CHAPTER LXVIII.
VIRGINIA.
As early as 1870 and 1871 Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage of New York and Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis of Rhode Island lectured on woman suffrage in Richmond. There has been, however, very little organized effort in its behalf, although the movement has many individual advocates. Since 1880 the State has been represented at the national conventions by Mrs. Orra Langhorne, who has been its most active worker for twenty years. Other names which appear at intervals are Miss Etta Grimes Farrar, Miss Brill and Miss Henderson Dangerfield. A few local societies have been formed, and in 1893 a State Association was organized, with Mrs. Langhorne as president and Mrs. Elizabeth B. Dodge as secretary and treasurer. Its efforts have been confined chiefly to discovering the friends of the movement, distributing literature and securing favorable matter in the newspapers. The Richmond Star is especially mentioned as a champion of the enfranchisement of women. In 1895 Miss Anthony, president of the National Association, on her way home from its convention in Atlanta, addressed a large audience at the opera house in Culpeper. Later this year Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine spoke in the same place. Mrs. Ruth D. Havens of Washington, D. C, lectured on The Girls of the Future before the State Teachers' Normal Institute.
Legislative Action And Laws: Petitions have been sent to the Legislature from time to time, by the State association and by individuals for woman suffrage with educational qualifications, the opening of State colleges to women, the appointment of women physicians in the prisons and insane asylums, women on school boards, proper accommodations in jails for women prisoners and the separation of juvenile offenders from the old and hardened. None of these ever has been acted upon.
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