1. Who Was Elizabeth Cady Stanton? and Who Started Votes for Women? A Bit of Ancient History for the Girls of Today. By Mrs. Stanton's Daughter Margaret Stanton Lawrence. As I walked along the pretty country road to cast my vote last November - in this suburb of New York City, - how I did wish that my mother, the late Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were with me, on her way to the polls. Only one or two of the far western states gave their women the vote before she passed away. I wore a beautiful brooch, an heirloom, oblong in shape. The breast pin has quite a wide gold border inlaid with lovely pearls, in the centre of which, under glass, is a lock of my mother's wonderful white hair. On the ------------------- 2. back of the pin there had inscribed, so that whoever inherits it will know whose hair it is, the following: Born Nov. 12, 1815. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Died Oct. 26, 1902. I was determined that something belonging to her should be in that polling booth with me. When I marked my ballots, after she had fought to get us women this vote for over fifty-four (54) years of her life! As I walked along under the trees, fast shedding their leaves, I pictured my mother, when she called that first consortium, a beautiful young woman of thirty-three, the mother of three stalwart boys. ------------------ 3. My parents went to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1843: where my father, the late Henry Brewster Stanton, a direct descendent of the Rev. William Brewster, who came over in the Mayflower, began his practice of law as a partner of Rufus Choate. He had for many years been an ardent anti-slavery advocate and was one of its (continued in page 4) ----------------- 4. most brilliant orators. In Boston mother met Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Peabody, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, John G. Whittier, Benson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many other literary lights. She and my father were frequent visitors at the homes of Wendell Philips and William Lloyd Garrison. While in Boston mother attended all the lectures, churches, concerts, theatre, temperance, peace, and prison-reform, and antislavery Conventions that met in the city; she says, "I never lived in such an enthusiastically literary and reform latitude before. My mental power here kept at the highest tension." Those were stirring times in which my parents lived. Boston was the storm centre of many of the big movements of that day. The great anti-slavery ------------ 4. Meetings in Fanieul [sic] ---------- 5. meetings in Fanueil Hall rocked "The Hub" to its very foundation. But alas! The climate of Boston proved to be too severe for my father, so they were obliged to leave all this congenial society and the good start he had made in the law. In 1847 they moved to Seneca Falls, New York, a little village in the centre of the state, where my grandfather, Judge Cady, had large landed interests, and offered them a nice home, with spacious grounds, and a farm nearby. Of their new abiding place my mother says, "The Seneca Falls life was comparatively solitary, and the change from Boston was somewhat depressing. There all my immediate friends were reformers; I had near neighbors, a new house with modern ----------- 6. improvements, and well trained servants. Here our residence was in the outskirts of the village, roads often muddy and no sidewalks most of the way. "Mr. Stanton was frequently away from home on business and I had poor servants, and an increasing number of children. To keep a house and grounds in good order, purchase every article for daily use, keep the wardrobes of half a dozen human beings in proper trim, take children to dentists, shoemakers, to different schools, altogether made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as well as all the hands I could impress with the service. Then too, the novelty of housekeeping had passed away, and much that was once attractive in domestic life was now irksome. I had so many cares that the company I needed for intellectual stimulus was a trial rather than a pleasure." --------- 7. She writes, "I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's best development if in contact the chief part of her life with servants and children." Emerson says, "A healthy discontent is the first step in progress." My mother says, "The general discontent I felt with women's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic condition into which everything fell without the constant supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs ------------ 8. of society in general, and of women in particular. xxxxxx It seemed as if all the elements had conspired to impel me to some inward step. I could not see what to do or where to begin, - my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion." In this tempest-tossed state of mind Mrs. Stanton received an invitation to spend the day in the nearby village of Waterloo, NY. to meet her old friend Lucretia Mott, the celebrated Quaker preacher from Philadelphia, who had arrived in that town on a visit at the home of Richard Hunt. There she met three other Quaker friends, all earnest, thoughtful women, happily married and