May Arkwright

Who was May Arkwright?

May Hutton née Arkwright was a suffrage leader in the early history of the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Hutton, who has been described as an orphan by some sources and is now often believed to have been illegitimate. She was raised by her paternal grandfather, Aza, in Ohio. Aza, who was blind, enjoyed political meetings and May often accompanied him.

In 1883, as an adult, she moved to Idaho. There, she owned and operated a boarding house in Kellogg, Idaho. In 1887 she married Levi Hutton and they moved to Wallace, Idaho where she oversaw the dining hall of the Wallace Hotel. Her husband "Al" Hutton worked for the Northern Pacific railroad, and both she and her husband were active in the associated labor movements. When miners dynamited the Bunker Hill and Sullivan's mine concentrator in Wardner, Idaho, Al was the engineer of the train used to deliver the dynamite. She wrote a book about the horrible treatment of the miners at the hands of the mine owners, and the treatment of her husband at the hands of the sheriff/mine owners in her book The Coeur d'Alenes: or, A tale of the modern inquisition in Idaho. In later life, she bought all of the copies she could back