Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/372

336 In my hunt through the journals of the two legislative houses I found in the House journal for 1878 that Mr. Pratt of Meriden had presented the petition of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac C. Lewis. Mr. Clark of Enfield, presented the petition of Lucy A. Allen; Mr. Gallagher of New Haven presented several petitions that year, one of them being headed by Mr. Henry A. Stillman ot Wethersfield, followed by 532 names, and another by Mrs. D. F. Connor, M. D. Mr. Broadhead of Glastonbury presented the petition of the Smith sisters. This unique petition Miss Mary Hall, who was with me in the secretary's office, chanced to light upon, and she copied it. It is a document well worth handing down on the page of history, and runs as follows:

This is the first time we have petitioned your honorable body, having twice come before the House of Assembly, which the last time gave a majority that we should vote in town affairs; but it was negatived in the Senate.

We now pray the highest court in our native State that we may be relieved from the stigma of birth. For forty years since the death of our father have we suffered intensely for being born women. We cannot even stand up for the principles of our forefathers (who fought and bled for them) without having our property seized and sold at the sign-post, which we have suffered four times; and have also seen eleven acres of our meadow-land sold to an ugly neighbor for a tax of fifty dollars—land worth more than $2,000, And a threat is given out that our house shall be ransacked and despoiled of articles most dear to us, the work of lamented members of our family who have gone before us, and all this is done without the least excuse of right or justice. We are told that it is the law of the land made by the legislature and done to us, two defenceless women, who have never broken these laws, made by not half the citizens of this State. And it was said in our Declaration of Independence that" Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

For being born women we are obliged to help support those who have earned nothing, and who, by gambling, drinking, and the like, have come to poverty, and these same can vote away what we have earned with our own hands. And when men meet to take off the dollar poll-tax, the bill for the dinner comes in for the women to pay. Neither have we husband, or brother, or son, or even nephew, or cousin, to help us. All men will acknowledge that it is as wrong to take a woman's property without her consent as to take a man's without his consent; and such wrong we suffer wholly for being born women, which we are in no wise to blame for. To be sure, for our consolation, we are upheld by the learned, the wise and the good, from all parts of the country, having received communications from thirty-two of our States, as well as from over the seas, that we are in the right, and from many of the best men in our own State. But they have no power to help us. We therefore now pray your honorable body, who have power, with the House of Assembly, to relieve us of this stigma of birth, and grant that we may have the same privileges before the Jaw as though we were born men. And this, as in duty bound, we will ever pray.

Glastonbury, Conn., January 29, 1878. and.

The story of the Smith sisters, from 1873 and on, will be handed down as one of the most original and unique chapters in the history of woman suffrage. Abby Smith, with my friend Mrs. Buckingham, attended with me the first meeting of the Woman's Congress, in New York, in October, 1873. While there, she said she should, on her return, address her town's people on woman suffrage and taxation, as they had not been treated fairly in the matter of their taxes. She did so on the fifth of November,