with children. Of this gathering, among other things she ------------ 9. says, "I poured out, that day, the torrent of my long accumulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself as well as the rest of the party to do and dare anything." The result was they decided to call a "Women's Rights Convention", the first in history! They wrote The Call for that meeting that afternoon, and as my mother drove home, she left it at the office of The Seneca County Courier to be published the next day, July 14, 1848. The meetings were to be held on July 19 and 20. The Call was inserted without signatures, - but the chief movers and managers were Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Seneca Falls, Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia, Martha C. Wright of Auburn, N.T. - a sister of ---------- 10. Lucretia Mott and the grandmother of Thomas Mott Osborne, who was the famous warden of Sing Sing prison in our day; and who thus comes naturally you see, by his reform proclivities. The other 2 rebellous [sic] women who signed were May Ann McClintock and Jane Hunt - of Waterloo. A quintet as it were. The Convention was held in the Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls, Thomas Mott, the still handsome husband of Lucretia, presided. Of this meeting my mother says, in her autobiography, lately republished by Harper Brothers, under the title Elizabeth Cady Stanton Life and Letters, "The house was crowded at every session, the speaking good, and a religious earnestness dignified all the proceedings." My mother further ------------ 11. says, "These were the initiative steps of the most momentous reform that had yet been launched in the world - the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny of one half the race." At the first meeting a Declaration of Sentiments, patterned after the Declaration of Independence, was read. Beside the Declaration, eleven Resolutions covering their aims and demands were proposed. As the Call was printed on the 14 of July. and the meetings were to take place on the 19 and 20, these intrepid women --------------- 12. Only left themselves five days in which to prepare for this gathering. “There was little time for Consultation, each one of this rebellious group had to develope [sic] some side of the great drama.” Mrs. Stanton was wholly responsible for the IX resolution, and thereby [illegible] An interesting tale, which I often heard my mother tell. It shows how far ahead she was of her times, and hose she saw into the future: - a thing she did all through her eventful life. My Mother’s resolution was number nine and when she read it to Lucretia Mott, that lady exclaimed, “Oh, Lizzie, if thee --------------- 13. reads that thee will make us ridiculous! We must go slowly!!" Next, she read it to my father, who usually stood by his wife in all she did and said, but he was so shocked that he jumped to his feet and begged her not to read it. Furthermore he told her, when she would not follow his advice, that if she persisted in her intention, that he would leave town and not attend any of the meetings. Which he did. But this brave, young mother of mine was so sure of what was needed that she defied the World, her Husband, and Lucretia Mott! The third person to whom Mrs. Stanton ---------------- 14. confided her intentions was Frederick Douglass, the brilliant colored orator, who had come down from Rochester to speak at the Convention. My mother asked him what it was that he saw, that his people, the black slaves in the southern plantations, needed to put them on the right plane. "The ballot," he promptly replied. "And I see that the ballot is exactly what we women need," said Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Then she explained to him that she had drawn up such a resolution - its text shortly follows. This she said she would read to the Convention when the IX Resolution was called --------------------- 15. for, and that he must jump at his feet immediately and make a singing speech in favor of its passage; and then she would do likewise. The Famous IX Resolution "Resolved. That it is the duty of the women of this country to serve to themselves their sacred right of the Elective Franchise." Mr. Douglass agreed with her that her resolution hit the nail right on its head, and said he would do all he could to help her. Then, too, mother remembered the advice given her by Daniel O'Connell, the famous Irish orator, ------------------ 15. whom she met in London, England in 1840 on her wedding trip, while attending the World's Anti-slavery convention with my father, Henry Brewster Stanton, who was one of the delegates from the U.S.A. as well as being the secretary of the Convention. She saw a great deal of Mr. O'Connell during that convention, and when she and father were in Dublin, Ireland, my parents dined with him. During the dinner she asked the "Irish Liberator," as O'Connell was called, if he expected to gain freedom for Ireland? "No," he replied, "but when you are agitating a question always ask for -------------- 17. the uttermost, then you may get something!" Of course those on the platform were furious at her for springing her resolution in the convention, - they thought they had squelched her beforehand - it created