TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

June 1918, she received the privilege of being the first woman to register to vote in Harris County. 35 The HoustonEqual Suffrage Association memorialized Hortense’s accomplishments in the inscription its members etched onthe silver loving cup it awarded her:Hortense WardA RemembranceFor Faithful ServiceTo Texas WomenFrom HoustonEqual SuffrageAssociationBut she was not ready to rest on her laurels after winning Texas women the right to vote. Hortensecontinued to champion reformist politics long after her panel of the Texas Supreme Court rendered its decisionin Johnson v. Darr. Confronted by undeniable evidence of devastated lives and family impoverishment, shesupported the prohibition movement to curtail excessive drinking. 36In her later years, Hortense took on the Ku Klux Klan at the height of its power and influence in Texas. 37 In 1926,Governor Miriam Ferguson sent her to Maine to campaign against Ku Klux Klan-supported candidates. 38 She workedhard to support reform legislation to limit working hours, argued in favor of a woman’s right to participate in corporategovernance as an officer or director, and advocated the organization of specialized family and divorce courts. 39My uncle reiterated that his grandmother had a warm, generous heart. My grandfather, John H. Crooker, Sr.—who called her Mother, preserved a letter she wrote on Ward & Ward stationery and sent to him on Saint Patrick’sDay in 1932 to remind him of the importance of love, family traditions, and wealth not measured in material terms.Hortense Sparks Ward’s March 17, 1932 St. Patrick’s Day letter to John Crooker, Sr., from the author’s personal collection.35See “Mrs. Hortense Ward is shown as she signed the first registration receipt issued to a woman in Harris county Thursday morning”(photograph caption), Houston Post (June 28, 1918), in Hortense Sparks Ward Biographical Vertical File, Texas Room, HoustonMetro. Res. Ctr., Houston Pub. Lib.36See Haley, A Narrative History, at 155-56.37See Dunn, Legacy, at 6.38See generally Helen Hunter, Denise Nosal, and Mary Gillette (eds.), Houston Women from Suffrage to City Hall: A Project of theLeague of Women Voters of Houston Education Fund (Houston: League of Women Voters Educ. Fund, 1987).39See Dunn, Legacy, at 6.59