We never organized a woman suffrage society, although our literary club has done much for the cause in a general way. We had crowded houses on the occasions of a very able speech from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a most spirited one from Miss Phœbe Couzins. For the past eight years a dozen tax-paying women of this town have availed themselves of the privilege granted them years ago, and voted at the school meetings; and two years ago a woman was elected member of the school-board.
Lansing reports for January, 1871, Mrs. Livermore's lecture on "The Reasons Why" [women should be enfranchised]; the organization of a city society with sixty members at the close of the annual meeting of the State Association held in that city in March; a lecture from Mrs. Stanton before the Young Men's Association; the adoption of a declaration of rights by the Ingham County Society, March, 1872, signed by 169 of the best people of the county. In 1874, of the many meetings held those of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Couzins are specially mentioned.
The St. Johns society, formed in 1872 with six members, reported sixty at the State annual meeting of 1874, and also $171.71, raised by fees and sociables, mainly expended in the circulation of tracts and documents throughout the county.
In the campaign of 1874 Hon. S. W. Fowler, one of the committee for Northern Michigan appointed by the State Society, canvassed Manistee county and advocated the cause through his paper, the Times and Standard. The election showed the good of educational work, as a large vote was polled in the towns canvassed by Mr. Fowler, two of them giving a majority for the amendment. In an editorial, after the election, Mr. Fowler said: "The combined forces of ignorance, vice and prejudice have blocked the wheels of advancing civilization, and Michigan, once the proudest of the sisterhood of States, has lost the opportunity of inaugurating a reform; now let the women organize for a final onset." However, no active suffrage work was done until December 3, 1879, when Susan B. Anthony was induced to stop over on her way from Frankfort to Ludington and give her lecture, "Woman Wants Bread; Not the Ballot." She was our guest, and urged the formation of a society, and through her influence a "Woman's Department" was added to the Times and Standard, which is still a feature of the paper. In the following spring (April, 1880), Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave her lecture, "Our Girls," with two "conversations," before the temperance women and others, which revived the courage of the few who had been considering the question of organization. A call was issued, to which twenty-three responded, and the society was formed June 8, 1880,[321] adopting the constitution of the National and electing delegates to attend a convention to be held under the auspices of that association the following week at Grand Rapids. The society at once made a thorough canvass of the city, which resulted in the attendance of seventy tax-paying women at the school election in September, when the first woman's vote was cast in Manistee county. Each succeeding year has witnessed more women at the school election, until, in 1883, they outnumbered the men, and would have elected their ticket but for a fraud perpetrated by the old school-board, which made the election void.
In August 1881, Mrs. May Wright Sewall delivered two lectures in Manistee. In February 1882, a social, celebrating Miss Anthony's birthday, was given by the association at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Fowler, and was voted a success. Through the untiring efforts of Mrs. Lucy T. Stansell, who was also a member of the Ladies' Lever League, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert gave a Manistee audience a rich treat in her "Homes of Representative Women," and her conversation on suffrage elicited much interest.
During the autumn of 1882, petitions asking for municipal suffrage were circulated. The venerable Josiah R. Holden of Grand Rapids, father of Mrs. Fowler, then in his 88th year, obtained the largest number of signatures to his petition of any one in the State. A bill granting municipal suffrage to women was drawn by Mrs. Fowler, introduced in the legislature by Hon. George J. Robinson, and afterwards tabled. At the session of 1885 a similar bill came within a few votes of being carried.
In Grand Rapids there was no revival of systematic work until 1880, when the National Association held a very successful two days' convention in the city. In response to a petition from the society, the legislature in the winter of 1885 passed a law, giving to the tax-paying women of the city the right to vote on school questions at the charter elections. At the first meeting a hundred women were present, and hundreds availed themselves of their new power and voted at the first election.
"Dear Friends: More than a hundred New Years have I seen before this one, and I send a New Year's greeting to one and all. We talk of a beginning, but there is no beginning but the beginning of a wrong. All else is from God, and is from everlasting to everlasting. All that has a beginning will have an ending. God is without end, and all that is good is without end. We shall never see God, only as we see him in one another. He is a great ocean of love, and we live and move in Him as the fishes in the sea, filled with His love and spirit, and His throne is in the hearts of His people. Jesus, the Son of God, will be as we are, if we are pure, and we will be like him. There will be no distinction. He will be like the sun and shine upon us, and we will be like the sun and shine upon him; all filled with glory. We are the children of one Father, and he is God; and Jesus will be one among us. God is no respecter of persons, and we will be as one. If it were not so, there would be jealousy. These ideas have come to me since I was a hundred years old, and if you, my friends, live to be a hundred years old, too, you may have greater ideas than these. This has become a new world. These thoughts I speak of because they come to me, and for you to consider and look at. We should grow in wisdom as we grow older, and new ideas will come to us about God and ourselves, and we will get more and more the wisdom of God. I am glad to be remembered by you, and to be able to send my thoughts; hoping they may multiply and bear fruit. If I should live to see another New Year's Day I hope to be able to send more new thoughts.
