Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/614

Rh the yearly conventions of the organization in Washington, D. C., she delivered a number of able addresses. In the International Council of Women in 1888 in the session devoted to political conditions, she delivered an address on the "Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States," and gave an unanswerable presentation of the subject. In 1878 she took a leading part and acted as spokesman before the committee of Congress upon a petition asking for legislation in favor of the enfranchisement of women. One of her later efforts in behalf of women was in the Republican National Convention in Chicago, where, in company with Miss Susan B. Anthony, she prepared an open letter reviewing work of women, claiming that they had earned recognition and ending with a powerful plea that the convention would include women in the term "citizens."

When Mr. and Mrs. Hooker celebrated their golden wedding on August 5, 1891, the celebration took place in City Mission Hall, in Hartford, Senator Joseph R. Hawley acting as master of ceremonies. The whole city turned out to honor the venerable couple, whose fame shed a luster on the place they called home. Many prominent persons attended the reception, the judges of the Supreme Court of Connecticut going in a body to tender their respects. The National American Women's Suffrage Association was represented by Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, Miss Phebe Couzins, and many others. Mrs. Hooker's long life was one of zealous toil, heroic endurance of undeserved abuse and exalted effort. She died in 1907, but her name stands for one of the best known exponents of the claims of the women of America who desire the right to vote.

A self-made woman in every sense of the word, was Mrs. Zerelda Gray Wallace, reformer and suffragist. She was born in Millersburg, Bourbon County,