hot debate, but the brilliant defense of Douglass and her own eloquence so roused the audience that many arose and spoke for her side; and after a three hours' tussle it has carried, by a small majority! So that Elizabeth Cady Stanton's demand from the very first was those three little words "Votes for Women!" ------------- 18. From an article that I read only today, written by an old inhabitant of Seneca Falls, and one of Mother's near neighbors - Janet Cowing - I take the following; "That Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 excited the laughter of the nation. Some of the papers treated it with derision and others with indignation. Only the Anti-slavery papers stood manfully by the women." My mother says of it: "With our Declaration of Rights and Resolutions for a text, it seemed as if every man who could wield a pen prepared a homily on "'Woman's Sphere.'" -------------- 19. So pronounced was the popular voice against it, in parlor, press, and pulpit - that most of the ladies who had attended the Convention and signed the Declaration, one by one withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding." Further on in her book Mrs. Stanton says, "Another Convention was held one month later in Rochester, N.Y. The first one seemed to have drawn all the fire, and of the second but little was said in the press. We had set the ball in motion, and now in quick succession conventions were held in Ohio, ---------------- 20. Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and in the city of New York; and have been kept up ever since." A list of those signing the Declaration and Resolutions at Seneca Falls, July 19-29 in 1848 is given in Mrs. Stanton's autobiography. Many people are now claiming that their ancestors signed that list, in consulting it you will find that their names do not appear on it at all! It numbered only about 100. Susan B. Anthony Susan B. Anthony was not pressured at that famous Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. She did not come into the movement until three (3) years later in 1851/ She was teaching school at this time, at Canajoharie, in the valley of the Mohawk river. --------------- 21. When she read the Women's Declaration of Independence and those eleven Resolutions in the papers, it's said she rather laughed at their audacity. But when she got home for her summer vacation and heard the reports of her father, mother, and sister Mary, who attended the meeting in Rochester, when my mother spoke and heard them say that they considered Mrs. Stanton's demands "quite proper," it set her to thinking. My mother and Miss Anthony did not meet until 1851, when she came to Seneca Falls to attend an anti-slavery meeting gotten up by William Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson. ------------------ 22. But almost from the day that my mother and Miss Anthony met they became the warmest of friends and stood by each other for over sixty (60) years. Theirs was probably one of the most beautiful friendships that ever existed between two women. She was a constant visitor at our house after 1851 and was on the tapis at our home shortly after I was born; and was one of my earliest friends and admirers, and took almost entire charge of me when I was being weaned in 1853!! So you see I knew "Thuzan", as we children always called her from "a to z," almost from the hour of my birth, October 20, 1852, til the day of her death in 1906. It is quite a trek for a lame old lady of 73 from where I live to the poll. ------------------- 23. So, you see, I had plenty of time to reminisce. When I arrived at the nice, clean, roomy school house - our polling place - I thought of mother's predictions, that when women got the vote we would have decent places in which to hold elections, instead of old barber shops or small tailoring establishments, and the like, as in the days of man-rule. I walked into the playroom on a level with the street. An American flag held a conspicuous place on the wall, plenty of benches and chairs were scattered about, these were two women among the polling clerks, a policeman, with nothing to-do, sat reading this morning paper. Oh! my, thought I, how mother would have enjoyed seeing her predictions come true. Such a contrast to the condition of the --------- 24. polls only a few years ago, when we women were still asking for the ballot, and the men allowed us to be watchers in New York City. One place was right opposite where I lived in the [illegible] nineties, just off Broadway, - a "kid glove" district, so it was called. My sister, Mrs. Blatch, was then President of the Women's Political Union, she and her young secretary had been assigned to watch in this little tailoring shop where the voting took place. Her Secretary, Miss Hill, was bemoaning the fact that they had not been sent down to some tough place where exciting things would happen. "Now hold on, Alberta, the day isn't done yet, you may see things even up here." I said. And they did; one by one the polling clerks ---------------- 25. disappeared and came back drunk, the police had to be called in. Mrs. Blatch and Mrs. Hill were pressed into service by the sober head-man to help him out in the emergency. They worked far into- the-night; were too busy even to come