Immediately following the national suffrage convention of 1883, in Washington, Miss Phœbe W. Couzins of Missouri addressed a large and enthusiastic audience at Sandy Spring. Soon afterwards Madame Clara Neymann of New York spoke in the same place and was cordially received. She and Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller were invited about this time to make addresses at Rockville. Mrs. Miller also spoke on the rights and wrongs of women at the Sandy Spring Lyceum.
In 1889 Mrs. Miller invited some of her acquaintances to meet at her home in Sandy Spring to form a suffrage association. Thirteen men and women became members, all but one of whom belonged to the Society of Friends.[301] This year Maryland was represented for the first time at the national suffrage convention by a delegate, Mrs. Sarah T. Miller. She is now superintendent of franchise in the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, this department having been adopted in 1893.
Annual State conventions have been held since 1889 and about 300 different members have been enrolled. The membership includes many men; one public meeting was addressed by a father and daughter, and a mother and son. The officers for 1900 are: President, Mary Bentley Thomas; vice-president, Pauline W. Holme; corresponding secretary, Annie R. Lamb; recording secretary, Margaret Smythe Clarke; treasurer, Mary E. Moore; member national executive committee, Emma J. M. Funck.
The first to organize a suffrage club in Baltimore was Mrs. Sarah H. Tudor. It has now a flourishing society and many open meetings have been held with large and interested audiences.
In 1896 six members of the W. C. T. U. of Baltimore went before the registrars and demanded that their names should be placed on the polling books. Mrs. Thomas J. Boram, whose husband was one of the registrars, was spokeswoman and claimed their right to vote under the Constitution of the United States. She made a strong argument in the name of taxpaying women and of mothers but was told that the State constitution limited the suffrage to males. The other ladies were Dr. Emily G. Peterson, Miss Annie M. V. Davenport, Mrs. Jane H. Rupp, Mrs. C. Rupp and Mrs. Amanda Peterman.
Among the outside speakers who have come into the State at different times are the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president-at-large of the National Association, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado, Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, the Rev. Henrietta G. Moore of Ohio, Mrs. Annie L. Diggs and Miss Laura A. Gregg of Kansas, Miss Helen Morris Lewis of North Carolina, Mrs. Ruth B. Havens of Washington, D. C., and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago.
One of the first and most efficient of the workers is Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller, who has represented her State for many years at the national conventions and pleased the audiences with her humorous but strong addresses. Her husband, Francis Miller, a prominent lawyer, was one of the very few men in the State who advocated suffrage for women as early as 1874, when he made an appeal for the enfranchisement of the women of the District of Columbia before the House Judiciary Committee.
Legislative Action and Laws: The constitution of Maryland opens as follows:
The right of the people to participate in the Legislature is the best security of liberty and the foundation of all free government; for this purpose, elections ought to be free and frequent; and every male (!) citizen having the qualifications prescribed by the constitution ought to have the right of suffrage.
The Legislature has been petitioned to grant full suffrage to women; to raise the "age of protection" for girls, and to refrain from giving State aid to institutions of learning which do not admit women students on equal terms with men.