y of
these.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

ILLINOIS.[237]

The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association has had only four presidents
in the past sixteen years. Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert retired from
this office at the annual meeting of Sept. 25, 1884, and was succeeded
by Mrs. Mary E. Holmes, who served until the autumn of 1889, when Mrs.
Harbert again filled the presidency for one year. At the convention of
1890 Mrs. Holmes was re-elected, and held office until her resignation
in 1897. In May of this year, Mrs. Julia Mills Dunn was elected. In
1899 Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch was made president, and in 1900
Mrs. Harbert resumed the position for one year. The other officers
elected were: Vice-president, Dr. Julia Holmes Smith; corresponding
secretary, Mrs. Mary Munn; recording secretary, Miss S. Grace
Nicholas; treasurer, the Rev. Kate Hughes; chairman executive
committee, Mrs. Elmina E. Springer.

As the work is divided into districts and counties, and as there are
twenty-two districts and 102 counties partially organized, it will not
be possible to name in this chapter the hundreds of quiet but very
efficient workers, men and women, or to tell of their unselfish
devotion, shown often in the face of fierce opposition.

The association has held a State convention each year, except 1893,
the year of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, when it was decided
instead to attend the World's Congress of Representative Women, which
met in May.[238] At many of these meetings national officers were
present, among them Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone, and the halls
were seldom large enough to accommodate the crowds in attendance.
There have been also district and county conventions every year, while
Fourth of July celebrations, county fairs and Chautauqua assemblies
have been utilized to disseminate suffrage sentiment.

In 1888 Senator Miles B. Castle, Judge C. B. Waite, Mrs. Dunn and Mrs.
Helen M. Gougar, the last-named from Indiana, held suffrage
conferences in various cities. Later in this and the following year,
similar meetings were held in a number of other places by the Illinois
workers, with the assistance of Mrs. Gougar and the Rev. Anna Howard
Shaw.

In 1891 occurred a series of conventions which extended over six weeks
and was conducted by Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace of Indiana and Mrs.
McCulloch. In November Mrs. Holmes made a two-weeks' lecturing trip.

In 1892 and '93 Mrs. Emma Smith DeVoe canvassed the State, sp