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

 

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.

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.