Donald Rutland Smith (1890 - 1918)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Donald's lifetime.

In 1890, in the year that Donald Rutland Smith was born, on January 2nd, Alice Sanger became the first female staffer to work in the White House. She was hired as a stenographer and, as such, took dictation.

In 1900, he was merely 10 years old when Carrie Chapman Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. NAWSA was created by Anthony in 1890 in order to fight for the right of women to vote in the United States. Membership in NAWSA began at 7,000 and in the decades of the struggle - women didn't get the right to vote until 1920 - membership rose to 2 million.

In 1904, Donald was only 14 years old when the first underground line of the New York City subway system opened. London's underground system was opened in 1863 and Boston opened one in 1897, but New York quickly became the largest system in the U.S. More than 100,000 people paid 5 cents to ride under Manhattan that first day.

In 1918, in the year of Donald Rutland Smith's passing, on November 11th, an armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany, ending the fighting on the Western Front in World War I. This meant a complete defeat of Germany although Germany never formally surrendered. It took another six months of negotiations to sign an actual peace treaty between the warring parties.