By the time Wyoming petitioned to become a state, its residents had gotten good press from their support of woman suffrage. Women's rights organizations in other western states looked to Wyoming as a model. Women had held office in a range of capacities. In 1880, Susan Johnson was appointed postmistress in Cheyenne and Mary Bellamy became the first woman to serve in a state legislature. Wyoming women exercised their right to vote: in the 1880s nearly 90% of Wyoming women voted. Women like Esther Hobart Morris, Amalia Post and Theresa Jenkins who worked hard in Wyoming and at national suffrage meetings to ensure woman's suffrage would remain the law.By 1890, when Wyoming had enough population to become a state, Wyoming residents petitioned Congress with a constitution that included suffrage for women. However, the U.S. Congress pushed back. The Wyoming delegation present in D.C. telegraphed the territorial legislature that woman suffrage had become an obstacle delaying their statehood application. The legislature, via a telegram from Joseph M. Carey (who later became governor of Wyoming), replied "We will stay out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without our women." With a very close vote of 139 to 127, Wyoming Territory was granted admission as a state with suffrage for women. Utah Territory had petitioned for statehood with women's suffrage several times earlier, but its statehood had been denied and women's suffrage had been revoked in 1887. In the end, when Wyoming became the 44th state it was the very first state to achieve suffrage. Several western states quickly followed Wyoming's lead.