have nothing but my memory to depend on as to that; but I was
pretty much alone here in those days, on the woman suffrage
question. Who the other signers were I made an attempt to find
out in the secretary of state's office the other day, but found
that it would take days, instead of the few hours I had at my
command. I find in my journal a reference to Lucy Stone and Mr.
Blackwell addressing the committee in the House of
Representatives, and that was the committee that made the report
afterwards published in _The Revolution_. Mr. Croffut made the
opening address on the day of the hearing. He was always ready to
aid us in whatever way he could, and I felt grateful to him, for
a helping hand was doubly appreciated in those days. I find by
the journal of the House for that year that the vote on the
question was 93 yeas to 111 nays. The name of Miss Susie
Hutchinson heads one petition, with 70 others. How many other
petitions there were that year I do not know, but I believe there
have been several every year since, besides a number of
individual petitions. Since that time the House has voted
favorably on the question twice, at least, but I believe we have
never had a majority in the Senate.

You ask when I first wrote or spoke for the ballot. My first
venture in that line was in 1853. I was then at the age of
twenty-two, living with my sister in Cleveland, O., and had never
given any attention to the subject of woman suffrage, and cared
nothing about it any further than the spirit of rebellion--born
with me--against everything unjust, might be said to have made me
a radical by nature. In the fall of that year a woman's rights
convention met in Cleveland, and I attended it alone, none of the
rest of the family caring to go. In my old journal I find this
entry:

October 7, 1853. Attended a woman's rights convention which
has met here. Never saw anything of the kind before. A Mr.
Barker spent most of the morning trying to prove that
woman's rights and the Bible cannot agree. The Rev.
Antoinette L. Brown replied in the afternoon in defense of
the Bible. She says the Bible favors woman's rights. Miss
Brown is the best-looking woman in the convention. They
appear to have a number of original and pleasing