The annual meeting was held Dec. 6, 7, 1892, instead of January, 1893. Mrs. Howe presided and addresses were made by Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Livermore, the Hon. George A. O. Ernst, Mrs. Estelle M. H. Merrill, president of the New England Women's Press Association, and others. Lucy Stone was elected president and superintendents were instituted for different departments of work.
At a gathering of Massachusetts farmers in Boston, Lucy Stone and Mrs. Olive Wright of Denver, spoke for woman suffrage; the meeting declared for it unanimously by a rising vote and every farmer present signed the petition. The State Grange, at its annual convention, adopted a strong suffrage resolution by 96 yeas, 27 nays. The Unitarian Ministers' Monday Club of Boston, after an address by Mrs. Stone, did the same, and every minister present but one signed the petition. The Universalist Ministers' Monday meeting in Boston, at her request, voted by a large majority to memorialize the Legislature for woman suffrage. The Central Labor Union took similar action. The Boston Transcript, Globe, Advertiser, Traveller and Beacon, the Springfield Republican, Greenfield Gazette and Courier, Salem Observer, Salem Register and many other papers supported the Municipal Suffrage Bill which was then pending.
At the May Festival of 1893 Senator Hoar presided and 900 persons sat down to the banquet. Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant of England, and Miss Kirstine Frederiksen of Denmark, were the speakers from abroad. A reception to these ladies preceded the annual meeting of the New England Association. Mme. Marie Marshall of Paris, was added to the above speakers, also Wendell Phillips Stafford of Vermont, Mrs. Ellen M. Bolles of Rhode Island, and others. On June 5 a reception was given to Mrs. Jane Cobden Unwin of London, Richard Cobden's daughter. On July 19, by invitation of the Waltham Suffrage Club, the State association and the local leagues united in a basket picnic at Forest Grove. On this occasion Lucy Stone made her last public address.
Woman's Day at the New England Agricultural Fair in Worcester was observed in September with addresses by Mrs. Chant, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Fanny Purdy Palmer and Mr. Blackwell, representing Lucy Stone, who was too ill to be present. There was a very large audience. Part of a day was also secured at the Marshfield Fair with an address by Mrs. Katherine Lente Stevenson. A convention was held at Westfield, October 2, when the opera house was crowded to hear Mrs. Livermore.
Mr. Blackwell presented a resolution in favor of Municipal Suffrage for women in the Resolutions Committee of the Republican State Convention, October 6. It was warmly advocated by the Hon. John D. Long, Samuel Walker McCall, M. C., Mayor Fairbanks of Quincy, and others, and would possibly have been passed but for the strenuous opposition of the chairman, ex-Gov. George D. Robinson, who said he would decline to read the platform to the convention if the resolution was adopted. It was finally lost by 4 yeas, 7 nays.
On Oct. 18, 1893, occurred the death of Lucy Stone at her home in Dorchester. She said with calm contentment, "I have done what I wanted to do; I have helped the women." Her last whispered words to her daughter were, "Make the world better." The funeral was held in James Freeman Clarke's old church in Boston. Hundreds of people stood waiting silently in the street before the doors were opened. The Rev. Charles G. Ames said afterward that, "the services were not like a funeral but like a solemn celebration and a coronation." The speakers were Mr. Ames, Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Livermore, Mr. Garrison, Mrs. Cheney, the Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, Mrs. Chant, the Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer of Providence, Mary Grew of Philadelphia, with a poem by Mrs. Howe. A strong impetus was given to the suffrage movement by the wide publication in the papers of the facts of Lucy Stone's simple and noble life, and by the universal expression of affection and regret. A life-long opponent declared that the death of no woman in America had ever called out so general a tribute of public respect and esteem.
The State association again held its annual meeting in December. Among the resolutions adopted was the following:
In the passing away of Lucy Stone, our president, the beloved pioneer of woman suffrage, who has been, ever since 1847, its mainstay and unfailing champion, the cause of equal rights in this State and throughout the Union has suffered an irreparable loss.
Her daughter closed the report of the year's work by saying: "Let all those who held her dear show their regard for her memory in the way that would have pleased and touched her most—by doing their best to help forward the cause she loved so well."