Jean Brooks Greenleaf Gravesite

Jean Brooks Greenleaf (1831-1918) was a leader in the suffrage movement and friend of Susan B. Anthony. Greenleaf served as the president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association between 1890 and 1896 and worked with Anthony on the "Second New York Campaign" for a state constitutional amendment for women's suffrage in 1894. At her death in 1918, her obituary remarked: "With the death yesterday of Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf there passed the last of the little band of devoted suffragists who received their first inspiration from Susan B. and Mary Anthony. Mrs. Greenleaf was the only one of the women who saw their dream come true in the state where they had lived the greater share of their lives."

Jean Brooks Greenleaf was born October 1, 1831 to John and Mary Bascom Brooks in Bernardston, MA. She attended Melrose Seminary in West Brattleboro, Vermont, but did not complete her studies due to the health of her mother. Jean Brooks married Halbert Stevens Greenleaf in 1862. Halbert Greenleaf was the owner of a lock company and served as a captain in the state’s militia. With the start of the Civil War, Greenleaf enlisted in the Union Army and attained the rank of Colonel, with the couple living for a period of time in New Orleans at the end of the war. 

In 1867, Jean and Halbert Greenleaf moved to Rochester where Halbert resumed his lock business and entered politics, serving two terms in Congress, and Jean began her work as a suffragist in the same circle as Susan B. and Mary Anthony. She was a member of the Women’s Political Club (later the Political Equality Club) and served as its president in 1888, as well as working with other Rochester-area organizations advancing the lives of women.

Between 1890 and 1896 Jean Brooks Greenleaf served as president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. During this time Greenleaf and Susan B. Anthony worked together in the “Second New York Campaign” for the vote as the state of New York revised its constitution in 1894. Greenleaf and Anthony spoke before the Suffrage Committee in May 1894 and Greenleaf was nominated as the only female delegate to the Constitutional Convention in August of that year.

She continued to work with the NYSWSA after the turn of the century, but her activism lessened as she cared for Halbert after his 1896 stroke. Greenleaf died on March 2, 1918. 

"Jean Brooks Greenleaf." Western New York Suffragists: Winning the Vote. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://rrlc.org/winningthevote/biographies/jean-brooks-greenleaf/.

Moore, Patrick, Seth Anderson, and Thomas Wirth. “Biographical Sketch of Jean Brooks Greenleaf.” Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920. Accessed January 5, 2022. https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009860204.

“Pioneer Suffragist Dies at Age of 86: Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf Last of Loyal Band.” Democrat and Chronicle. Rochester, NY, Sun. 3 Mar 1918. Transcribed by Karen E. Dau. Accessed January 5, 2022. http://nyscu.org/Archives/Universalist%20Memory%20Garden/Universalist%20Memory%20Garden%20G/Greenleaf,%20Jean%20(Brooks)%201918.pdf