[352] Other officers elected: Vice-president, Mrs. Kate M. Ford; corresponding secretary, Dr. Marie E. Adams; recording secretary, Mrs. Sue DeHaven; treasurer, Mrs. Alice C. Mulkey; auditors, Miss Almira Hayes and Mrs. Ethel B. Harrison; member national executive committee, Mrs. Etta E. M. Weink.
Among those who have held official position since 1894 are: Vice-presidents, Mrs. Cordelia Dobyns, Mrs. Amelie C. Fruchte; corresponding secretaries, Mrs. G. G. R. Wagner, Mrs. Emma P. Jenkins; recording secretary, Mrs. E. Montague Winch; treasurer, Mrs. Juliet Cunningham; auditors, Mrs. Maria I. Johnston, Mrs. Minor Meriwether.
[353] In 1901 women obtained a law and appropriation for a State Home for Feeble-Minded Children.
CHAPTER L.
MONTANA.[354]
In August, 1883, Miss Frances E. Willard, national president, came to Montana and formed a Territorial Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Butte. At this time Miss Willard in her speeches, and the union in its adoption of a franchise department, made the initiative effort to obtain suffrage for the women of Montana. This organization has been here, as elsewhere, a great educative force for its members, training them in parliamentary law, broadening their ideas and preparing them for citizenship. Out of its ranks have come the Rev. Alice S. N. Barnes, Mesdames Laura E. Howey, Delia A. Kellogg, Mary A. Wylie, Martha Rolfe Plassman, Anna A. Walker and many other earnest advocates of the ballot for women. Within the past five or six years a number of professional and business women have joined the suffrage forces and to-day they compose a majority of the active leaders.
No attempt was made to organize the State until Mrs. Emma Smith De Voe was sent by the National Association in 1895. She visited most of the prominent towns and formed clubs or committees. The first State convention was called at Helena in September of this year by the suffrage association of that city, Miss Sarepta Sanders, president, and Mrs. Kellogg, secretary. It was assisted by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, to whose eloquent addresses was due the great impetus the cause received at this time.[355]
Mrs. De Voe again visited the State in the spring of 1896. The annual meeting took place at Butte in November. Mrs. Harriet P. Sanders, wife of Senator Sanders, having declined re-election, was unanimously made honorary president, and Mrs. Ella Knowles Haskell succeeded her in the presidency. Nearly 300 members were reported.