Talk on Etta Semple, Kansas freethinker, set for historical society
An upcoming historical program looks at Etta Semple, the Ottawa, Kan., editor who led the Kansas Freethought Association.
By Garrett Pruitt
A local historical program this spring will tell the story of Etta Semple, one of the more unusual figures in Kansas history.
Semple, born Martha Etta Donaldson in Quincy, Ill., in 1854, grew up in a Baptist family and made her name in Ottawa, Kan. She came to see religion as a matter of “ignorance and superstition” and built a public life around keeping church and state apart.
She founded the Kansas Freethought Association and was elected its president in 1879. She also served for a time as vice president of the American Secular Union.
With her second husband, Matthew Semple, she was active in the labor movement. She wrote two novels, “The Strike” and “Society,” and ran twice for office on the Socialist Labor ticket. From 1898 to 1901 she published a bimonthly paper, Freethought Ideal, with a circulation of about 2,000. Later in life she opened a “Natural Cure” sanitarium in Ottawa. She died in 1914.