t a
short time, it secured petitions and drew the attention of
legislators elect--Senator McMeans and C. B. Slocumb--to the
general interest felt in Jefferson county. The second society was
formed in Thayer county. The sisters, Mrs. Davis and Mrs.
Cornell, of Alexandria, called a meeting, which resulted in
organizing the Alexandria Free Suffrage Association, Sept. 27,
1878. Prof. W. D. Vermilion and E. M. Correll of Hebron, lectured
before this society, but, most of the members living in the
country, the meetings were given up when the cold weather set
in.

The first working society was that of Hebron, which was organized
by Mrs. Stanton, April 15, 1879. The citizens were prepared for
the undertaking. E. M. Correll, editor of the Hebron _Journal_,
in editorials, in lectures by himself and others, had urged on
women the dignity and importance of interesting themselves in
their own behalf. The society had been encouraged by lectures
from Miss Couzins and Mrs. H. T. Wilcox, the latter taking the
ground then comparatively new, that woman's ballot is necessary
for successful temperance effort. Meetings were kept up regularly
and with increasing membership, and the Thayer County Woman
Suffrage Association won a deserved triumph in being primarily
connected with the origin and successful passage of the joint
resolution of 1881. The legislators elected in 1880 were Senator
C. B. Coon, and Representative E. M. Correll. Both these
gentlemen were active members of the Thayer County Association,
and after their election a committee waited on them, pledging
them to special effort during the coming session.

Meanwhile a general favorable sentiment was growing. In noting
this it would not be right to omit mention of Mrs. Harbert's
"Woman's Kingdom," in the Chicago _Inter-Ocean_, which circulated
largely among country readers. The Omaha _Republican_ passed, in
1876, under the editorial management of D. C. Brooks, who, with
his wife, had been prominent in the suffrage work of Michigan and
Illinois. The favorable attitude of this paper, and the articles
which Mrs. Brooks from time to time contributed to it, exerted a
wide influence. In the winter of 1881, Mrs. Brooks established a
woman's department in the _Republican_ which crystallized the
growin