second hearing on the right of suffrage for women was
held the following week before the same committee. Thomas W.
Higginson made an address and Caroline Kealey Dall read an essay.

In 1858, Stephen A. Chase of Salem, from the same Committee on the
Qualifications of Voters, made a long report on the petitions. This
report closed with an order that the State Board of Education make
inquiry and report to the next legislature "whether it is not
practicable and expedient to provide by law some method by which
the women of this State may have a more active part in the control
and management of the schools." There is nothing in legislative
records to show that the State Board of Education reported
favorably; but from the above statement it appears that ten years
before Samuel E. Sewall's petition on the subject, a movement was
made towards making women "eligible to serve as members of
school-committees."

The petitions for woman's rights were usually circulated by women
going from house to house. They did the drudgery, endured the
hardships and suffered the humiliations attendant upon the early
history of our cause; but their names are forgotten, and others
reap the benefit of their labors. These women were so modest and so
anxious for the success of their petitions, that they never put
their own names at the head of the list, preferring the signature
of some leading man, so that others seeing his name, might be
induced to follow his example. Among the earliest of these silent
workers was Mary Upton Ferrin. Her petitions were for a change in
the laws concerning the property rights of married women, and for
the political and legal rights of all women. In 1849 she prepared a
memorial to the Massachusetts legislature in which are embodied
many of the demands for woman's equality before the law, which have
so often been made to that body since that time.[133]

In 1861 the legislature debated a bill to allow a widow, "if she
have woodland as a part of her dower, the privilege of cutting wood
enough for one fire." This bill failed, and the widow, by law, was
_not_ allowed to keep herself warm with fuel from her own wood-lot.
In 1863 a bill providing that "a wife may be allowed to be a
witness and proceed against her husband for desertion," was
reported inexpedient, and a bill was passed to _prevent_ women from
forming copartnerships in business. In 1865, Gov. John A. Andrew,
seeing the magnitude of the approaching woman questi