"Go ahead and indulge all you want in the next two months, but then step out in healthy fashion Saturday, Jan 3, 2026! Join your friends and neighbors,10 am, at […]
"Go ahead and indulge all you want in the next two months, but then step out in healthy fashion Saturday, Jan 3, 2026! Join your friends and neighbors,10 am, at […]
This event dates back to the earliest days of the organization and is a great opportunity for the membership to gather, share stories, fill up on tasty treats and build community. Thanks to everyone who attended!
Help us finish our landscape renovation by donating to match the generous $7,500 gift from the Ripples 4 Ever Fund.
The Ladies of La Mesa - Helen M. Gerrells Stoddard (July 27, 1850 - December 31, 1940)
In honor of Women's History Month, the LMHC is kicking off its next social media series, the Ladies of La Mesa. For our first post, we are highlighting a political groundbreaker, Helen Stoddard.
Born in 1850 in Sheboyan Falls, Wisconsin, Helen Gerrells was dedicated to education from a very young age. She attended Ripon College and trained as a teacher at Genessee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima, New York where she graduated as valedictorian in 1873. Following graduation, she married her classmate Sheppard D. Stoddard. The couple had two sons, one of whom died in infancy, prior to Sheppard’s death in 1878. Helen and her surviving son Robert moved around the country as she taught in multiple locations.
While she lived in Texas, she helped establish a women’s industrial arts college known today as Texas Women’s University. In 1910, she moved to La Mesa and soon after was elected President of the La Mesa Woman’s Club. In addition, she was also the leader of the La Mesa chapter of the Women’s Temperance Society. Stoddard was integral in the fight for women’s right to vote, and in 1911, when California finally granted women the right to vote in the state’s constitution, she led 40 members from the La Mesa Women’s Club to the Registrar of Voter’s office in downtown San Diego to register to vote. With the help of Stoddard and the new demographic of women voters, the vote to incorporate La Mesa as a city passed in 1912. Soon after, Stoddard decided to run for Congress as a member of the Prohibition Party. Her campaign targeted women with a slogan “A Vote for Helen M. Stoddard is a Vote for the Home.” She didn’t win but did draw over 1,300 votes out of more than 20,000 cast for the five candidates in the race.
Helen Stoddard died in Dallas, Texas in 1940.
Where is this and what do you know about it? Also, give us your best guess on the date of the image. #WhereIsItWednesday #historyiscool
Any guesses what, where and when this is? (Thanks again to our volunteers who are scanning in all these great images from our archival collection.) #WhereIsItWednesday #lamesahistory
