FINNIGAN, ANNETTE (1873–1940). Annette Finnigan, suffragist and
art patron, was born into the family of John Finnigan in West
Columbia, Texas, in 1873. When she was three years old her
family moved to Houston, where her father developed business and
real estate interests. She attended Houston public schools and
received a diploma from Tilden Seminary in West Lebanon, New
Hampshire. In 1889 she entered Wellesley College, Wellesley,
Massachusetts, where she developed skills in fine arts and
athletics and graduated in 1894. She then studied philosophy at
Columbia University and worked as an administrative assistant to
her father. She also began a long-term practice of travel in the
United States and abroad. By 1903 Annette Finnigan had returned
to Houston, where she collaborated with her sisters, Elizabeth
Finnigan and Katherine Finnigan Anderson, in launching equal-
suffrage leagues in Houston and Galveston-the first twentieth-
century woman suffrage efforts in Texas. In the next three years
the sisters organized