Volume IV Part 93 (1/2)

Thomas Brackett Reed, Judge Joseph W. Symonds, Franklin Payson; ex-Governors Joseph Bodwell, Frederick Robie, Henry B. Cleaves and Llewellyn Powers; Mesdames Augusta Merrill Hunt, Margaret T. W.

Merrill and Ann Frances Greeley; Dr. Abby Mary Fulton and the Misses Cornelia M. Dow, Charlotte Thomas and Elizabeth Upham Yates.

CHAPTER XLIV.

MARYLAND.[299]

If but one State in the Union allowed woman to represent herself it should be Maryland, which was named for a woman, whose capital was named for a woman, and where in 1647 Mistress Margaret Brent, the first woman suffragist in America, demanded ”place and voyce” in the a.s.sembly as the executor and representative of her kinsman, Lord Baltimore. Her pet.i.tion was denied but she must have had some gallant supporters, as the archives record that the question of her admission was hotly debated for hours. After the signal defeat of Mistress Brent, there seems to have been no demand for the ballot on the part of Maryland women for about 225 years.[300]

In 1870 and '71 Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Lucy Stone and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe lectured in Baltimore and there was some slight agitation of the subject.

Immediately following the national suffrage convention of 1883, in Was.h.i.+ngton, Miss Phoebe W. Couzins of Missouri addressed a large and enthusiastic audience at Sandy Spring. Soon afterwards Madame Clara Neymann of New York spoke in the same place and was cordially received. She and Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller were invited about this time to make addresses at Rockville. Mrs. Miller also spoke on the rights and wrongs of women at the Sandy Spring Lyceum.

In 1889 Mrs. Miller invited some of her acquaintances to meet at her home in Sandy Spring to form a suffrage a.s.sociation. Thirteen men and women became members, all but one of whom belonged to the Society of Friends.[301] This year Maryland was represented for the first time at the national suffrage convention by a delegate, Mrs. Sarah T. Miller.

She is now superintendent of franchise in the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, this department having been adopted in 1893.

Annual State conventions have been held since 1889 and about 300 different members have been enrolled. The members.h.i.+p includes many men; one public meeting was addressed by a father and daughter, and a mother and son. The officers for 1900 are: President, Mary Bentley Thomas; vice-president, Pauline W. Holme; corresponding secretary, Annie R. Lamb; recording secretary, Margaret Smythe Clarke; treasurer, Mary E. Moore; member national executive committee, Emma J. M. Funck.

The first to organize a suffrage club in Baltimore was Mrs. Sarah H.

Tudor. It has now a flouris.h.i.+ng society and many open meetings have been held with large and interested audiences.

In 1896 six members of the W. C. T. U. of Baltimore went before the registrars and demanded that their names should be placed on the polling books. Mrs. Thomas J. Boram, whose husband was one of the registrars, was spokeswoman and claimed their right to vote under the Const.i.tution of the United States. She made a strong argument in the name of taxpaying women and of mothers but was told that the State const.i.tution limited the suffrage to males. The other ladies were Dr.

Emily G. Peterson, Miss Annie M. V. Davenport, Mrs. Jane H. Rupp, Mrs.

C. Rupp and Mrs. Amanda Peterman.

Among the outside speakers who have come into the State at different times are the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president-at-large of the National a.s.sociation, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of the national organization committee, Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado, Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, the Rev. Henrietta G. Moore of Ohio, Mrs. Annie L. Diggs and Miss Laura A. Gregg of Kansas, Miss Helen Morris Lewis of North Carolina, Mrs. Ruth B. Havens of Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch of Chicago.

One of the first and most efficient of the workers is Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller, who has represented her State for many years at the national conventions and pleased the audiences with her humorous but strong addresses. Her husband, Francis Miller, a prominent lawyer, was one of the very few men in the State who advocated suffrage for women as early as 1874, when he made an appeal for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of the District of Columbia before the House Judiciary Committee.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION AND LAWS: The const.i.tution of Maryland opens as follows:

The right of the people to partic.i.p.ate in the Legislature is the best security of liberty and the foundation of all free government; for this purpose, elections ought to be free and frequent; and every male (!) citizen having the qualifications prescribed by the const.i.tution ought to have the right of suffrage.

The Legislature has been pet.i.tioned to grant full suffrage to women; to raise the ”age of protection” for girls, and to refrain from giving State aid to inst.i.tutions of learning which do not admit women students on equal terms with men.

The Legislature of 1900 took a remarkably progressive step. An act authorizing the city of Annapolis to submit to the voters the question of issuing bonds to the amount of $121,000, to pay off the floating indebtedness and provide a fund for permanent improvements, contained a paragraph ent.i.tling women to vote.

This bill was introduced in the Senate January 25, by Elijah Williams and was referred to the Committee on Finance. On January 31, Austin L.

Crothers reported it favorably. On February 1, at the motion of Senator Williams, the bill was recommitted and on the 15th Senator Crothers again reported it favorably. On the 19th it was pa.s.sed by the Senate unanimously.

The Senate Bill was presented to the House of Delegates February 20, and referred to the Committee on Ways and Means. On the 28th, Ferdinand C. Latrobe (who had been mayor of Baltimore four or five times) reported the bill favorably. On March 23 it was pa.s.sed by the House, 69 yeas, one nay, the negative vote being cast by Patrick E.

Finzel of Garrett County.

It is a common practice of the General a.s.sembly to pa.s.s laws applicable only to one county or portion of a county, or to one munic.i.p.ality or to one special occasion, as in this instance.

As this law was a decided innovation in a very conservative community, naturally the number of women availing themselves of it for the first time was not large, and it hardly seemed worth a special Act of the Legislature, except as a progressive step. The Baltimore _Sun_ of May 14 said: