n at both meetings, were present
and should have come forward with this group. The Rev. Antoinette
Brown Blackwell stated that she had spoken in favor of woman's rights
in 1846. Among the earliest of the pioneers present were John W.
Hutchinson, the last of that famous family of singers; Henry B.
Blackwell, Mrs. Helen Philleo Jenkins (Mich.), Miss Sarah Wall (Mass.)
and Mrs. Hooker. Many of those who arose made brief remarks and the
occasion was one which will not be forgotten by those who witnessed
it.

Among the letters received from the many pioneers still living was one
from Mrs. Abigail Bush, now eighty-eight years old and residing in
California, who presided over the Rochester meeting, Aug. 2, 1848. It
is especially interesting as showing that even so advanced women as
Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, although they dared call such a
meeting, were yet so conservative as to object to a woman's presiding
over it:

TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY, GREETING: You will bear me witness that the
state of society is very different from what it was fifty years
ago, when I presided at the first Woman's Rights Convention. I
had not been able to meet in council at all with the friends
until I met them in the hall as the congregation was gathering,
and then fell into the hands of those who urged me to take part
with the opposers of a woman serving, as the party had with them
a fine-looking man to preside at all of their meetings, James
Mott, who had presided at Seneca Falls. Afterward I fell in with
the old friends, Amy Post, Rhoda de Garmo and Sarah Fish, who at
once commenced labors with me to prove that the hour had come
when a woman should preside, and led me into the church. Amy
proposed my name as president; I was accepted at once, and from
that hour I seemed endowed as from on high to serve.

It was a two days' meeting with three sessions per day. On my
taking the chair, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton left
the platform and took their seats in the audience, but it did not
move me from performing all my duties, and at the close of the
meeting Lucretia Mott came forward, folded me tenderly in her
arms and thanked me for presiding. That settled the question of
men's presiding at a woman's convention. From that day to this,
in all the walks of life, I have been faithful in asserting that
there should be "no taxat