The annual meeting of 1884 was held January 22, 23, presided over by William I. Bowditch, who had succeeded the Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke as president in 1878. A number of fine addresses were given and the official board was unanimously re-elected.[1] Mr. Bowditch's opening address was afterwards widely circulated as a tract, The Forgotten Woman in Massachusetts.
It was voted that a fund should be raised to organize local suffrage associations or leagues throughout the State, and that, as soon as $2,500 was in hand, an agent should be put in the field. Mr. Bowditch, Miss Louisa M. Alcott, John L. Whiting and Henry H. Faxon each subscribed $100 on the spot; $800 was raised at the meeting and more than $2,500 within four months.
This year, in the death of Wendell Phillips, the cause of equal rights lost one of its earliest and noblest supporters. On February 28 an impressive memorial service was held in Boston. Mrs. Howe presided and the other speakers were William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore D. Weld, Judge Thomas Russell, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Elizur Wright, the Rev. Samuel May, George W. Lowther, Mrs. Lucy Stone and Mr. Blackwell. John Boyle O'Reilly and William P. Liscomb read memorial poems.
Fifty-seven meetings were held this year in different parts of
- ↑ As this board was continued for many years with but little change, and as it indicates clearly the personnel of the association, the remainder is given in full: Vice-presidents, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, John G. Whittier, U. S. Senator George F. Hoar, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Theodore D. Weld, ex-Gov. William Claflin, Judge Samuel E. Sewall, William Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Hon. John Hopkins, Miss Abby W. May, A. Bronson Alcott, Marie E. Zakrzewska, M. D., Col. Thomas W. Higginson, Misa Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Wendell Phillips, Miss Louisa M.
Nathan E. Wood, W. W. Lucas; the Revs. Ida C. Hultin, Lorenza Haynes, Mary Traffern Whitney, Lila Frost Sprague; J. W. Clarke, of the Boston Traveller, D. H. Beggs, President of the Central Labor Union, Judge Robert Pitman, the Hon. Joseph H. Walker, Francis J. Garrison, John Graham Brooks, John L. Whiting, Sam Walter Foss, Sherman Hoar, W. L. Haskel; Mesdames Martha Perry Lowe, E. N. L. Walton, Martha Sewall Curtis, O. A. Cheney, Ellie A. Hilt, Abby M. Davis, Judith W. Smith; Misses Anna Gardner, Lucia T. Ames, Eva Channing, Amorette Beecher, Alice Parker, all of Massachusetts. The Rev. J. W. Bashford, Delaware College, Ohio; the Rev. Florence E. Kollock, Illinois; Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, California; Mrs. Helen Coffin Beedy, Mrs. Etta H. Osgood, Maine; U. S. Senator Henry W. Blair, Mrs. Armenia S. White, Miss Mary N. Chase, New Hampshire; Mrs. M. L. T. Hidden, Mrs. A. D. Chandler, Vermont; Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace, Dr. John C. Wyman, Dr. Ira Aldrich, Jeanette S. French, Louise Tyler, Rhode Island; Mesdames Emily O. Kimball, Josephine M. Bissell, Emily J. Leonard, Annie C. S. Fenner, Judge Joseph and Miss Elizabeth Sheldon, Connecticut; Mrs. Cornelia Collins Hussey, New Jersey; Judge William S. Peirce, Philadelphia; Miss Anna Gordon, Illinois; Dr. Ida Joe Brooks, Arkansas; Ellis Meredith, Denver; Giles B. Stebbins, Michigan; Lloyd McKim Garrison, New York; Amelia B. Edwards, Mrs. Percy Widdrington, England.
