s given a great birthday reception by her
fellow-townsmen, with addresses by Mrs. Susan S. Fessenden and Mr.
Blackwell and a poem by Hezekiah Butterworth.

The May Festival also opened with a Young People's Meeting, Mrs. Howe
as "grandmother" introducing the speakers.[312] Mr. Garrison presided
at the Festival and the speakers included Alfred Webb, M. P., of
Dublin, the Rev. Dean Hodges, of the Episcopal Theological School,
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson and Prof. Ellen Hayes of Wellesley.

A series of meetings was held this year in Berkshire County. Mrs. Mary
Clarke Smith was kept in the field as State organizer for seven
months. A speaker was sent free of charge to every woman's club or
other society willing to hear the suffrage question presented; 13,000
pages of literature were distributed. On October 27 the State Baptist
Young People's Union at its anniversary indorsed woman suffrage. In
December a rousing meeting was held in Canton, Congressman Elijah
Morse presiding, with Mrs. Livermore and Miss Yates as speakers.

Among the deaths of the year was that of Frederick T. Greenhalge--the
latest of a long line of Massachusetts governors who have advocated
woman suffrage since 1870--Governors Claflin, Washburn, Talbot,
Brackett, Long, Butler and Ames.

At the annual meeting, in 1897, the speakers included the Rev. George
L. Perin and Augusta Chapin, D. D. As the laws were about to be
revised and codified it was decided to ask for an equalization of
those bearing on domestic relations. The _Women's Journal_ noted that
never before had so many petitions for suffrage been sent in within so
short a time. On February 16 the association gave a large and
brilliant reception at the Vendome to Miss Jane Addams of Chicago.
Col. Higginson presided, and Miss Addams, Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Livermore
spoke. On April 17 a reception was given in the suffrage parlors to
Mrs. Harriet Tubman, the colored woman so noted in anti-slavery days
for her assistance to fugitive slaves, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney assisting.

Mr. Blackwell presided at the Festival, May 27, and eloquent addresses
were made by the Rev. Dr. George C. Lorimer, Lieutenant-Governor John
L. Bates, Mrs. Florence Howe Hall and many others, while letters of
greeting were read from Lady Henry Somerset and Mrs. Millicent Garrett
Fawcett of England. It was Mrs. Howe's seventy-eighth birthday and she
was received with cheers and presented with flowers.

On July 29 the annual meetin