across the street and partake of the tempting dinner that my good cook had prepared for them. So we sent some nice [snacks] over for all of them. “Ladies, the head-man said at parting, “I don’t know, I am sure, what I should have done without your efficient help.” Alberta was more than satisfied with her day's work she told me afterward, “no place could have been more exciting. Mrs. Lawrence, “ she exclaimed! When I went to register there happened ------------- 26. to be no one present but the polling clerks. As I took my seat beside the woman in charge of the book wherein I wrote my name, and they began to ask me how old I was, who I was, what my occupation was re. Re. I spoke up and said “Now all sit down and listen and I’ll tell you.” “I am 73 years old and the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Now can any of you tell me who she was?” No, they couldn’t, never heard of her. “ Well,” I replied, “She it was who, way back in 1848, started all this fuss about giving women the right to vote.” So I told them who she was, all about that first convention; and of her answer to Horace Greeley, then owner and editor of the N.Y. Tribune. Mother was talking ------------- 27. woman suffrage to him, he looked at her and saint, “ Mrs. Stanton, don’t you know that the bullet and the ballot go to-gether? Are you ready to fight?” “Yes, Mr. Greeley.” She promptly replied, “I’ll fight just as you fought in the late war of the Rebellion, by sending my paid substitute!” In the war of 1861-1865 all you had to do was to pay a man $300 and he would go and fight for you. They were called “Three-hundred-dollar-men.” They all laughed heartily at that , and seemed much interested in all I had told them. I remember that before went to the polls for the first time, my sister, Mrs. Blatch showed me how to fold my ---------------- 28. ballot, and why it must be folded that way, so that no one could open it and peep in and see how it was marked, and change if they wished. Lo! In going to the polls that day I saw that all the ballots were folded wrong, I at once went to the head man and both told him and showed him how they must be folded, and he had to have them all done over! Mrs. Blatch told me that the way the ballots are folded is the proper way to fold table cloths, then all the creases will be on top when the cloth is laid on the table. Hence looks better. I wonder if the men got the idea from seeing their wives iron and fold their table linen properly? Who knows? ------------- [typed transcript] 1. WHO WAS ELIZABETH CADY STANTON? AND WHO STARTED VOTES FOR WOMEN? A BIT OF ANCIENT HISTORY FOR THE GIRLS OF TO-DAY. BY MR’S. STANTON’S DAUGHTER MARGARET STANTON LAWRENCE. This is the title of the article and should have been at the head of the first page. It was typed but a person who doesn’t know her business. Margaret Stanton Lawrence [hand written in blck ink] ---------------- 1. The title on other page belongs here. [handwritten written in black ink] As I walked along the pretty country road to cast my vote last November-in this suburb of New York city,- how I did wish that my mother, the late Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were here with me, on her way to the polls. Only one or two of the far western states gave their women the vote before she passed away. I wore a beautiful brooch, an heirloom, oblong in shape. The breast pin has quite a wide gold border inlaid with lovely pearls, in the cent of which, under glass, is a lock of my mother’s wonderful white hair. On the back of the pin I have had inscribed, so that whoever inherits it will know whose hair it is, the following: Born Nov. 12, 1815. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Died Oct. 26, 1902. I was determined that something belonging to her should be in the polling booth with me when I marked my ballots, after she had fought to get us women the vote for over fifty four (54) years of her life! As I walked under the trees, fast shedding their leaves, I pictured my mother when she called that first convention, a beautiful young woman of thirty-three the mother of three stalwart boys. ---------------- 2. My parents went to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1843: where my father, the late Henry Brewster Stanton, a direct descendent of the Rev. William Brewster, who came over in the Mayflower, began his practice of law as a partner of Rufus Choate. He had for many years been an ardent anti-slavery advocate and was one of its most brilliant orators. In Boston mother met Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Peabody, Theodore Parker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, John G. Whittier, Benson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many other literary lights. She and my father were frequent visitors at the homes of Wendell Philips and William Lloyd Garrison. While in Boston mother attended all the lectures, churches, concerts, theatre, temperance, peace, and prison-reform, and antislavery Conventions that met in the city; she says, "I never lived in such an enthusiastically literary and reform latitude before. My mental powers were kept at the highest tension." Those were stirring times in which my parents lived. Boston was the storm centre of many of the big