eroism and steady adherence to principle
of many comparatively unknown lives, the historian is painfully
conscious of the meagerness of the record, as compared with the
amount of labor that must necessarily have been performed. In
almost every city, village and school district some earnest man
or woman has been quietly waging the great moral battle that will
eventually make us free; and while it would be a labor of love to
recognize every one who has wrought for freedom, doubtless many
names worthy of mention may unintentionally be omitted.

The earliest account of specific work that we have been able to
trace is an address delivered in Earlville by A. J. Grover, esq.,
in 1855, who from that time until the present has been an able
champion of the constitutional rights of women. As a result of
his efforts, and the discussion that followed, a society was
formed, of which Mrs. Susan Hoxie Richardson (a cousin of Susan
B. Anthony) was elected president, and Mrs. Octavia Grover
secretary. This, we believe, was the first suffrage society in
Illinois. Its influence was increased by the fact that, during
two years of Mr. Grover's editorial control, the Earlville
_Transcript_ was a fearless champion of equal rights. While that
band of pioneers was actively at work, Prudence Crandall, who was
mobbed and imprisoned in Connecticut for teaching a school for
colored girls, was actively engaged in Mendota, in the same
county. A few years later, lectures were delivered[351] on the
subject of equal rights for women in different parts of the
State.

Copies of two of the early appeals have been secured. One by A.
J. Grover, published in pamphlet form, was extensively
circulated; the other by Mrs. Catharine V. Waite, appeared in the
Earlville _Transcript_. Both of these documents are yellowed with
age, but the arguments presented are as logical as the more
recent utterances of our most radical champions. There is a
tradition of a convention at Galesburg some years later, but we
have failed to find any accurate data. During the interim between
these dates and that never-to-be-forgotten April day in 1861, but
little agitation of this great subject can be traced, and during
the six years subsequent to that time we witness all previously
defined boundaries of