Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/589

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of obtaining and maintaining equal political rights for Wyoming women, and to her, perhaps more than to any other individual, is due the fact that the women of Wyoming have to-day the right of suffrage. In 1869 the first legislature of Wyoming Territory granted to women the right to vote. The movement was an experimental one, and few expected that the women of the Territory would avail themselves of the privileges granted by the law. That the movement was a success and became a permanent feature of Wyoming's political history was due to the dignified and wise use of its privileges by the educated and cultured women of the Territory. Without lessening the respect in which they were held, Mrs. Post and other prominent women quietly assumed their political privileges and duties. Mrs. Post was for four years a member of the Territorial Central Committee of the Republican party. Several times she served on juries, and she was foreman of a jury composed of six men and six women, before which the first legal conviction for murder was had in the Territory. In 1871 she was a delegate to the Woman's National Convention in Washington, D. C, and before an audience of five-thousand people in Lincoln Hall she told of woman's emancipation in Wyoming. In the fall of 1871 the Wyoming legislature repealed the act granting suffrage to women. Mrs. Post, by a personal appeal to Governor Campbell, induced him to veto the bill. To Mrs. Post he said: "I came here opposed to woman suffrage, but the eagerness and fidelity with which you and your friends have performed political duties, when called upon to act, has convinced me that you deserve to enjoy those rights." A determined effort was made to pass the bill over the governor's veto. A canvass of the members had shown that the necessary two-thirds majority would probably be secured, though by the narrow margin of one vote. With political sagacity equal to that of any man, Mrs. Post decided to secure that one vote. By an earnest appeal to one of the best educated members, she won him to its support, and, upon the final ballot being taken upon the proposal to pass the bill over the governor's veto, that man. Senator Foster, voted "No," and woman suffrage became a permanency in Wyoming. From 1880 until 1884 Mrs. Post, whose husband was delegate to Congress from Wyoming during that time, resided in Washington, D. C. By her social tact and sterling womanly qualities she made many friends for the cause of woman suffrage among those who were inclined to believe that only the forward or immodest of the sex desired suffrage. For the past twenty years she has been a vice-president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1890, after equal rights to Wyoming women had been secured irrevocably by the constitution adopted by the people of the new State. Mrs. Post was made president of the committees having in charge the statehood celebration. On that occasion a copy of the State constitution was presented to the women of the State by Judge M. C. Brown, who had been president of the constitutional convention which adopted it. Mrs. Post received the book on behalf of the women of the State.


POST, Mrs. Caroline Lathrop, poet and author, born in Ashford, Conn., in 1824. Her ancestry runs back to the New England Puritans. In her youth her family removed to Hartford, Conn. After her marriage she lived for some years in Pittsfield, Mass., after which she lived in Springfield, Ill., for twenty-five years. In that town she did the greater and the better part of her work. CAROLINE LATHROP POST. She has written verse since her childhood days. At the age of seven years she was a rhymer, and at the age of twelve she was the possessor of a mass of manuscript of her own making. She had concealed her practice of rhyming and was so mortified, when her older sister discovered her work, that she thrust her productions into the fire. She continued to write verses all through her school-days, and in 1846 her poems were being published in the "Sunday Magazine," the "Advance," the "Golden Rule," "Life and Light," the "Floral World " and many other periodicals. She has written in prose a series of leaflets for the Woman's Board of Missions. She has been an unobtrusive and diligent worker in various lines. Her husband, C. R. Post, to whom she was married in 1862, was a business man in Springfield. He has encouraged her in all her good works. They have three sons, two of whom are engaged in business in Fort Worth, Tex., where Mrs. Post now makes her home. She has of late years done some writing, but she no longer wields her pen regularly.


SARAH E. POST. POST, Miss Sarah E., physician, born in Cambria, Wis., and November, 1853. She studied in the Milwaukee schools and was graduated from the high school in that city in 1874. She then entered the training school for nurses connected with Bellevue Hospital, in New York City, from which she was graduated in 1876, later becoming a student in the Woman's Medical College, New York Infirmary, from which she was graduated in 1882. Dr. Post has practiced in medicine in New York City, has been represented in medical literature, and in 1885 founded "The Nightingale." the first paper in the world published exclusively in the interests of nursing.


POTTER, Mrs. Cora Urquhart, actor, was born in New Orleans, La. Her maiden name was Cora Urquhart. Her father was a wealthy cotton-planter, and Cora in childhood lived a life of the typical southern kind, surrounded by wealth and refined associates. In her school-days she