Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/46

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
16
HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

tions of taxation in Iowa, Montana, Louisiana and New York; full suffrage in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho—States containing more than a million inhabitants, with eight Senators and nine Representatives in Congress elected in part by the votes of women.

"We rejoice in important gains during the past year; the extension of suffrage upon questions of taxation to 200,000 women in the towns and villages of New York and to the tax-paying women of Norway; the voting of women for the first time for members of Parliament in West Australia; the almost unanimous refusal of the Kansas Legislature to repeal municipal woman suffrage and the acquittal in Denver of the only woman ever charged with fraudulent voting."

A tribute was paid to the tried and true friends of woman suffrage who had died during the year, many of them veterans in the cause: Sarah Anthony Burtis, aged 90, secretary of the first Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 when adjourned to Rochester, N. Y.; Charles K. Whipple, aged 91, for many years secretary of the Massachusetts and New England Woman Suffrage Associations; Zerelda G. Wallace of Indiana, the "mother" of "Ben Hur"; Paulina Gerry, the Rev. Cyrus Bartol, Carrie Anders, Dr. Salome Merritt, Matilda Goddard and Mary Shannon of Massachusetts; Mary J. Clay of Kentucky; Eliza J. Patrick of Missouri; Fanny C. Wooley and Nettie Laub Romans of Iowa; Eliza Scudder Fenton, the widow of New York's war governor; Charlotte A. Cleveland and Henry Villard of New York; John Hooker of Connecticut; Giles F. Stebbins and George Willard of Michigan; Ruth C. Dennison, D. C., Theron Nye of Nebraska; Elizabeth Coit of Ohio; Major Niles Meriwether of Tennessee; M. B. Castle of Illinois; John Bidwell of California; Wendell Phillips Garrison of New Jersey.

On the evening when Miss Anthony presided she introduced to the audience with tender words Mrs. Charlotte Pierce of Philadelphia, as one of the few left who attended the first Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848; Mrs, Eliza Wright Osborne of Auburn, N. Y., niece of Lucretia Mott and daughter of Martha Wright, two of the four women who called that convention; Miss Emily Howland, a devoted pioneer of