Martha Goodwin Tunstall

Martha Goodwin Tunstall (1838-1911) was an abolitionist and Unionist, supporter of Radical Republicans and one of the earliest organizers of the Texas women's suffragist movement.

[2][4] The speech was reported on derisively (and assuming the speaker was a man) in a Galveston, Texas, newspaper: "The Republican publishes an address by Mr. M. G. Tunstall 'at the final meeting of the friends of female suffrage in Austin, pending its discussion in the Reconstruction Convention.'

Following the early years working for women's voting rights in Texas, Tunstall was part of the nascent National Woman Suffrage Association.

Former Confederate soldiers targeted Tunstall's family with threats and violence because of their political support for abolition and for Black Americans' rights.

In Anderson County, where they were living in 1866-68, locals who had served in the Confederate Army harassed and threatened the family because of their politics and perceived pro-Union sympathies.

[1] Due to hostility toward their political views, the family left Texas in the early 1880s, and they spent a number of nomadic years in nearby states.

In the decades following their departure from Texas, the family moved frequently, living for periods in nearby states including Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma.