Minnie Kraus was a young woman who made a real estate investment in northeast Seattle in 1918, filing a plat which she named after herself. A “plat” is a section of land, any size, for which a map of streets and house lots is laid out.
Minnie Kraus portrait in the Broadway High School yearbook of 1911.
Minnie was 24 years old in that year of 1918 and she was in the first generation of young women in Washington State who could vote in elections, as of 1910. “Universal womens suffrage” finally came throughout the USA on August 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. This changed the Constitution to guarantee all women across the USA the right to vote. Most American women voted for the first time in the presidential election of 1920.
During her lifetime Minnie experienced extremes in society’s expectations and demands of women. During war years it was thought to be OK for women to take up jobs in the absence of men who had gone into the military. During times of economic depression such as the 1930s, some women were laid off because Washington State employment policy favored male heads of households; it was thought that married women should keep house and let men be wage earners.
As of 1918 when she filed a plat of land for income from real estate, Minnie was part of a movement to show that women were not weak or fragile, arguments which had been used by people opposed to granting voting rights for women. Minnie fit the profile of the “new American woman” who was well-educated and independent. Minnie worked at a job outside the home and she even drove a car.
Minnie’s two sisters never married and they became teachers, a traditional job for women, but Minnie followed a nontraditional path of continuing to work at an office job and real estate sales even after she got married. Perhaps Minnie named her land investment after herself to show that she stood behind her sales, that the opportunity to buy house lots in her plat was a good investment.
Wedgwood in Seattle History 