ite influential persons.

In my hunt through the journals of the two legislative houses I
found in the House journal for 1878 that Mr. Pratt of Meriden had
presented the petition of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac C. Lewis. Mr. Clark
of Enfield, presented the petition of Lucy A. Allen; Mr.
Gallagher of New Haven presented several petitions that year, one
of them being headed by Mr. Henry A. Stillman of Wethersfield,
followed by 532 names, and another by Mrs. D. F. Connor, M. D.
Mr. Broadhead of Glastonbury presented the petition of the Smith
sisters. This unique petition Miss Mary Hall, who was with me in
the secretary's office, chanced to light upon, and she copied it.
It is a document well worth handing down on the page of history,
and runs as follows:

_The Petition of Julia E. Smith and Abby H. Smith, of
Glastonbury, to the Senate of the State of Connecticut:_

This is the first time we have petitioned your honorable
body, having twice come before the House of Assembly, which
the last time gave a majority that we should vote in town
affairs; but it was negatived in the Senate.

We now pray the highest court in our native State that we
may be relieved from the stigma of birth. For forty years
since the death of our father have we suffered intensely for
being born women. We cannot even stand up for the principles
of our forefathers (who fought and bled for them) without
having our property seized and sold at the sign-post, which
we have suffered four times; and have also seen eleven acres
of our meadow-land sold to an ugly neighbor for a tax of
fifty dollars--land worth more than $2,000. And a threat is
given out that our house shall be ransacked and despoiled of
articles most dear to us, the work of lamented members of
our family who have gone before us, and all this is done
without the least excuse of right or justice. We are told
that it is the law of the land made by the legislature and
done to us, two defenceless women, who have never broken
these laws, made by not half the citizens of this State. And
it was said in our Declaration of Independence that
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of
the gove