Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/619

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History of Woman Suffrage.

of the business (by himself!) from the pulpit. At a later meeting a vote on reconsideration was reached, and enough of the male adult minority were in attendance to make the vote stand 19 to 17, not two-thirds of the male adult element voting for reconsideration.

The contention now became bitter, and twenty-eight of the more intelligent and earnest members withdrew and asked for letters to other churches. Such of the "adult males" as "tarried by the altar," refused to give the outgoing members the usual letters, to join in a mutual council on an equal footing, or to discipline the seceders. The latter called an ex-parte council, composed of such men as Dr. Bascom, of Princeton; Dr. Edward Beecher, of Galesburg; Dr. Haven, of Evanston; Dr. C. D. Helmer, of Chicago, and others. This council gave the desired letters, but advised reconciliation. Among the seceders, Mrs. Huldah Joy, an educated, and intensely religious woman, was one of the most active and earnest, her husband, F. R. Joy, and her daughters, also doing good service. Mrs. H. E. Sunderland,[1] another woman of culture, and Mrs. Mary Ann Cone and Mrs. S. R. Murray were faithful, brave and earnest. The church, which previous to the secession, was strong and flourishing, became an inharmonious organization, and has never rallied from the effects of that unjust action.

At a meeting held in Chicago, in the autumn of 1868, a resolution was offered to the effect that "a State association be formed, having for its object the advocacy of universal suffrage." Among the many interesting facts connected with the "rise and progress" of the equal-rights movement is the large number of representative men and women who have from the first been identified with it.[2] t January 25, 1860 we find among the most progressive utterances from the pulpit, a sermon by the Rev. Sumner Ellis of Chicago, while Rev. Charles Fowler and Dr. H. W. Thomas were ever fearless and earnest in their advocacy of this measure. In February, 1869, the Legal News said:

———

  1. Mrs. Sunderland was one of the many New England girls who in the early days went West to teach. Speaking of the large number of women elected to the office of county superintendent (one of them her own daughter), she told me that thirty years ago when she arrived at the settlement where she had been engaged as teacher, the trustees being unable to make the "examination" deputed one of their number to take her to an adjoining county, where another New England girl was teaching. The excursion was made in a lumber wagon with an ox-team. All the ordinary questions asked and promptly answered, the trustee rather hesitatingly said, "Now, while you're about it, wouldn't you just as lief write out the certificate?" This was readily done, and the man affixing his cross thereto, triumphantly carried the applicant back to his district, announcing her duly qualified to teach; and that trio of unlettered men installed the cultivated New England girl in their log school-house, probably without the thought entering the heads of trustees or teacher, that woman, when better educated, should hold the superior position.—[S. B. A.
  2. Dr. Mary Safford, Mrs. A. M. Freeman, Hon. and Mrs. Sharon Tyndale, Hon. E. Haines, Fernando Jones, Jane Graham Jones, Professor Bailey, Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Prince, Mr. and Mrs. R. M. Fell, Mrs. Belle S. Candee, General J. M. Thompson, Mrs. Professor Noyes of Evanston, Charles B, Waite, Catharine V. Waite, Susan Bronson, E. S. Williams, Kate N. Doggett, C. B. Farwell, L. Z. Leiter, J. L. Pickard, Henry M. Smith, Frank Gilbert, Ann Telford, Mrs. L. C. Levanway, Myra Bradwell, Mary E. Haven, Mrs. A. L. Taylor, Elizabeth Eggleston, P. D. Livermore, James B. Bradwell, Joseph Haven, J. H. Bayliss, D. Blakely, R. E. Hoyt, C. D. Helmer, Alfred L. Sewell, George D. Willigton, H. Allen, R. N. Foster, W. W. Smith, M. B. Smith, Amos G. Throop, Robert Collyer, L. I. Colburn, G. Percy English, Arthur Edwards, A. Reed and Sons, S. M. Booth, Sumner Ellis, George B. Marsh, Sarah Marsh, Ruth Graham, John Nutt, J. W. Butler, Mrs. J, Butler, Mrs. S. A. Richards, Mrs. S. W. Roe, F. W. Hall, Mrs. Fanny Blake, Mary S. Waite, J. F, Temple, A. W. Kellogg, W. H. Thomson, J. W. Loomis, James E. Curtis, Elizabeth Johnston, E. F. Hurlbut, E. E. Pratt, Mrs. E. M. Warren, William Doggett, Edward Beecher, James P. Weston, E. R. Allen, J. E. Forrester, Mrs. J. F. Temple, Mrs. F. W. Adams, L. Walker, Mary A. Whitaker, Elvira W. Ruggles, W. W. Corbett, H. B. Norton, W. H. Davis, I. S. Dennis, G, T. Flanders, Mrs. H. B. Manford, Edward Eggleston, Sarah G. Cleveland, G. G. Lyon, E. Manford, William D. Babbitt, Elizabeth Holt Babbitt, I. S. Page, W. O. Carpenter, Mrs, W. O. Carpenter, Mrs. H. W. Cobb, T. D. Fitch, Harriet Fitch, Mary A. Livermore, T. W. Eddy, A. G. Brackett, Andrew Shuman, John A. Jameson, John V. Farwell, B. W. Raymond, E. G. Taylor, Mems Root and lady, Rev. John McLean, Mrs. Owen Lovejoy, Mrs. Noyes Kendall.