Anna Beulah Boyd Ritchie (March 24, 1864 – October 4, 1939) was a founding member of the Fairmont Woman Suffrage Club (later the Fairmont Political Equality Club), third president of the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association, and officer in the West Virginia Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Ritchie's leadership in the suffrage movement included a close connection with NAWSA's Carrie Chapman Catt, who was the keynote speaker at the 1897 WVESA convention.
The work in the State is in promising condition and the Association will undoubtedly increase in membership the coming year.”[5] Ritchie led campaigns to get a NAWSA representative (Rev.
Ritchie stepped down as WVESA president at the state convention in August 1904 at Moundsville, West Virginia, but was retained on the executive board as vice-president at-large.
For several weeks in 1913, as the West Virginia legislature prepared to meet, Richie organized public speakers to support a women's suffrage bill.
Ritchie also attended the march in Washington D.C. As she told the story to a reporter several years later, she remembered that when the men in the crowds saw the West Virginia women's banner, they started calling them “'coal diggers,' and 'snake hunters' as well as other names.
"[8] In fall 1916, Ritchie again took the lead in Fairmont to try to push a suffrage bill through the legislature, but by then the anti-suffragist contingent was in full force.
[9] In February 1920 Governor John J. Cornwell called a special session of the legislature, ostensibly to debate a new tax bill but included on the agenda ratification of the new federal amendment for woman suffrage recently passed by Congress.