Rheta Louise Childe Dorr (1868–1948) was an American journalist, suffragist newspaper editor, writer, and political activist. Dorr is best remembered as one of the leading female muckraking journalists of the Progressive Era and as the first editor of the influential newspaper The Suffragist.
Early years
Rheta Louise Child was born November 2, 1866, in Omaha, Nebraska. She was the second child in a family of four daughters and two sons born to the former Lucie Mitchell and Edward Payson Child, a New York-born druggist.
One night when she was just 12 years old, Child and her sister snuck out of the family home against their father's wishes to hear Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton speak on women's suffrage. The experience proved to be transformative and Dorr became committed to the idea of voting as a fundamental right even at this early age.
Child studied for two years at the University of Nebraska before moving in 1890 to New York City, where she worked as a journalist. While in New York she met John Pixley Dorr, a conservative businessman from Seattle. The couple were married in 1892 and moved to Seattle to start a family.
Even after her marriage Rheta Dorr continued to work as a journalist, interviewing gold miners returning from Alaska writing articles for New York newspapers as a freelancer. Conflict with her traditionalist husband grew and in 1898 the pair separated, with Rheta returning East with her two-year-old son, where she was forced to make her own way financially as a single mother.