Sojourner Truth.
"Grand Rapids, Mich., Dec. 26, 1880."
Mrs. Laura C. Haviland is another noble woman worthy of mention. She has given a busy life to mitigating the miseries of the unfortunate. She helped many a fugitive to elude the kidnappers; she nursed the suffering soldiers, fed the starving freedmen, following them into Kansas,[324] and traveled thousands of miles with orphan children to find them places in western homes. She and her husband at an early day opened a manual-labor school, beginning by taking nine children from the county-house, to educate them with their own on a farm near Adrian. Out of her repeated experiments, and petitions to the legislature for State aid, grew at last the State school for homeless children at Coldwater, where for years she gave her services to train girls in various industries.
Mrs. Sybil Lawrence, a woman of strong character, and charming social qualities, exerted a powerful influence for many years in Ann Arbor. Being in sympathy with the suffrage movement, and in favor of coëducation, she did all in her power to make the experiment a success, by her aid and counsels to the girls who first entered the University. Her mother, sister, and nieces made a charming household of earnest women ready for every good work. Their services in the war were indispensable, and their sympathies during the trying period of reconstruction were all on the side of liberty and justice.
FOOTNOTES:
[305] Having made many lyceum trips through Michigan, I have had several opportunities of meeting Mrs. Stone in her own quiet home, and I can readily understand the wide influence she exerted on the women of that State, and what a benediction her presence must have been in all the reform associations in which she took an active part. I always felt that Michigan would be a grand State in which to make the experiment of woman suffrage, especially as in Mrs. Stone we had an enthusiastic coädjutor. In paying this well-deserved tribute to Mrs. Stone, I must not forget to mention that Mrs. Janney of Flint, a woman of great executive ability, started the first woman's reading-room and library many years ago.—[E. C. S.
[306] A sketch of this brilliant Polish woman, who has taken such an active part in the woman suffrage movement, both in this country and England, will be found in Volume I., page [95].
[307] The speakers at the Battle Creek convention were Miriam M. Cole, editor of The Woman's Advocate, Dayton, Ohio; Mary A. Livermore, editor Woman's Journal, Boston; Hannah Tracy Cutler, Illinois; Rev. J. M. McCarthy, Saginaw; Mrs. J. C. Dexter, Ionia; Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Lucinda H. Stone, Kalamazoo; Adelle Hazlett, Hillsdale; Rev. J. S. Loveland, D. M. Fox, Battle Creek; Mary T. Lathrop, Jackson. Letters of sympathy were received from B. F. Cocker and Moses Coit Tyler, professors of the Michigan State University. The officers of the State association were: President, Professor Moses Coit Tyler, Ann Arbor; Vice-President, Lucinda H. Stone; Recording Secretary, Mary T. Lathrop; Corresponding Secretary, Euphemia Cochran, Detroit; Treasurer, Colin Campbell, Detroit; Executive Committee, Dr. S. B. Thayer, Frances W. Titus, Battle Creek; Eliza Burt Gamble, East Saginaw; Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Detroit; Hon. J. G. Wait, Sturgis; Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Kalamazoo; Mrs. L. H. T. Dexter, Ionia.
[308] The speakers at the Northwestern convention were Mrs. Hazlett, the president; Hon. C. B. Waite, Professor D. C. Brooks, Chicago; Susan B. Anthony, Celia Burleigh, New York; Lillie Peckham, Wisconsin; Mrs. Lathrop, Jackson; Giles B. Stebbins, Adam Elder, J. B. Bloss, Detroit. Letters were reported from Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, Rev. E. O. Haven, Professor B. F. Cocker, Moses Coit Tyler, Mrs. Livermore, Lucy Stone, H. B. Blackwell, Mrs. Josephine Griffing, T. W. Higginson, Theodore Tilton, Phœbe Couzins, Anna E. Dickinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miriam M. Cole and Rev. Robert Collyer. The officers elected were: President, Mrs. A. M. Hazlett, Michigan; Recording Secretary, Mrs. Rebecca W. Mott, Chicago; Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Harriet S. Brooks, Chicago; Treasurer, Hon. Fernandol Jones, Chicago; Vice-Presidents, J. B. Bloss, Michigan; Mrs. Myra Bradwell, Illinois; Mrs. E. R. Collins, Ohio; Mrs. Dr. Ferguson, Indiana; Miss Phœbe Couzins, Missouri; Executive Committee, C. B. Waite, Chicago; Colin Campbell, Detroit; Mrs. Francis Minor, Missouri; Madame Anneke, Wisconsin; Mrs. Charles Leonard and Mrs. E. J. Loomis, Chicago.
[309] President, Mrs. A. H. Walker; Corresponding Secretary, Lucinda H. Stone; Recording Secretary, Mrs. S. E. Emory; Treasurer, Mrs. E. Metcalf; Executive Committee, Dr. J. A.B. Stone, Mrs. Frances Titus, Mrs. O. A. Jennison, Mrs. C. A. F. Stebbins, Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Mrs. L. B. Curtiss, Dr. J. H. Bartholomew.