zed the Protective Agency
for Women and Children, opening an office in the Chamber of Commerce
Building and employing an agent on salary. Since then it has done
admirable work and has obtained some good legislation.

[339] Mrs. May Stocking Knaggs has been appointed (1901) a member of
the Board of Control of the State Industrial School for Girls, by Gov.
Aaron T. Bliss. [Eds.

CHAPTER XLVII.

MINNESOTA.[340]

The first agitation of the question of woman suffrage in Minnesota,
and the first petitions to the Legislature to grant it, began
immediately after the Civil War, through the efforts of Mrs. Sarah
Burger Stearns and Mrs. Mary J. Colburn, and the first suffrage
societies were formed by these ladies in 1869. The work has continued
with more or less regularity up to the present.

From 1883 to 1890 the State Suffrage Association held its annual
meetings regularly in one or the other of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis
and St. Paul. Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Julia
Ward Howe, the Hon. William Dudley Foulke, Mary A. Livermore, the Rev.
Ada C. Bowles, Abigail Scott Duniway and other eminent advocates were
secured as speakers at different times. Dr. Martha G. Ripley succeeded
Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns as president in 1883, and was re-elected
each year until 1889. She was followed by Mrs. Ella M. S. Marble for
that year, and Dr. Mary Emery for 1890.

The association contributed toward sending Mrs. Julia B. Nelson to
South Dakota to speak in the suffrage campaign of 1890. On November
18, 19, the State convention was held in St. Paul, Mrs. Stearns
presiding. Mrs. Nelson was elected president. Among the speakers were
Attorney-General Moses E. Clapp, the Reverends Mr. Vail and Mr.
Morgan, Mrs. A. T. Anderson, Mrs. Priscilla M. Niles, Mrs. Ella
Tremain Whitford and the Rev. Olympia Brown of Wisconsin.

In the autumn of 1891 the convention met at Blue Earth City. This
place had not lost the savor of the salt which Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Susan B. Anthony and Phoebe W. Couzins had scattered in the vicinity
thirteen years before, and the meetings were enthusiastic and
well-attended. The Rev. W. K. Weaver was the principal speaker.

It was largely as the superintendent of franchise of the State Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, which was better organized, that Mrs.
Nelson, president of the suffrage association from 1890 to 1896, was
able to secure thousands of signatures to the petitions for th