omen were already legal.[150] Thus the
legislature of the State established the precedent, that "he" meant
"she" under the law, in one instance at least. Phebe Hanaford, Mary
H. Graves and Lorenza Haynes were the first Massachusetts women to
be ordained preachers of the gospel. Rev. Lorenza Haynes has been
chaplain of the Maine House of Representatives.

The three best-known women sculptors in this country were born and
bred in Massachusetts. They are Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley and
Anne Whitney. Harriet Hosmer was the first to free herself from the
traditions of her sex and follow her profession as a sculptor. When
she desired to fit herself for her vocation there was no art school
east of the Mississippi river where she could study anatomy, or
find suitable models. Margaret Foley, who, amid the hum of the
machinery of the Lowell cotton mills, first conceived the idea of
chiseling her thought on the surface of a "smooth-lipped shell,"
was obliged to go to Rome in order to get the necessary instruction
in cameo-cutting. There her genius developed so much that she began
to model in clay, and soon became a successful sculptor in marble.
Lucy Larcom, in her "Idyl of Work," says of Miss Foley:

"That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome
Faces in marble, classic as her own."

One of her finest creations is "The Fountain," first exhibited in
Horticultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia,
1876. A free art-school was opened to women in Boston in 1867, and
Anne Whitney was not obliged to go to Rome for instruction in the
appliances of her art. Harriet Hosmer and Margaret Foley have both
made statues which adorn the public buildings and parks of their
native country; and Anne Whitney's statues of Samuel Adams and
Harriet Martineau are the crowning works of her genius.

No great work has yet been done by Massachusetts women in oil
painting; but in water colors, and in decorative art, many have
excelled, first prizes in superiority of design having been taken
by them over their masculine competitors. Lizzie B. Humphrey,
Jessie Curtis, Sarah W. Whitman and Fidelia Bridges, take high rank
as artists. Helen M. Knowlton, a pupil of William M. Hunt, is a
skillful artist in charcoal and has produced some fine pictures.
Women form a large proportion of the students in the school of
design recently opened in Boston. A great deal of the ornamental
painting now so fashionable on cards and all fancy