for many years, taking an active part in all our Conventions.
REV. MARY T. CLARK.
Mrs. Clark has been an acceptable lecturer and preacher for many years in different parts of the State. She was early a recognized minister among the Congregational Quakers. More recently she has been ordained in the Universalist Church, and enjoys equal rights and honors with the clergymen of that denomination. She is a woman of education and culture, and of English parentage.
EMMA B. SWANK.
Mrs. Swank is one of the most pleasing speakers of Indiana. She is a graduate of Antioch, and while yet in college she gained quite a reputation by her lecturing on Astronomy. She spent several years lecturing to classes of women on Physiology, Anatomy, and Hygiene. Of late, she has devoted herself to Woman Suffrage and Temperance. She served as president of the State Society one year before the war and one since, and has always done good, service to the cause of woman with both pen and tongue.
SARAH E. UNDERHILL.
Mrs. Underhill was first known in Indiana as the editor and proprietor of the Ladies' Tribune at Indianapolis in 1857. She associated with her Amanda Way as office editor, that she might devote her entire time to lecturing. Though she remained in the State but three years, she was widely and favorably known as an earnest and effective speaker on Woman Suffrage and Temperance. When the war began, she was among the first to go to the sick and wounded soldiers. A brief account of her work in the hospitals will be found in the "Women of the War."
JANE MORROW.
Miss Morrow was a pioneer in our movement; attended the Second Convention in 1852. She was not a speaker, but a practical business woman, owning and successfully carrying on a dry-goods store in Richmond for many years. By precept and example, she taught the doctrine of woman's independence and self-reliance. She was a kind, genial, sunny-hearted woman, who made all about her bright and happy, though she was what the world calls an "old maid." In 1867, she died suddenly, without a moment's warning or parting word; but "Aunt Jane," as she was familiarly called, will long be remembered in her native town.
MARY B. BIRDSALL
was secretary of the Convention of 1852, and held that position for three years. She purchased The Lily, a Woman's Rights paper, of Amelia Bloomer, in 1855, and published it for three years. Her home is in Richmond.
MARY ROBINSON OWEN.
Mrs. Owen, wife of Robert Dale Owen, was not known to the public until after the war. It is said, however, that she suggested and helped prepare the amendments to the laws with reference to woman's property rights, that her husband carried through our Legislature. She had a strong, clear intellect, and her lectures were more argumentative and pointed than rhetorical and flinched. She sympathized with and aided her husband in all his reformatory movements, and was his equal in mental power. She was one of the vice-presidents of our Indiana State Woman Suffrage Association at the time of her death, 1871.
MARY F. THOMAS.
Mary F. Thomas, M.D., was born October 28. 1816, in Montgomery County, Maryland. Her parents, Samuel and Mary Myers, were members of the Society of Friends, and resided in their early days in Berks and Chester Counties, in Pennsylvania. Her father was the associate of Benjamin Lundy, in organizing and attending the first anti-slavery meeting held in Washington, at the risk of their lives.
Desiring to place his family beyond the evil influences of slavery, he moved to Columbiana County, Ohio. He purchased a farm there; his daughters assisted him in his outdoor labors in the summer, and studied under his instructions in the winter. While in Washington he frequently took his daughters to the capitol to listen to the debates, which gave them interest in political questions. Mary was early roused to the consideration of woman's wrongs by the unequal wages paid to teachers of her own sex. In 1845 she was much moved in listening to the preaching of Lucretia Mott at a yearly meeting in Salem, Ohio, and resolved that her best efforts should be given to secure justice for woman.
In 1839 she was married to Dr. Owen Thomas. She has three daughters, all well educated, self-reliant women. Her youngest daughter, a graduate of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, took the Greek prize in the intercollegiate contest in 1874. As Mrs. Thomas' husband was a physician, she studied medicine with him, and graduated at the Penn Medical College of Philadelphia in 1854. She was the first woman to take her place in the State Medical Association as a regularly admitted delegate. She is a member of the Wayne County Medical Association; has been physician for "The Home for Friendless Women" in the city of Richmond for nine years, and has filled the office of City Physician by the appointment of the Commissioners for several years.
Though deeply interested in the woman suffrage reform, owing to her domestic cares and medical studies she could not attend any public meetings until 1857; since that time she has been one of the most responsible standard-bearers, and for several years President of the State Association.
Mrs. Thomas was always a conscientious abolitionist; the poor fugitive from bondage did not knock at her door in vain. The temperance reform, too, has had her warm sympathy and the benefit of her pure example. She is a member of the Grand Lodge of Good Templars, and has held important offices in that Order, having been a faithful disciple in spreading the gospel of temperance over forty years, always a member of some organization.
During the war of the rebellion she gave herself in every way that was open to woman to the loyal service of her country. As assistant physician in hospitals, looking after the sick and wounded, and in sanitary work at home, she manifested as much patriotism as any man did on the battle-field. After her long experience, she comes to the conclusion, that with the ballot in her own hand, with the power to coin her will into law, a woman might do a far more effective work in preventing human misery and crime, than she ever can accomplish by indirect influence, in merely mitigating the evils man perpetuates by law.
(From the Liberator of May, 1856).
RIGHTS OF WOMEN IN WISCONSIN.
Minority Report of C. L. Sholes, from the "Committee on Expiration and Re-enactment of Laws," to whom were referred sundry petitions, praying that steps may be taken to confer upon women the right of suffrage in Wisconsin.
The minority of the Committee on Expiration and Re-enactment of Laws, beg leave to report:
The theory of our government, proclaimed some eighty years since, these petitioners ask may be reduced to practice. The undersigned is aware that the opinion has been announced from a high place and high source, that this theory is, in the instrument which contains it, a mere rhetorical flourish, admirable to fill a sentence and round a period, but otherwise useless and meaningless; that so far from all mankind being born free and equal, it is those only who have rights that are entitled to them; those yet out of the pale of that fortunate condition being intended by Providence always to be and remain there. But notwithstanding this opinion has the weight of high authority, and notwithstanding the practice of the American people has thus far been in strict accordance with such opinion, the undersigned believes the theory proclaimed is not simply a rhetorical flourish, nor meaningless, but that it means just what it says; that it is true, and being true, is susceptible of an application as broad as the truth proclaimed.
All humankind, says the theory, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Other governments proclaim the divine right of kings, and assume that man is the mere creature of the government, deriving all his rights from its concessions, and forever subject to all its impositions, while this government (or at least its theory) elevates all men to an equality with kings, brings every man face to face with the author of his being and the arbiter of his destiny, deriving his rights from that
