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Phoebe King Ensminger Burn (23 Nov 1873 — 18 Jun 1945)^[1] A Tennessee woman known as Miss Febb, Burn is notable for a letter she wrote to her son, Harry T. Burn, a legislator in the Tennessee House of Representatives, urging him to vote for ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. At the time of the Tennessee house vote, the Amendment needed ratification from one more state to pass. Burn's vote broke a tie in the House, removing the last obstacle to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Though he had been against woman suffrage, and was on the verge of voting against ratification, his mother's letter urged him to "be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification."^[2]He changed his vote, and by a one vote margin, on August 20, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to vote in favor of ratification.^[3] The 19th Amendment passed and women gained the right to vote.

At the time of the vote, Phoebe Burn lived in Mouse Creek (now Niota), Tennessee, and was running the family farm after her husband's death. Educated at U.S. Grant University (now Tennessee Wesleyan University)^[4], Burn was an avid reader of newspapers, magazines, and books, and she followed the suffrage movement closely.^[5]

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