Nearly 100 years ago, more than 100 women marched in Boone to protest their inability to vote.

On Oct. 29, 1908, these women, including two women from England, walked down the streets of Boone, singing and protesting in what the Boone County Historical Society lauds as the first suffrage march in Iowa.

According to the informational packet about the event, not only was the Boone Suffrage parade the first of its kind in Iowa, it was also the only one ever held in the state.

During Saturday’s march, which featured nearly a hundred men and women in period clothing, a number of marchers re-enacted moments and characters from the first march.

Etta Berkowitz, of Des Moines, played Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, who spoke during the original march.

Berkowitz said she’d only agreed to play the role under the condition that she wouldn’t have to write her own speech.

“But as it turned out it was easy enough to find [a speech],” Berkowitz said. “We don’t know what she said on this street corner herself but the Boone newspaper had a quote from what she said at the convention and I used a big chunk of that and some things that she’d said in other speeches.”

Berkowitz said Shaw was a remarkable woman.

“She was the first woman to be ordained as a Methodist minister and one of the first women to go to medical school and be a doctor,” Berkowitz said.

When the parade paused at the corner of Eighth and Story Streets in Boone, Berkowitz stood on top of a car and spoke to the crowd that gathered in the intersection.

“What has made Iowa what it is today: the women,” she said. “ We are here today because women are still trying to persuade American men to believe in, and live up to the fundamental principles of democracy.”

Berkowitz said playing Shaw gave her new insight into the struggle that women had to go through in order to gain equal representation rights.

“It makes me newly appreciative of my right to vote and my obligation to vote,” Berkowitz said.

 Hanna McCubbin and Marjie Tometich, students at Boone High School, where the commemoration march began and ended, played the roles of two English women who joined in the original march.

Tometich said when she’d signed up to be part of the march she had no idea that she would be giving a large speech but that she’d enjoyed it.

Both McCubbin and Tometich said when they are old enough to vote, they will.

After their speeches, the parade participants marched back up Eighth Street to the high school where they gathered for a meal afterwards and explored information booths that were set up by the Boone Historical Society as well as the Iowa League of Women’s Voters, the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.