Published January 10, 2026
By Joseph Newkirk
Three major social forces converged in late 19th century America: the Victorian Era with its rigid conformity and moral strictures; the Gilded Age with immense disparities between wealth and poverty; and Charles Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species and Descent of Man, which thrust the theory of evolution into national discourse. Out of this tumultuous time, the Freethought Movement emerged, a rebellion against blind allegiance to religious doctrine, authoritarian control, and the oligarchy of the rich and powerful. Freethinker Robert Ingersoll, known as “The Great Agnostic” for denying Biblical authority and heralding reason, spoke several times to enthusiastic audiences in Quincy. Many people began reexamining themselves and society and seeking answers based on evidence rather than dogma. Some left organized religions.
Martha “Etta” Donaldson was born in Quincy in 1855 and raised in Adams County until adulthood. She was the youngest of Joseph and Elizabeth Donaldson’s six children in a strict Methodist farm family. From an early age, she witnessed the hypocrisy of “loving” religions that threaten Hell to coerce submission to doctrine. Etta attended rural schools and, as with many young women, began teaching in a one-room school at age 16. Despite her father’s objections, she became engaged to a railroad worker at 19. Just before their marriage, her fiancée was killed in a rail accident.
Realizing the obstacles facing single women, she soon married Charles Kilmer and moved to Audrain County, Missouri. There she began an unhappy marriage that three years later left her divorced and with two children. She had, though, found her calling in the Freethought Movement. At a Freethought meeting, she met and later married Matthew Semple, a like-minded man, and they moved to Ottawa, Kansas. There she began a long career with the Freethought Movement.
While raising another child with her new husband, she wrote, edited and published the Freethought Ideal newspaper in her home’s parlor. Her paper’s motto was “Justice For All.” And while she advocated for strong labor unions and the rights of workers, she opposed the violence unleashed in Chicago’s 1886 Haymakers Riot. She walked arm-in-arm with temperance leader Carrie Nation at a Kansas Freethought Convention but disliked her hatchet-wielding tactics. Weekly editions contained articles on socialism, women’s suffrage, anti-imperialism and, most prominently, separation of church and state.
A bill in the United States Congress sponsored by the National Reform Association intended to usurp the First Amendment and make the United States a Christian theocracy. When the Reform Association cited the Bible as justifying this legislation, Semple added a “Women in the Bible” column to her paper. This featured portrayals of brutalized and belittled women in this supposedly “sacred” work. “If Heaven is composed of such hatred,” she wrote, “I don’t want to go there. Hell is more preferable.” She exhorted readers to stop wishing for happiness in an afterlife and live fully NOW.
Semple called herself an “atheist” but thought that the historical Jesus lived nobly. Hypocritical Christians, though, are “little better than a procurer or whorehouse madam…Jesus would not be the Prince of Peace while his followers carry a sword.” Freethinking “strives to do away with selfishness, envy, malice, gossip, jealousy, and back biting.” Perhaps her most contentious issue had the front-page headline: “A reward of $1,000 will be given the man, woman, or child, who will furnish positive proof of a God, the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ as a savior, the soul, the devil, Heaven or Hell, or the Truth of the Bible.”
Semple called for women’s suffrage. And with her endorsement Susanna Salter became the first female mayor in the United States in 1887 in Argonia, Kansas. The Kansas Freethought Association elected Semple as its first president and she served for six terms. She also ran for several local offices in Ottawa and was the first woman elected to the Kansas State Congressional Convention. The Socialist Labor Party invited her to an American Secular Union meeting in Cincinnati, where she spoke and was chosen vice-president.
Child labor and abhorrent conditions found in many factories and sweat shops owned by greedy owners only interested in reaping exorbitant profits repulsed her. When asked what she thought of the Christ-child, she replied, “If he were born today, he would be named ‘Astor’”—referring to John Jacob Astor, one of the Gilded Age’s “robber barons.” She also expressed her social views in two novels: Society and The Strike. The Quincy Daily Herald noted this native-born daughter’s works and her prominence in contemporary American life.
Perhaps her most contentious view was “free love.” She did not mean “free lust” but rather that husband and wife remain equal partners and make decisions together, especially about having a child. Also, in this era before the availability of birth control, she upheld a woman’s right of “voluntary motherhood. Some groups threatened her with the 1873 Comstock Act that banned the distribution of pornography and birth control information.
While admirers saw her as a social trailblazer and citizen-watchdog, Semple’s controversial stances, especially against sacrosanct Biblical authority, increased public hostility. Many people called her “Ottawa’s Infidel.” Readership declined at the same time her husband became seriously ill. In 1901, she sold her newspaper and soon opened a “Natural Cure Sanitarium” in Ottawa. Instead of traditional medicine, she provided herbal treatments, healthy food, fresh air, rest and gentle exercise to everyone regardless of religion, race, gender, ethnicity, or ability to pay. The sick flocked to her place of healing. The Sanitarium continued service for 22 years.
When Etta Semple died in 1914, the local Ottawa Daily Herald reported that she had the largest funeral in the town’s history. Kansas Congressman Charles Curtis delivered the eulogy and condolences poured in from across the country. Rather than traditional hymns, she chose the song “Spreading Seeds of Kindness” for her memorial service. A fitting epitaph for her valiant effort in the Freethought Movement to create a more just society.
Joseph Newkirk is a local writer and photographer whose work has been widely published as a contributor to literary magazines, as a correspondent for Catholic Times, and for the past 23 years as a writer for the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project. He is a member of the reorganized Quincy Bicycle Club and has logged more than 10,000 miles on bicycles in his life.
Sources:
Evening Herald. Ottawa, KS, April 13, 1914, 3.
Freethought Ideal. Ottawa, KS, June 1, 1899, 5-6.
Freethought Ideal, Ottawa, KS, Dec. 15, 1898, 3.
Freethought Ideal. Ottawa, KS, June 15, 1899, 1-2.
Freethought Ideal. Ottawa, KS, July 15, 1900, 4.
Freethought Ideal and Vindicator. Ottawa, KS, May 18, 1901, 6.
Freethought Ideal and Vindicator. Ottawa, KS, Nov. 2, 1901, 4.
Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Women, Church and State. Aberdeen, SD: Pine Hill Crest Press, 1998, 330-31.
Gayor, Annie Laurie. “Etta Semple.” Freedom from Religion Foundation, September 1980. www.ffrf.org
“Some of the Sayings of Robert Ingersoll.” Quincy Morning Whig, July 23, 1899, 4.
Stangl, Vickie Sandell. Etta Semple: Kansas Freethinker and “Ideal’ Woman. USA: Adriel Publishing, 2015.
“Still Another Ticket.” The Quincy Journal. Sept. 13, 1894, 1.