movements of that day. The great anti-slavery meetings in Fanueil Hall rocked "The Hub" to its very foundation. But alas! The climate of Boston proved to be too severe for my father, so they were obliged to leave all this congenial society and the good start he had made in the law. ---------------- 3. In 1847 they moved to Seneca Falls, New York, a little village in the centre of the state, where my grandfather, Judge Cady, had large landed interests, and offered them a nice home, with spacious grounds, and a farm nearby. Of their new abiding place my mother says, "The Seneca Falls life was comparatively solitary, and the change from Boston was somewhat depressing. There all my immediate friends were reformers; I had near neighbors, a new house with modern improvements, and well trained servants. Here our residence was on the outskirts of the village, roads often muddy and no sidewalks most of the way. "Mr. Stanton was frequently away from home on business and I had poor servants, and an increasing number of children. To keep a house and grounds in good order, purchase every article for daily use, keep the wardrobes of half a dozen human beings in proper trim, take children to dentists, shoemakers, to different schools, altogether made sufficient work to keep one brain busy, as well as all the hands I could impress with the service. Then too, the novelty of housekeeping had passed away, and much that was once attractive in domestic life was now irksome. I had so many cares that the company I needed for intellectual stimulus was a trial rather than a pleasure." --------- 4. She writes, "I now fully understood the practical difficulties most women had to contend with in the isolated household, and the impossibility of woman's best development if in contact the chief part of her life with servants and children." Emerson says, "A healthy discontent is the first step in progress." My mother says, "The general discontent I felt with women's portion as wife, mother, housekeeper, physician, and spiritual guide, the chaotic condition into which everything fell without the constant supervision, and the wearied, anxious look of the majority of women impressed me with a feeling that some active measures should be taken to remedy the wrongs of society in general, and of women in particular. It seemed as if all the elements had conspired to impel me to some inward step. I could not see what to do or where to begin, --- my only thought was a public meeting for protest and discussion." In this tempest-tossed state of mind Mrs. Stanton received an invitation to spend the day in the nearby village of Waterloo, NY. to meet her old friend Lucretia Mott, the celebrated Quaker preacher from Philadelphia, who had arrived in that town on a visit at the home of Richard Hunt. There she met three other Quaker friends, all earnest, thoughtful women, happily married and with children. ------------ 5. Of this gathering, among other things she says, "I poured out, that day, the torrent of my long accumulating discontent, with such vehemence and indignation that I stirred myself as well as the rest of the party to do and dare anything." The result was they decided to call a "Women's Rights Convention", the first in history! They wrote The Call for that meeting that afternoon, and as my mother drove home, she left it at the office of The Seneca County Courier to be published the next day, July 14, 1848. The meetings were to be held on July 19 and 20. The Call was inserted without signatures, - but the chief movers and managers were Elizabeth Cady Stanton of Seneca Falls, Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia, Martha C. Wright of Auburn, N.Y. - a sister of Lucretia Mott and the grandmother of Thomas Mott Osborne, who was the famous warden of Sing Sing prison in our day; and who thus comes naturally you see, by his reform proclivities. The other 2 rebellious [sic] women who signed were May Ann McChatock and Jane Hunt of Waterloo. A quintet as it were. They were all happily married women with good husbands and many children. The Convention was held in the Methodist Chapel in Seneca Falls, Thomas Mott, the still handsome husband of Lucretia, presided. Of this meeting my mother says, in her autobiography, lately republished by Harper Brothers, under the title Elizabeth Cady Stanton Life and Letters, "The house was crowded at every session, the speaking good, and a religious earnestness dignified all the proceedings." ------------ 6. My mother further says, "These were the initiative steps of the most momentous reform that had yet been launched in the world - the first organized protest against the injustice which had brooded for ages over the character and destiny of one half the race." At the first meeting a Declaration of Sentiments, patterned after the Declaration of Independence, was read. Beside the Declaration, eleven Resolutions covering their aims and demands were proposed. As the Call was printed on the 14 of July. and the meetings were to take place on the 19 and 20, these intrepid women only left themselves five days in which to prepare for this gathering. “There was little time for Consultation, each one of this rebellious group had to develop some side of the great drama.” Mrs. Stanton was wholly responsible