Oct 22, 1834 on the family farm near Groveland, Illinois. Her parents led the family on the Oregon Trail in 1852. Her mother and youngest brother died on the trail, when Abigail was 17. She taught school until her marriage to Benjamin Duniway in 1853. In 1862 an accident left her husband unable to work, and Abigail Scott Duniway returned to teaching and opened a retail store in Albany, Oregon. The experience of running a household heightened her awareness of legal inequalities against women. She moved her family to Portland, Oregon in 1871 and began publishing the New Northwest, a weekly newspaper that ran from 1871 to 1887, and demanded equal rights for women. As a pioneer, Duniway knew the women had been equal partners in establishing their communities with their husbands! In 1873 Duniway helped found the Oregon State Women Suffrage Association, and she regularly lectured in the Northwest. Her efforts - despite the outspoken opposition of her brother and editor of The Oregonian, Harvey W. Scott - helped women get the vote in Idaho is 1896, in Washington in 1910 and in Oregon in 1912. Abigail Scott Duniway penned her life story in 1914, Path Breaking. She also authored 2 novels and many poems. Abigail Scott Duniway died October 11, 1915 and her ashes are interred in the grave of her daughter, Clara Belle Duniway Stearns.

Rock Springs Adviser-News no. 12 October 14, 1915
Mrs. Duniway Passes Away at Portland

Word reached Laramie on Monday from President Clyde Duniway of the University of Wyoming of the death of his mother, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, at her home at Portland, Ore., a little after midnight. Dr. Duniway stated that he and his brother, Ralph Duniway, were with their mother at the time of her death. Dr. Duniway, who was with the Burlington-International Harvester farm demonstration train in the northern part of the state, left the train at Sheridan and hurried to Portland.

Mrs. Duniway was born October 22, 1834, at Groveland, Ill., her parents being John Tucker and Ann (Roleofson) Scott. She was self educated, and married Benjamin Charles Duniway of Fafayette, Ore., August 2, 1853. He died in 1896. Mrs. Duniway?s mother, Mrs. Ann Roloefson Scott Duniway, was a member of the ox-team party crossing the plains in 1852 and died at Fort Laramie, Wyo., and was buried at that place, the party traveling by the Overland trail through this state, then part of the territory of Dakota. Mrs. Duniway, whose death has just occurred, was successfully a ranchwoman, teacher, milliner and dressmaker. She became an advocate of equal rights before the conventions and legislatures in Oregon, Washing and Idaho in 1871, and had been active in that propaganda to the time of her death, almost. She assisted in organizing the National American Equal Suffrage association in 1884, and was the owner and editor of the New Northwest from 1871 to 1886. She composed the Centennial Ode for the Lewis and Clark exposition in 1905, and was honored by the naming of Abigail Scott Duniway day at the exposition on Oct. 6, 1905, and for years was honorary president of the Oregon Federation of Women?s clubs, president of the Federation Government Study clubs and a member of the Women?s club of Portland.∼Abigail Jane Scott Duniway is my 1st. cousin 3 times removed. Her mother Ann Roelofson Scott is a sister to my great great grandmother Esther Roelofson Johnson wife of Rev. Neill Johnson a founder of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Oregon.