on the subject, a movement was made towards making women "eligible to serve as members of school-committees."
The petitions for woman's rights were usually circulated by women going from house to house. They did the drudgery, endured the hardships and suffered the humiliations attendant upon the early history of our cause; but their names are forgotten, and others reap the benefit of their labors. These women were so modest and so anxious for the success of their petitions, that they never put their own names at the head of the list, preferring the signature of some leading man, so that others seeing his name, might be induced to follow his example. Among the earliest of these silent workers was Mary Upton Ferrin. Her petitions were for a change in the laws concerning the property rights of married women, and for the political and legal rights of all women. In 1849 she prepared a memorial to the Massachusetts legislature in which are embodied many of the demands for woman's equality before the law, which have so often been made to that body since that time.[1]
In 1861 the legislature debated a bill to allow a widow, "if she have woodland as a part of her dower, the privilege of cutting wood enough for one fire." This bill failed, and the widow, by law, was not allowed to keep herself warm with fuel from her own wood-lot. In 1863 a bill providing that "a wife may be allowed to be a witness and proceed against her husband for desertion," was reported inexpedient, and a bill was passed to prevent women from forming copartnerships in business. In 1865, Gov. John A. Andrew, seeing the magnitude of the approaching woman question, in his annual message to the legislature, made a memorable suggestion:
I know of no more useful object to which the commonwealth can lend its aid, than that of a movement, adopted in a practical way, to open the door of emigration to young women who are wanted for teachers and for every appropriate, as well as domestic, employment in the remote West, but who are leading anxious and aimless lives in New England.
By the "anxious and aimless" it was supposed the governor meant the widowed, single or otherwise unrepresented portion of
- ↑ This memorial was printed by order of the legislature (Leg. Doc. Ho. 57) and is called "Memorial of the Female Signers of the Several Petitions of Henry A. Hardy and Others," presented March 1, 1849. The document is not signed and Mrs. Ferrin's name is not found with it upon the records, neither does her name appear in the journal of the House in connection with any of the petitions and addresses she caused to be presented to the legislature of the State. But for the loyal friendship of the few who knew of her work and were willing to give her due credit, the name of Mary Upton Ferrin [see Vol. I., page 208] and the memory of her labors as well as those of many another silent worker, would have gone into the "great darkness."