for the IX resolution, and thereby [illegible] An interesting tale, which I often heard my mother tell. It shows how far ahead she was of her times, and hose she saw into the future: - a thing she did all through her eventful life. My Mother’s resolution was number nine and when she read it to Lucretia Mott, that lady exclaimed, “Oh, Lizzie, if thee reads that thee will make us ridiculous! We must go slowly!!" --------------- 7. Next, she read it to my father, who usually stood by his wife in all she did and said, but he was so shocked that he jumped to his feet and begged her not to read it. Furthermore he told her, when she would not follow his advice, that if she persisted in her intention, that he would leave town and not attend any of the meetings. Which he did. But this brave, young mother of mine was so sure of what was needed that she defied the World, her Husband, and Lucretia Mott! The third person to whom Mrs. Stanton confided her intentions was Frederick Douglass, the brilliant colored orator, who had come down from Rochester to speak at the Convention. My mother asked him what it was that he saw, that his people, the black slaves in the southern plantations, needed to put them on the right plane: "The ballot," he promptly replied. "And I see that the ballot is exactly what we women need," said Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Then she explained to him that she had drawn up such a resolution - its text shortly follows. This she said she would read to the Convention when the IX Resolution was called for, and that he must jump at his feet immediately and make a singing speech in favor of its passage; and then she would do likewise. The Famous IX Resolution. "Resolved. That it is the duty of the women of this country to serve to themselves their sacred right of the Elective Franchise." Mr. Douglass agreed with her that her resolution hit the nail right on its head, and said he would do all he could to help her. Then, too, mother remembered the advice given her by Daniel O'Connell, the famous Irish orator, whom she met in London, England in 1840 on her wedding trip, while attending the World's Anti-slavery convention with my father, Henry Brewster Stanton, who was one of the delegates from the U.S.A. as well as being the secretary of the Convention. She saw a great deal of Mr. O'Connell during that convention, and when she and father were in Dublin, Ireland, my parents dined with him. During the dinner she asked the "Irish Liberator," as O'Connell was called, if he expected to gain freedom for Ireland? "No," he replied, "but when you are agitating a question always ask for the uttermost, then you may get something!" Of course those on the platform were furious at her for springing her resolution in the convention, - they thought they had squelched her beforehand - it created hot debate, but the brilliant defense of Douglass and her own eloquence so roused the audience that many arose and spoke for her side; and after a three hours' tussle it has carried, by a small majority! ------------- 9. So that Elizabeth Cady Stanton's demand from the very first was those three little words "Votes for Women!" From an article that I read only today, written by an old inhabitant of Seneca Falls, and one of Mother's near neighbors - Janet Cowing - I take the following; "That Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 excited the laughter of the nation. Some of the papers treated it with derision and others with indignation. Only the Anti-slavery papers stood manfully by the women." My mother says of it: "With our Declaration of Rights and Resolutions for a text, it seemed as if every man who could wield a pen prepared a homily on "'Woman's Sphere.” So pronounced was the popular voice against it, in parlor, press, and pulpit - that most of the ladies who had attended the Convention and signed the Declaration, one by one withdrew their names and influence and joined our persecutors. Our friends gave us the cold shoulder and felt themselves disgraced by the whole proceeding." Further on in her book Mrs. Stanton says, "Another Convention was held one month later in Rochester, N.Y. The first one seemed to have drawn all the fire, and of the second but little was said in the press. We had set the ball in motion, and now in quick succession conventions were held in Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and in the city of New York; and have been kept up ever since." ---------------- 10. A list of those signing the Declaration and Resolutions at Seneca Falls, July 19-29 in 1848 is given in Mrs. Stanton's autobiography. Many people are now claiming that their ancestors signed that list, in consulting it you will find that their names do not appear on it at all! It numbered only about 100. SUSAN B. ANTHONY Susan B. Anthony was not pressured at that famous Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. She did not come into the movement until three (3) years later in 1851/ She was teaching school at this time, at Canajoharie, in the valley of the Mohawk river. When she read the Women's Declaration of Independence and those eleven Resolutions in the papers,it's said she rather laughed at their audacity. But when she got home for her summer vacation and heard the reports