Sarah platt decker biography

The entire collection was in the possession of the Woman's Club of Denver until the 1990s.

An outlet for both intellectual and charitable efforts, the Woman’s Club of Denver hosted events where women delivered speeches on various social and political issues, performed in theatrical and music performances, and planned fundraisers for needy Denverites and other social causes. She also began advocating for the preservation of some natural places, including advocating for the establishment of Mesa Verde as a national park.

It also made Colorado a point of curiosity for many Americans, who were eager to see whether anti-vote predictions would prove true that giving women political power would be the ruin of men, women, and families alike. The Omaha Daily Bee quoted a Denver newspaper stating that “Decker was a woman who stands for all that is progressive, all that is good and all that is womanly.” The Decker Library Branch in Denver is named after Sarah.

Permission for publication may be given on behalf of the Denver Public Library as the owner of the physical item.

In 1904, following the death of Judge Decker, Decker would run for president of the GFWC, and would successfully run for a second term in 1906.

The Woman's Club of Denver scrapbooks (Scrapbooks 8-9 and enclosures) are dedicated to the history and activities of the WCD.

While Decker is referenced occasionally in these books, she is not the primary focus of the books, and indeed they continue for more than a decade after her death.

Throughout her career, Platt-Decker was a passionate and magnetic speaker, but her lively good humor and common sense powered her through life. Scrapbook 6 contains an image in the back cover of him sitting with a gluepot and scrapbook, noting he was a scrapbook creator.

She was the first president of the Denver Women’s Club and became national president of the Federation of Associated Women’s Clubs. Topics documented within the collection include long-running coverage on women's suffrage, the role of the modern woman and working women, the temperance movement, and child labor and juvenile justice.

The GFWC scrapbooks (scrapbooks 1-7, plus enclosures) document Decker's activities as a member, vice president, and president of the organization.

In 1908, she was the sole woman delegate invited to President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot’s Conference of Governors on the Conservation of Natural Resources, to be held at the White House on May 13-15, 1908.

In 1912, Decker was attending the GFWC convention in San Francisco, when she collapsed in pain. She was a galvanizing force in the organization, enhancing connections between the many scattered women’s clubs nationwide, and strategizing to create coordinated public relations messaging across the various state member clubs.

The family left her with just one-third of the estate, or the "widow's share," and no legal recourse.

In 1902, she famously rebutted President Roosevelt’s call for white Americans to have more children to avoid “race suicide.” Her reply was that the country did not need more children, but “better quality” ones. Pro-suffrage women nationwide were particularly attuned to developments in the state.