In April, 1850, a convention was held in Salem, Ohio. J. Elizabeth Jones, Mary Ann Johnson, and Josephine Griffing were the leading spirits, all women of high moral character and intellectual cultivation. Mary Ann Johnson had lectured to large audiences throughout the country on physiology. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Griffing were both able writers and speakers. These women circulated petitions in that State, and addressed the Legislature demanding woman's right to her property, wages, children, and the elective franchise. In the reports of this convention we find mention made of Maria L. Giddings, daughter of Joshua R. Giddings, who presented an able report on the laws; of Sojourner Truth, Mrs. Stowe's Lybian Sybil, for forty years a slave in New York, and of the Hutchinson family, who enlivened the occasion with their songs.

Among the representative women of the nineteenth century,

ABBY HUTCHINSON

deserves a passing notice. She was born in Milford, New Hampshire, one of a large family of children. Early in the anti-slavery cause, she, with four brothers, began to sing in the conventions. In all those stormy days of mob violence the Hutchinson family was the one harmonizing element. Like oil on the troubled waters, their sweet songs would soothe to silence those savages whom neither appeal nor defiance could awe. Abby made her first appearance in public at an early age. Anti-slavery, woman's rights, temperance, peace, and democracy have been her themes, singing alike in the Old World and the New. To farmers on New England's granite hills, to pioneers on the far-off prairies, to merchant princes in crowded cities, and to kings, queens, and nobles, in palaces and courts, have those girlish lips sung the republican anthem, "All men are created equal." She was a girl of strong character and a nice

sense of propriety in all things. Although until her marriage her life was wholly a public one, yet she never lost the modesty, delicacy, and refinement so peculiarly her own. She was slightly formed, graceful, with a bright, happy face, and most pleasing manners. She had a fair complexion, dark eyes and hair, teeth like rows of pearls, and in fact might be called beautiful. Her voice, though not of great compass and variety, was full, rich, deep, and well modulated.

All admit that "the Hutchinson family" have acted well their part in the cause of reform, and a second generation is singing still. When Abby retired from the stage her mantle fell on her niece Viola, who, having just married, will probably share the fate of her aunt, being according to Blackstone, wholly absorbed in another, and we shall hear from her no more.

The first national convention was held in Brinley Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts, October 23d, and 24th, 1850. This was the first thoroughly organized, and ably sustained convention, for which extensive preparations were made, as the women of the country had learned by that time what was necessary to make a convention a success. Above three hundred persons, men and women, enrolled their names as members. Among them we find William H. Channing, E. D. Draper, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Earle, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, Charles Burleigh, Hannah Darlington, Sarah Tyndall, Sarah R. May, S. C. Sargent, C. M. Shaw, Ellen and Marion Blackwell, Mary Adams, and Sojourner Truth. The proceedings of this convention were remarkable for their earnestness and ability. The reports, published both in England and America, in all the leading journals, first drew the attention of Mrs. John Stuart Mill to this subject, and prompted her able article in the "Westminster Review" on "The enfranchisement of women."

Paulina Wright Davis was chosen president of the conven

tion. Her opening address, an hour in length, was a very con cise, and able presentation of the work to be done, and the manner of doing it.

In this convention every phase of the question was discussed,-work, wages, property, education, and suffrage,by the ablest men and women in the country. After this, National Women's Rights Conventions were held annually in the different States of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Ohio, and as the result the laws in these States were essentially though slowly nrodified. This simultaneous movement in every State, the unanimity of thought and feeling among the ablest women in the country, the striking similarity in the appeals, petitions, resolutions, and speeches, all prove this claim for woman to be one of those great ideas that mark an era in human progress, and not the idiosyncrasy of a few unbalanced minds.

ANTOINETTE BROWN

Was born in Henrietta, Monroe County, New York, May 20th, 1825. At the age of nine years she joined the Congregational church, and sometimes spoke and prayed in the meetings. In childhood she often expressed the wish that she might become a preacher. At the age of sixteen, she taught school during the summer, and attended the academy in Henrietta during the winter. In 1844 she went to Oberlin performing alone her first journey by canal and stage, to begin the experience of college life. While there she taught several branches in the seminary, in order to pay the expenses of her collegiate course. In 1846 she taught in the academy in Rochester. There her first lecture was delivered, in accordance with the custom of the male teachers, to address the pupils and visitors at the close of the terms. Her vacations at Oberlin had been passed in extra study of

Greek and Hebrew. It was here she and Lucy Stone had first met, and formed a friendship that has strengthened with their years. Here they fought together the battles of woman's rights with the students and professors, and sustained each other under all the peculiar hardships of their position. As they afterwards married brothers, and purchased homes in New Jersey, their lives have moved on harmoniously together.

In 1846 she returned to Oberlin to go through a three years' course in theology. For some time the Bible argument on the ministrations of woman had been with her a subject of serious and prayerful consideration. It was customary for the students to receive a license to preach, and before finishing their course they would often speak in the pulpits of the neighborhood.

When Miss Brown asked this license, the professors were grievously exercised. But after much thought and consultation they decided "that she was a resident graduate, pursuing the theological course, but not a member of the theological department, and, consequently, she needed no license from the institution, but must preach or be silent on her own responsibility."

Like General Jackson, she took the responsibility, and preached often in different parts of Ohio, while pursuing her theological course of studies.

After quitting Oberlin she spent four years in private reading and study, preaching and lecturing on various reforms. In 1850 she attended the convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, and made a speech on the enfranchisement of woman. She preached whenever and wherever opportunity offered, without regard to sect, alike in the church at Andover, Music Hall, in Boston, or public halls in Worcester, Cincinnati, and New York. In 1853 she was ordained pastor of a Congregational church in South Butler, Wayne County, New York. The Rev. Luther Lee, Wesleyan minister of Syra

cuse, preached the ordination sermon. Gerrit Smith and Samuel J. May took part in the ceremonies.

'Then," says Mrs. Blackwell, in a note to me recently, "Dr. Cheever openly branded me and my South Butler Church as infidels; and the New York Independent' sustained him, and would only publish a crumb of my reply."

We are happy to say that our noble young friend, Theodore Tilton, was not then editor of that journal.

Miss Brown remained in South Butler but one year, owing to ill health from excessive labor, and painful doubts concerning theological doctrines. As soon as she was re-established in health of body and mind she lectured on reformatory subjects in Cincinnati and elsewhere, and investigated the character and causes of vice in New York, with especial reference to its bearing on woman. The year 1855 was spent in this interesting though painful work, and she published in the "New York Tribune" a number of sketches from life, under the title "Shadows of our Social System."

In 1854 she was a delegate from the Wayne County Society to the World's Temperance Convention, at which Neal Dow presided, in New York. But she was denied her seat, simply because she was a woman. Wendell Phillips and William H. Channing made eloquent speeches in favor of her admission, and she took the platform herself and essayed to speak, but such was the noise and confusion with tongues and canes, and the swaying of the audience to and fro, that all attempts on her part were unavailable.

From the liberal state of public sentiment to-day one can hardly believe it possible that, thirteen years ago, men claiming to be Christian ministers could have so rudely treated a beautiful, highly-educated young girl, a member of the same church with themselves, because she asked that her name might be enrolled with theirs in a World's Temperance Con