of her father, mother, and sister Mary, who attended the meeting in Rochester, when my mother spoke and heard them say that they considered Mrs. Stanton's demands "quite proper," it-set-her to thinking. My mother and Susan B. Anthony did not meet until 1851, when she came to Seneca Falls to attend an anti-slavery meeting gotten up by William Lloyd Garrison and George Thompson. But almost from the day that my mother and Miss Anthony met they became the warmest of friends and stood by each other for over fifty (50) years. Theirs was, probably one of the most beautiful friendships that ever existed between two women. She was a constant visitor at our house after 1851 and was on the tapis, at our home shortly after I was born; and was one of my earliest friends and admirers, and took almost entire Continued ------------------- 11. charge of me when I was being weaned in 1853!! So you see I knew "Thuzan", as we children always called her from "A to Z," almost from the hour of my birth, October 20, 1852, til the day of her death in 1906. It is quite a trek for a lame old lady of 73 from where I live to the polls. Hence, I had plenty of time to reminisce. When I arrived at the nice, clean, roomy school house - I thought of mother's predictions, that when women got the vote we would have decent places in which to hold elections, instead of old barber shops or small tailoring establishments, and the like, as in the days of man-rule. I walked into the playroom on a level with the street. An American flag held a conspicuous place on the wall, plenty of benches and chairs were scattered about, there were two women among the polling clerks. A policeman, with nothing to do, sat reading his morning paper. Oh! my, thought I, how mother would have enjoyed seeing her predictions come true. Such a contrast to the condition of the polls only a few years ago, when we women were still asking for the ballot, and the men allowed us to be watchers in New York City. One place was right opposite where I lived in the west nineties, just off Broadway, --- a "kid glove" district, so it was called. ---------------- 12. My sister, Mrs. Blatch, was then President of the Women's Political Union, she and her young secretary had been assigned to watch in this little tailoring shop where the voting took place. Her Secretary, Miss Hill, was bemoaning the fact that they had not been sent down to some tough place where exciting things would happen. "Now hold on, Alberta, the day isn't done yet, you may see things even up here." I said. And they did: one by one the polling clerks disappeared and came back drunk, the police had to be called in. Mrs. Blatch and Mrss Hill were pressed into service by the sober head-man to help him out in the emergency. They worked far into the night; were too busy ever to come across the street and partake of the tempting dinner that my good cook had prepared for them. So we sent some nice viands over for all of them. “Ladies, the head-man said at parting, “I don’t know, I am sure, what I should have done without your efficient help.” Alberta was more than satisfied with her day's work she told me afterward, “no place could have been more exciting. Mrs. Lawrence, “ she exclaimed! When I went to register there happened to be no one present but the polling clerks. As I took my seat beside the woman in charge of the book wherein I wrote my name, and they began to ask me how old I was, who I was, what my occupation was etc. I spoke up and said “Now all sit down and listen and I’ll tell you.” ---------------- 13. “I am 73 years old and the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Now can any of you tell me who she was?” No, they couldn’t, never heard of her. “ Well,” I replied, “She it was who, way back in 1848, started all this fuss about giving women the right to vote.” So I told them who she was, all about that first convention; and of her answer to Horace Greeley, then owner and editor of the N.Y. Tribune. Mother was talking woman suffrage to him, he looked at her and saint, “ Mrs. Stanton, don’t you know that the bullet and the ballot go to-gether? Are you ready to fight?” “Yes, Mr. Greeley.” She promptly replied, “I’ll fight just as you fought in the late war of the Rebellion, by sending my paid substitute!” In the war of 1861-1865 all you had to do was to pay a man $300 and he would go and fight for you. They were called “Three-hundred-dollar-men.” They all laughed heartily at that , and seemed much interested in all I had told them. I remember that before went to the polls for the first time, my sister, Mrs. Blatch showed me how to fold my ballot, ---------------- 14. and why it must be folded that way, so that no one could open it and peep in and see how it was marked, and change if they wished. Lo! In going to the polls that day I saw that all the ballots were folded wrong, I at once went to the head man and both told him and showed him how they must be folded, and he had to have them all done over! Mrs. Blatch told me that the way the ballots are folded is the proper way to fold table cloths, then all the creases will be on top when the cloth is laid on the table. Hence looks better. I wonder if the men got the idea from seeing their wives iron and fold their table linen properly? Who knows?