Three thousand people were in attendance, and it was altogether an enthusiastic occasion and one long to be remembered.
The record of conventions and meetings held by the Massachusetts Association by no means includes all such gatherings held in different towns and cities of the State. The county and local societies have done a vast amount of work. The Hampden society was started in 1868, with Eliphalet Trask, Frank B. Sanborn and Margaret W. Campbell as leading officers. This was the first county society formed in the State. Julia Ward Howe, a fresh convert of the recent convention went to Salem to lecture on woman suffrage, and the Essex county society was formed with Mrs. Sarah G. Wilkins and Mrs. Delight R. P. Hewitt—the only two Salem women who went to the 1850 convention at Worcester—on its executive board. The Middlesex county society followed, planned by Ada C. Bowles and officered by names well known in that historic old county. The Hampshire and Worcester societies brought up the rear; the former planned by Seth Hunt of Northampton. Notable conventions were held by the Middlesex society in 1876—one in Malden, one in Melrose and one in Concord, organized and conducted by its president, Harriet H. Robinson. This last celebrated town had never before been so favored. These meetings were conducted something after the style of local church conferences. They were well advertised, and many people came. A collation was provided by the ladies of each town, and the feast of reason was so judiciously mingled with the triumphs of cookery, that converts to the cause were never so easily won. Many women present said to the president: "I never before heard a woman's rights speech. If these are the reasons why women should vote, I believe in voting."
The Concord convention was held about a month after the great centennial celebration of April 19, 1875—a celebration in which no woman belonging to that town took any official part. Nor was there any place of honor found for the more distinguished women who had come long distances to share in the festivities. Some of the women were descendents of Governor John Hancock, Dr. Samuel Prescott, Major John Buttrick, Rev. William Emerson and Lieutenant Emerson Cogswell. Though no seat of honor in the big tent in which the speeches were made was given to the women of to-day, silent memorials of those who had taken part in the events of one hundred years ago, had found
