Mrs. Mary J. Green, mentally and physically alert at 81 years, tell most interestingly of the pioneer suffrage work. It was very exceptional that a struggling western village should provide intellectual treats and bring speakers of national prominence to this place.Hebron was the first town in the state to organize a Woman Suffrage Association, April 15, 1879.
On October 30, 1877, the famous Susan B. Anthony delivered a lecture here on "Bread Versus the Ballot." A woman of wealth and culture, who learned that women's efforts for temperance were powerless without the ballot, she devoted her talents and means to this work, and traveled the western states on a buckboard.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Phoebe Cousins were also national characters who addressed Hebron audiences. Mrs. Green says it was her privilege to entertain a number of these women in her home, and she found them to be charmingly refined and free from the "mannish" characteristics which some people thought inseparable from the appearance of women in public.
February 1, 1881, E. M. Correll, representative from Thayer county, secured the passage of a woman suffrage amendment through the Nebraska house and senate, but it was defeated in the referendum at the polls. In recognition of his efforts, Mr. Correll was elected president of the American Woman Suffrage association at Louisville, Kentucky, in October, 1881. For several years he edited the Woman's Journal at Lincoln.
Mrs. Green says the community was always progressive and literary. Among the officers of the suffrage association in 1881 were: Susan E. Ferguson, president; Harriet G. Huse, vice-president; Barbare J. Thompson, secretary; Lucy L. Correll, treasurer. It seems far to look ahead for the fruition of one's efforts, but no so long to look backward after the achievement of hopes.
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