Zerelda G. Wallace

Zerelda Gray Sanders Wallace (August 6, 1817 – March 19, 1901) was the First Lady of Indiana from 1837 to 1840, and a temperance activist, women's suffrage leader, and inspirational speaker in the 1870s and 1880s. She was a charter member of Central Christian Church, the first Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her husband was David Wallace, the sixth governor of Indiana; Lew Wallace, one of her stepsons, became an American Civil War general and author.

Zerelda Gray Sanders was born on August 7, 1817, in Millersburg, Kentucky. She was the eldest of five daughters born to John H., a physician, and Polly C. (Gray) Sanders. After receiving a grammar school education, she attended a boarding school at Versailles, Kentucky, from 1828 to 1830. Around 1830 the Sanders family moved to Indianapolis, where her father continued his medical practice. Zerelda was an avid reader as a youth and had an interest in medicine.

On December 25, 1836, nineteen year old Zerelda married thirty seven year old David Wallace. At the time he was the lieutenant governor of Indiana and a widower with three sons from his first marriage. Zerelda became a stepmother to Wallace's sons (William, Lew, and Edward). The couple also had six children of their own, but only three of them (Mary, Agnes, and David) survived to adulthood. After David's death, Zerelda was left nearly penniless with young children still at home, but she refused assistance from other family members. Fortunately, she retained the family's residence in Indianapolis and took in boarders to earn an income. In 1870 she took on the additional task of caring for the four children of her daughter, Mary, who had died in childbirth. Lew Wallace, Zerelda's stepson, became an American Civil War general and author of the novel Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It is believed the character of Ben Hur's mother is modeled after Zerelda, who was a devoted mother to her children and stepsons. Zerelda was also a sister in law of Richard Jordan Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun. Gatling married Zerelda's younger sister, Jemima Sanders. Her daughter in law was an opera singer, Zelda Seguin Wallace, the wife of David Wallace Jr. Zelda Wallace performed at suffrage events hosted by Zerelda Wallace.

Zerelda, who was described as shy and without personal ambition, showed little interest in becoming active in public life before 1873. However, she was an active member of the first Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis. She was a charter member of the congregation, and later served as a church deaconess. Organized in 1833, it was the "mother church" of the other Disciples of Christ congregations in Indianapolis, and was renamed Central Christian Church in 1879. In 1890 its congregation dedicated a new church at Fort Wayne Avenue and Walnut Street, where Wallace's funeral service was held in 1901. By the 1880s Wallace was not hesitant to demonstrate her convictions on the issue of temperance. In 1883 she refused to take communion unless unfermented grape juice was substituted for wine. Central Christian Church became the first Disciples of Christ church in Indianapolis to switch to grape juice for its communion services; other Disciples of Christ congregations in the United States soon followed its lead. Better known as an inspirational speaker rather than an administrator among the social reformers of her era, Wallace was popular on the national lecture circuit for her speeches on temperance and suffrage. The speaking engagements she made throughout the United States also provided Wallace with an income. Wallace's first efforts as a social reformer were tied to the temperance movement. On March 3, 1874, she was among the organizers of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of Indiana. Wallace was elected the Indiana chapter's first president, serving from 1874 to 1876, and also served as its president from 1879 to 1882. In November 1874 Wallace attended the national WCTU conference at Cleveland, Ohio, where she met suffragist Frances Willard. On January 21, 1875, she testified before the Indiana General Assembly, presenting 21,050 signatures on temperance petitions from forty seven Indiana counties. For nearly a decade the Indianapolis suffrage group did not formally join a specific suffrage organization at the national level. Instead, the Society preferred to work with several different groups that were politically active in lobbying, letter writing campaigns, gathering petitions, and speechmaking on behalf of women's suffrage. The Society finally affiliated with the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1887. On January 23, 1880, Wallace was one of several who testified before the U. S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary on women's right to vote. As she explained in her address, "You must admit that in popular government the ballot is the most potent means of all moral and social reforms." In 1881 Wallace was among those who lobbied the Indiana General Assembly to approve a woman's suffrage amendment to the state's constitution. At the next legislative session in 1883, the Indiana House of Representatives approved the woman suffrage resolution by a 53 to 42 vote, but the Indiana Senate refused to act on it. The Indiana legislature took no further action on woman suffrage until 1920, when it ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Lew Wallace memorialized his stepmother as "Mother Wallace, the sweet tongued apostle of temperance and reform."