g's
suffrage address with his portrait was issued as a handsome pamphlet.
In response to an appeal from the president, Mrs. Livermore (so well
known through the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War), $500 and
many boxes of supplies were sent to the soldiers in the
Spanish-American War, and the secretary of the State association,
Mrs. Ellie A. Hilt, literally worked herself to death in this service.

The usual meetings were held in 1899 and 1900 and the same great
amount of work was done. To increase the school vote of women in 1899
thirty-eight public meetings were held by the association, with the
result that in Boston 3,000 new names were added to the registration
list. In 1900 the association contributed liberally to the suffrage
campaign in Oregon. A large and brilliant reception was given at the
Hotel Vendome in honor of Mrs. Livermore's 80th birthday.

Presidents of the State association since 1883 have been the Hon.
William I. Bowditch (1878) to 1891; Mrs. Julia Ward Howe to 1893; Mrs.
Lucy Stone elected that year but died in October; Mrs. Mary A.
Livermore, 1893 and still in office. Henry B. Blackwell has been
corresponding secretary over thirty years.[313]

The first president of the New England association was Mrs. Howe. In
1877 Mrs. Lucy Stone was elected, and at her death in 1893 Mrs. Howe
was again chosen and is still serving.[314]

LEGISLATIVE ACTION:[315] The first petition for the rights of women
was presented to the Legislature by William Lloyd Garrison in 1849. In
1853 Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and Thomas
Wentworth Higginson went before the constitutional convention held in
the State House, with a petition signed by 2,000 names, and pleaded
for an amendment conferring suffrage on women.

The first appearance of a woman in this State before a legislative
committee was made in 1857, when Lucy Stone, with the Rev. James
Freeman Clarke and Mr. Phillips, addressed the House Judiciary asking
suffrage for women and equal property rights for wives. The next year
Samuel E. Sewall and Dr. Harriot K. Hunt were granted a similar
hearing. In 1869, through the efforts of the New England Suffrage
Association, two hearings were secured to present the claims of 8,000
women who had petitioned for the franchise on the same terms as men.
This was the beginning of annual hearings on this question, which have
been continued without intermission for over thirty years. Henry B.
Blackwell has spok