ecord of conventions and meetings held by the Massachusetts
Association by no means includes all such gatherings held in
different towns and cities of the State. The county and local
societies have done a vast amount of work. The Hampden society was
started in 1868, with Eliphalet Trask, Frank B. Sanborn and
Margaret W. Campbell as leading officers. This was the first county
society formed in the State. Julia Ward Howe, a fresh convert of
the recent convention went to Salem to lecture on woman suffrage,
and the Essex county society was formed with Mrs. Sarah G. Wilkins
and Mrs. Delight R. P. Hewitt--the only two Salem women who went to
the 1850 convention at Worcester--on its executive board. The
Middlesex county society followed, planned by Ada C. Bowles and
officered by names well known in that historic old county. The
Hampshire and Worcester societies brought up the rear; the former
planned by Seth Hunt of Northampton. Notable conventions were held
by the Middlesex society in 1876--one in Malden, one in Melrose and
one in Concord, organized and conducted by its president, Harriet
H. Robinson. This last celebrated town had never before been so
favored. These meetings were conducted something after the style of
local church conferences. They were well advertised, and many
people came. A collation was provided by the ladies of each town,
and the feast of reason was so judiciously mingled with the
triumphs of cookery, that converts to the cause were never so
easily won. Many women present said to the president: "I never
before heard a woman's rights speech. If these are the reasons why
women should vote, I believe in voting."

The Concord convention was held about a month after the great
centennial celebration of April 19, 1875--a celebration in which no
woman belonging to that town took any official part. Nor was there
any place of honor found for the more distinguished women who had
come long distances to share in the festivities. Some of the women
were descendents of Governor John Hancock, Dr. Samuel Prescott,
Major John Buttrick, Rev. William Emerson and Lieutenant Emerson
Cogswell. Though no seat of honor in the big tent in which the
speeches were made was given to the women of to-day, silent
memorials of those who had taken part in the events of one hundred
years ago, had found a conspicuous place there--the scissors that
cut the immortal cartridges made by the women on that eventful day,
and the ancient flag tha