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Mrs. Orpha Gatch (1892 ~ 1991)
was an active suffragette who voted in the election of 1920 for Warren
Harding. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
which provided women with the right to vote was ratified on August
26, 1920. After growing up in Buffalo, New York, she attended Smith
College. After graduation she maintained close ties with the Smith
College and she served as class secretary at the time of her death.
While teaching at the Park School in Buffalo, she volunteered for
service in the American Red Cross during World War I. As part of this
service she was sent to France in 1918. While in Bourge, she met
John N. Gatch of Terrace Park, who was serving as a Second Lieutenant
in the infantry. They married in early 1919 in St. Nazaire, France,
and then moved to Terrace Park.
Mrs. Gatch was the first woman elected to the Milford School Board
(1920 ~ 1931), and she was President of the PTA in the 1930s. In
1927, Mr. And Mrs. Gatch moved to the family farm stone house on
Garfield Avenue in Milford, where they raised seven children. In
1958, Mrs. Gatch helped create the Clermont County
League of Women Voters. Mrs. Gatch was a member of the Milford United
Methodist Church where, over the years she sang in the choir, taught
Sunday School and headed the Women's Society. Mr. Gatch died in
1966. Mrs. Gatch was an active member of the Smith Club of
Cincinnati, the Milford Historical Society, the Patterson Library, and
the Cincinnati Nature Center. She was a lifelong supporter of the
Cincinnati Symphony, The Cincinnati Opera, and the Cincinnati Art
Museum. At age 78, Mrs. Gatch marched in the 1970 Frontier Days
Parade in Milford dressed as a suffragette carrying a sign "Fifty
Years of a Good Idea."
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