STATE SUFFRAGE SOCIETY.
The first Iowa Woman’s State Suffrage Society was organized at Mount Pleasant, in 1870. Mrs. Bloomer was present at this gathering of the earnest workers of the state and took an active part in their proceedings. Hon. Henry O’Conner, then attorney-general of the state, was made its first president, and Mrs. Bloomer its first vice-president. On her way home, she stopped over at Des Moines, with Mrs. Anna Savary and with Mrs. H. B. Cutler; addressed in the afternoon a large Temperance gathering on the capitol grounds, and in the evening both ladies spoke on woman’s enfranchisement in the Baptist church. The first annual meeting of the society was held in Des Moines in October, 1871. Mrs. Bloomer presided and was chosen president; she attended its annual meetings in subsequent years so long as she had the strength to do so. She was for years in constant correspondence with its members, and whenever the question of woman suffrage was before the general assembly she did not fail, by petition and otherwise, to do all in her power to promote its success. In 1875 she was an inmate of the Cleveland Sanitorium, and while there delivered to the inmates an address on the subject in which she was so deeply interested. In 1867 she made a long and wearisome journey, while in very poor health, to the city of New York to attend the meeting of the Woman-Suffrage Association, and was elected one of its vice-presidents, a position she continued to hold so long as she lived. She was an interested listener to the proceedings of the Woman’s Council held in Des Moines in 1883, but took no part in them further than a very short address.