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95 Chapter Five Pennybacker’s success as president of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs led her to broader involvement in women’s clubs and to positions of greater national visibility with the General Federation in the years after her tfwc presidency. As her tfwc presidency came to a close in 1903, she traveled to Colorado to assume leadership of the Boulder Chautauqua Women’s Council. Her mission there was to turn the women’s council into a functioning women’s club, “with a regular organization after the order of the New York Chautauqua.”1 Upon her return to Texas that fall, she was offered the presidency of the World’s Fair Texas Women’s Board. A group of Texas women believed they had made a poor showing at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893 and pledged to do better at the St. Louis exposition in 1904. Although Pennybacker turned down the presidency of the Texas Women’s Board, she remained involved with the leaders of this organization .2 The General Federation had scheduled its 1904 convention to coincide with the St. Louis exposition to be held to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.3 As she had in previous years, Pennybacker represented Texas as a delegate to this biennial convention. At this meeting, Sarah S. Platt Decker of Colorado was elected to the gfwc presidency, and Pennybacker was elected to her first national position, treasurer of the General Federation. Like her predecessor as treasurer, Emma Van Vechten of Iowa, Pennybacker also was appointed chair of the membership committee, the committee responsible for examining and approving the memberships of new clubs. That a single individual would hold both the treasurer and membership committee chair positions made sense. The work of the membership committee dovetailed the most powerful position a woman could hold call her a citizen 96 with the work of the treasurer. As treasurer, a large part of Pennybacker’s responsibility involved keeping track of which clubs had paid dues in a timely manner and were thus eligible to send delegates to federation meetings. Member clubs were required to pay dues, and often questions of membership depended upon whether or not dues were paid. However, Pennybacker may have been seen as particularly well suited for this position, not so much because of her organizational abilities, but because of her conservative handling of the “color question” at the 1902 biennial. As the Texas federation president, she had opposed the seating of black women as delegates and gfwc leaders may have expected that, as membership committee chair, she would be unlikely to admit clubs with black members. Furthermore, she was known for her tact, and others may have been secure in the belief that she would find a way to quell controversy and exclude the clubs with black members in what clubwomen would have considered a dignified manner. As chair of this committee, Pennybacker oversaw changes in the bylaws regarding membership. Among these changes were amendments that required new clubs to submit upon application their constitution and bylaws that “show that no sectarian or political test is required for membership.” Changes also set dues for clubs: $2.50 for clubs with fewer than twenty-five members and ten cents per capita for larger clubs, and clubs were required to pay dues by May 1 of each year.4 As treasurer of the federation, Pennybacker was a member of the gfwc board of directors and as such consulted with other federation leaders on a variety of issues not limited to federation financial affairs. gfwc president Decker, known for her “long prospective view that overlooked some of the necessary steps between” and for “overstepping the strict parliamentary ruling that permits no presiding officer an expression of feeling, in order to point a moral or touch the heartstrings,” relied on Pennybacker’s “judicial mind” (Pennybacker, in Decker’s view, was “never swayed by prejudice nor self-interest”).5 Pennybacker, for her part, served Decker well. She was an active member of Decker’s board, participating in some of the major achievements of her administration. In 1904, for example, Pennybacker and fellow board member Mary I. Wood advocated the formation of a bureau of information, a central office from which information about the federation could be collected and distributed. Pennybacker explained the rationale for this office in a report, noting that relatively few members had the opportunity to attend a biennial to learn more about the work of the...

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