Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/946

 

The only attempt at suffrage organization in North Carolina was made by Miss Helen Morris Lewis, Nov. 21, 1894. A meeting was called at the court house in Asheville and attended by a large audience, which was addressed by Miss Lewis and Miss Floride Cunningham. Thomas W. Patton, mayor of the city, made a stirring speech in favor of giving the ballot to women. At his residence the next day a society was formed with a membership of forty-five men and women; president, Miss Morris; vice-president, T. C. Westall; secretary, Mrs. Eleanor Johnstone Coffin; treasurer, Mayor Patton. The next mayor of Asheville, Theodore F. Davidson, also advocated woman suffrage.

In 1895 addresses were made in various cities by Miss Laura Clay of Kentucky and Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates of Maine, who had been attending the national convention in Atlanta.

Later on Miss Frances E. Willard, president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and Miss Belle Kearney, a noted lecturer from Mississippi, aroused considerable enthusiasm in various places by pleas for woman suffrage in their temperance addresses. Miss Lewis has spoken in a number of towns and at the State Normal School. No organized work has been done, however, and but little public interest is felt.


 * Early in February, 1895, as a result of the suffrage meeting held in Asheville, a bill was presented in the Legislature to place women on school boards. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake of New York, a native of North Carolina, addressed the legislators in its behalf and upon the rights of women. The bill provoked a hot discussion but was defeated. It is impossible to obtain a record of the vote.

In 1897 a bill to permit women to serve as notaries public was defeated in the House on the ground that it would be