last was midwife to Mrs. Judge Sewall, who was the mother of
nineteen children. Judge Samuel E. Sewall mentions this fact in his
diary, recently published.

[148] Dr. Jackson had a large practice in Boston, and filled for
five years the chair of professor of diseases of children in the
Boston University School of Medicine.

[149] In 1840, a Massachusetts woman could not legally be treasurer
of even a sewing society without having some man responsible for
her. In 1809, it was necessary that the subscriptions of a married
woman for a newspaper or for charities should be in the name of her
husband.

[150] Olympia Brown's own account of this transaction is as
follows: In 1864, soon after my settlement in Weymouth, I
solemnized a marriage. It was the first time a woman had officiated
in this capacity, and there was so much talk about the legality of
the act, that I petitioned the legislature to take such action as
was necessary in order to make marriages solemnized by me legal.
The committee to whom it was referred reported that no legislation
was necessary.

[151] This little book is worthy of mention, from the fact that it
is probably the first publication of its kind in Massachusetts, if
not in America. The whole title of the book is, "Observations on
the Rights of Women, with their appropriate duties agreeable to
Scripture, reason and common sense." Mrs. Crocker, in her
introduction, says: "The wise author of Nature has endowed the
female mind with equal powers and faculties, and given them the
same right of judging and acting for themselves as he gave the male
sex." She further argues that, "According to Scripture, woman was
the first to transgress and thus forfeited her original right of
equality, and for a time was under the yoke of bondage, till the
birth of our blessed Savior, when she was restored to her equality
with man."

This is a very fine beginning, and would seem to savor strongly of
the modern woman's rights doctrine; but, unfortunately, the author,
with charming inconsistency, goes on to say,--"We shall strictly
adhere to the principle of the impropriety of females ever
trespassing on masculine grounds, as it is morally incorrect, and
physically impossible."

[152] In 1836 there was a small woman's club of Lowell factory
operatives, officered and managed entirely by women. This may be a
remote first cause of the origin of the New England Women's Club,
since it bears the same relation to that flo