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578 to rest from her public labors, but this was not permitted to her. Calls for lectures were frequent, and to these she responded as far as possible, but was obliged to refuse to go long distances on account of there being at that day no public conveyance except the old stage coach. In the winter of 1856, Mrs. Bloomer, by invitation, addressed the legislature of Nebraska on the subject of woman's right to the ballot. The Territorial House of Representatives shortly afterwards passed a bill giving women the right to vote, and in the council it passed to a second reading, but was finally lost for want of time, the limited session drawing to a close and the last hour expiring before the bill could come up for final action. Mrs. Bloomer took part in organizing the Iowa State Suffrage Association, and was at one time its president. Poor health eventually compelled her to retire from active work in the cause. She died on the thirtieth of December, 1894.

Both the parents of Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake were descended from the Reverend Jonathan Edwards, D.D., so her inclination to reform might have been a matter of direct inheritance. But the vehicle she used for her preaching was much milder than the invectives of her distinguished ancestor. She was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, August 12, 1835, but was brought to New Haven, Connecticut, by her widowed mother that she might have every advantage of education. She took the Yale college course with tutors at home, and continued her studies until after she was married in 1855 to Frank Q. Umsted. When in 1859 he died leaving her a widow with two children she had already begun to write; one of her first stories, "A Lonely House," having appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. A novel, "Southwold" had also achieved its success. The large fortune she had inherited was sadly impaired and it was necessary that the young widow begin to work in earnest, writing stories, sketches and letters for several leading periodicals. In 1862 she published a second novel "Rockford" and afterwards several romances. It was not until 1869, after her second marriage to Grenfill Blake, a young merchant of New York, that she became actively interested in the women's suffrage movement. In 1872 she published a novel called "Fettered for Life," designed to show the many disadvantages under which women labor. In 1873, she made an application for the opening of Columbia College to young women, and as an argument she presented a class of qualified girl students. The agitation then begun by Mrs. Blake eventually led to the establishment of Barnard College. In 1879 she was unanimously elected president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, and she held that office for eleven years. She has also lectured a great deal, but being a woman of strong affection and marked domestic tastes, her speaking out of New York has been done almost wholly in the summer when her family was naturally scattered. Her lectures printed under the title of "Woman's Place To-Day," had a large sale. Among the many reforms in which she has been actively interested has been that of securing matrons to take charge of women detained in police stations. As early as 1871 Mrs. Blake spoke and wrote on this subject but it was not until 1891 that public sentiment was finally aroused to the point of passing a law enforcing this much-needed reform.