Women Who Ran: Emma Nichols Wanty

About Emma Nichols Wanty (1851–1931)

Emma Nichols Wanty, Grand Rapids Herald, January 26, 1919.

In 1907, Emma Nichols Wanty was appointed by the Grand Rapids Board of Education to finish out the term of Josephine Goss, who had resigned her position on the school board to care for her ill husband. Wanty had a formidable legacy to live up to. First elected in 1896, Josephine Goss had served on the school board for five consecutive terms before resigning in the middle of her sixth. That Wanty was the right person to succeed Goss seems to be confirmed by her similarly impressive electoral record. Voters affirmed her service on the board by handing her a victory in the 1908 school board election. And she won again in 1911, 1914, 1917, and 1920. 

Before her tenure on the Grand Rapids Board of Education, Wanty had already established a reputation for herself in Grand Rapids as a respected physician. She graduated from the Woman’s Medical School at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1880. After graduation, she stayed on at the Woman’s Medical School to work as a house surgeon and later as an assistant to the Chair of Physiology and as a lecturer on histology (the study of the microscopic structure of tissues). In 1886, she married the lawyer George P. Wanty, and the two moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Wanty set up her medical practice and worked as a visiting gynecologist at both the Union Benevolent Association Hospital and the St. Mark’s Home and Hospital. According to Ernest B. Fisher’s historical account of Grand Rapids, Wanty practiced medicine in the city until about 1899, after which she seems to have shifted her attention to a wide variety of women’s clubs and reform efforts.  

Wanty’s interests varied widely. She worked on behalf of worker’s rights on the executive board of the Grand Rapids Consumers’ League. But she was also interested in education reform, serving on the board of the Grand Rapids Kindergarten Association in 1901 and taking an active role in local Mother’s Clubs. Moreover. In 1910, Wanty played a central role in the establishment of a Grand Rapids institution that remains an important part of the city today: the Grand Rapids Art Association (known today as the Grand Rapids Art Museum).

“Opportunity Clubs Hears Candidates.” Grand Rapids Herald, April 2, 1911.

Although Wanty seems to have won her numerous reelections with little struggle, there was at least one occasion in which she faced a formidable challenger. In 1911, she and another candidate, Agnes F. Chalmers, publicly opposed one another over the issue of medical inspection in Grand Rapids public schools. As a medical professional, Wanty favored the policy. But Chalmers opposed it and argued that the policy ran the risk of becoming compulsory, something she rejected on principle as a practicing Christian Scientist. Both women, however, agreed on a separate but equally important issue—the role of women in politics and on school boards. The journalist who reported on their public disagreement over medical inspection summed up their position well: “it is pointed out that Mrs. Wanty and Miss Chalmers are not necessarily opposed to each other for school trustees. Membership on the board is not necessarily limited to one woman, the balance to be men. It is claimed that next to their own election, either of them would perhaps rather see the other elected, and two men suffer the defeat instead of one.”