Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/990

 Brown—founded in 1764. In 1883 Miss Helen McGill and Miss Annie S. Peck, college graduates, addressed a meeting at Providence on the higher education of women. Arnold B. Chace was requested at this time to report at the next regular meeting of the State Suffrage Association the prospects for the admission of women to Brown University, as he was treasurer of the university corporation. At a later meeting the Rev. Ezekiel Gilman Robinson, then president of the.university, by request addressed the association and declared his views, saying in substance that he was not in favor of their admission, especially in the undergraduate departments, as the discipline required by young men and women was quite different and all social questions would be complicated by the presence of the latter.

After much discussion at other meetings it was decided to form a committee, representing several organizations interested in the advancement of women, to work more definitely in this direction. On Feb. 20, 1886, a number of ladies assembled at the home of Mrs. Rachel Fry, a prominent member of the suffrage association, and, after discussion and advice from Mr. Chace, appointed a committee. Three days later it met at the home of Mrs. R. A. Peckham, organized and elected Miss Sarah E. Doyle chairman and Mrs. Fanny Purdy Palmer secretary. It met again March 14, to hear reports on the conferences of the members with professors of the university, and the result showed a considerable number of them in favor of the project. To influence public opinion the committee published statistics showing that thirty young women of Rhode Island were attending colleges outside the State, and argued that most of these who now were “exiles” would gladly receive the higher education at home.

The movement was accelerated by the act of four young girls, Elizabeth Hoyt, Henrietta R. Palmer, Emma L. Meader and Helen Gregory, who took by permission the classical course in the Providence High School, at that time limited to boys; and in 1887 addressed a petition prepared by David Hoyt, the principal, to the president of the university, urging that when their prepara-