Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/763

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CHAPTER XLIV.

MARYLAND.^[1]

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 Assembly as the executor and representative of her kinsman, Lord Baltimore. Her petition 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.^[2]

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 Washington, Miss Phœbe 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.

↑ The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas of Ednor, who for the last nine years has been president of the State Suffrage Association.
↑ Miss Mary Catherine Goddard conducted the Baltimore post-office and also the only newspaper in the city, the Maryland Journal and Commercial Advertiser, through all the trying times of the Revolutionary War. On July 12, 1775, she published a detailed account of the battle of Bunker Hill, which had occurred on June 17, and the Declaration of the Continental Congress giving the causes and necessity for taking up arms. The first official publication of the Declaration of Independence, with the signers' names attached, was entrusted by Congress, at that time sitting in Baltimore, to Miss Goddard. She remained in control of her paper for ten years. In 1779 she made an appeal through its columns for the destitute families of the American soldiers, and by her efforts $25,000 were raised for their needs.

[1] The History is indebted for this chapter to Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas of Ednor, who for the last nine years has been president of the State Suffrage Association.

[2] Miss Mary Catherine Goddard conducted the Baltimore post-office and also the only newspaper in the city, the Maryland Journal and Commercial Advertiser, through all the trying times of the Revolutionary War. On July 12, 1775, she published a detailed account of the battle of Bunker Hill, which had occurred on June 17, and the Declaration of the Continental Congress giving the causes and necessity for taking up arms. The first official publication of the Declaration of Independence, with the signers' names attached, was entrusted by Congress, at that time sitting in Baltimore, to Miss Goddard. She remained in control of her paper for ten years. In 1779 she made an appeal through its columns for the destitute families of the American soldiers, and by her efforts $25,000 were raised for their needs.

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