Madeline McDowell Breckinridge

Madeline (Madge) McDowell Breckinridge (May 20, 1872 – November 25, 1920) was a leader of the women's suffrage movement and one of Kentucky's leading progressive reformers. She lobbied for women's right to vote in board elections and for state and federal election voting rights. Kentucky ratified the constitution amendment for women's right to vote on January 6, 1920 and the federal Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed that year, which allowed women, including Breckinridge, to vote in the presidential election in November 1920.

She was instrumental in the adoption of legislation to establish the juvenile justice system, which was enacted in 1906. She also lobbied for child labor and compulsory school attendance legislation. Breckenridge was the founder of many civic organizations, including the Lexington Civic League, Associated Charities and Kentucky Association for the Prevention and Treatment of Tuberculosis. She led efforts to create these organizations, implement model schools for children and adults, parks and recreations, manual training programs, and health care facilities for tuberculosis treatment. McDowell had suffered from tuberculosis since she was a young woman, and the amputation of part of one of her legs necessitated the use of a wooden leg.

In their book, A New History of Kentucky, Lowell H. Harrison and James C. Klotter, state that Breckinridge was the most influential woman in the state. She was named one of the Kentucky Women Remembered in 1996 and her portrait is permanently displayed at the state capitol. She was a descendant of 19th-century statesman Henry Clay and married editor and publisher Desha Breckinridge.

She was born in Woodlake, Kentucky and grew up at Ashland (Henry Clay estate), the farm established by her great-grandfather, nineteenth-century statesman Henry Clay. Her mother was Henry Clay, Jr.'s daughter, Anne Clay McDowell, and her father was Major Henry Clay McDowell (a namesake of Henry Clay), who served during the American Civil War on the Union side. They purchased the Ashland estate in 1882.

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