WASHINGTON - Which state first let women vote? Wyoming claims credit, but New Jersey deserves it.

Maybe.

New Jersey's first constitution, adopted amid the revolutionary spirit of 1776, gave voting rights to "all inhabitants of this Colony, of full age, who are worth 50 pounds proclamation money." That included some women, who voted in modest numbers until the state Legislature limited suffrage to men only in 1807.

It was not until 1869 that women were given the right to vote in the Wyoming Territory, which in 1890 became a state.

Wyoming proudly calls itself the "Equality State" and says on its Web page that women there were "the first in the nation to vote." But history shows that honor belongs in New Jersey.

"They were the 'Equality State' in the 19th century, but New Jersey women voted in the 18th century," noted Ferris Olin, head of the Margery Somers Foster Center at Rutgers University, who helped create a Web site for the Women's Project of New Jersey.

Delight Dodyk, president of the Women's Project and a student of women's suffrage, said New Jersey has a winning case. "At the time of the Declaration of Independence, New Jersey was the only new state to allow women the right to vote," said Dodyk, of Ridgewood.

But, as she is quick to point out, the story is more complicated.

While New Jersey's original constitution was not sexist on its face, it was hardly what one would now call democratic.

"It was an elitist thing," Dodyk said. "People with a certain amount of money could vote, while others could not."

Most women did not qualify. A woman's personal property became her husband's at the time they were married, Dodyk said, so only adult single women or widows could realistically have the 50 pounds of personal property that earned a vote.

Still, some women could vote, and did so mostly in municipal and county elections. And their rights were enshrined in a state election law passed in 1790 that referred to voters as "he" and "she."

"Initially there's no evidence that women used the vote in the early years, until about the 1790s," Dodyk said. "And then they started voting in certain elections. You find a woman's name or two on certain election lists in some towns. It was around the election of 1800, when there were some highly contested local issues, when women turned out in enough numbers to be visible."

That visibility prompted second thoughts among the men who ran the state. "There was some concern that during an election that was very close, women would stuff the ballot box by changing their clothing and then coming back to vote again," Olin said.

The dispute reached a head in an 1807 Essex County election to determine whether a new courthouse would be built in Elizabeth or Newark.

"Both sides exerted themselves to bring out the vote," said Richard P. McCormick, a retired Rutgers history professor who wrote a book on New Jersey election history. "They not only voted every male, but every female, and no doubt voted some people twice. This was a scandalous event, so the Legislature reconsidered the whole voting requirement."

In 1807, the Legislature limited voting to white men and removed the property requirement. The state's second constitution, adopted in 1844, enshrined the men-only voting rule.

New Jersey women could not vote again until the 19th amendment became law in 1920, granting suffrage to women nationwide.

So the question remains: Does New Jersey deserve to be known as the first state to let women vote?

No, says Phil Roberts, a professor of history at the University of Wyoming.

"New Jersey's claim is weak because the state granted very limited suffrage to women," Roberts said in an e-mail interview. "In the case of Wyoming, as the national press pointed out rather endlessly in 1869 when it was accomplished, the territorial legislature in its first session granted full suffrage to women and 'equal rights' in all legal matters. New Jersey's act was a half measure, at best."

But McCormick said technically speaking, New Jersey has a leg up.

"I would say that under the legislation of 1790, women were legally eligible to vote, and did," he said. "I mean, that's a fact."

To McCormick, a Piscataway resident whose son is president of Rutgers, the definitive step was the addition of the word "she" to state election law.

But he said there is no historical record of how or why that happened.

"There was no discussion in the press, either before or after, and there's nothing in the legislative minutes," he said. "The thing remains a mystery."