In 1867, territorial voting laws said that "all white American citizens twenty-one years of age" had the right to vote. Because it didn’t specify gender, this law became the rallying point for women in Washington who demanded the vote. These women, known as "suffragists," also cited the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that defined citizens as "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." Together, they said, these laws gave women the right to vote.

In 1869, White River suffragist Mary Olney Brown determined to test her rights. When she announced her intentions to vote, many tried to convince her to stay home. Brown went to the polls anyway accompanied by her husband, daughter, and son-in-law. When opposed, Brown argued that she was a citizen and, as such, should be accorded the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Although Brown and her daughter presented their ballots, election judges were afraid that their votes would sully the precinct’s returns and refused to accept them.

Undaunted, Brown launched her own suffrage campaign the next year, writing several newspaper editorials urging women to vote. By 1870, she was living in Olympia and her sister, Charlotte Olney French, was living in nearby Grand Mound. With other women in the area, the sisters planned a picnic dinner at the schoolhouse at Goodell’s Point, where the June 6, 1870, election was scheduled to take place. French, like her sister, was a suffragist and spoke at the gathering. After the picnic, the women, seven in all, handed in their ballots. One woman’s husband was an election inspector, which may have influenced the eligibility of the women to vote.

Women at nearby Black River (present-day Littlerock) also awaited their turn. They stationed a man on a "fleet horse" at the Grand Mound precinct to report whether the women there had been allowed to vote. The man arrived at the polling place, waved his hat, and yelled, "They’re voting! They’re voting!" Eight Black River women immediately cast their ballots. While the southern Thurston County women were successful, a small Olympia delegation was not. When Brown and two women presented ballots at the Olympia courthouse, they were rejected.] On a positive note, however, The Olympia Transcript verified that the fifteen votes cast by women from Grand Mound and Black River had been included in the election results.

Although the votes of the Thurston County women were not permanent strides toward Washington suffrage, they were significant stepping-stones in the history of the movement. Mary Olney Brown lived to see women win the right to vote in Washington Territory in 1883, although that right was taken away by the Territorial Supreme Court in 1888 not long after her death in 1886. Women of Washington did not permanently regain the right to vote until 1910.