public service she visited
nearly every county in the State, attending teachers' institutes,
and lecturing upon educational topics with great ability. For
many years women have been eligible to school offices in
California and there is not a county in the State where women
have not filled positions as trustees or been elected to the
office of county superintendent.[497] Mrs. Coleman has been
reelected to that office in Shasta county, and Mrs. E. W.
Sullivan in Mono county has served for several terms.

The first attempt to awaken the public mind to the question of
suffrage for woman was a lecture given by Laura De Force Gordon
in Platt's Hall, San Francisco, February 19, 1868. Although the
attendance was small, a few earnest women were there[498] who
formed the nucleus of what followed. Soon after Mrs. Gordon
addressed the legislature in the senate-chamber at Sacramento,
and made an eloquent appeal for the political rights of women.
Among the audience were many members of the legislature who
became very deeply impressed with the justice of her demand,
including the subsequent governor of the State, George C.
Perkins, then senator from Butte county. Soon afterwards Mrs.
Gordon removed to Nevada, and no more lectures on woman suffrage
were given until the visit of Anna Dickinson in the summer of
1869.

The way was being prepared however, for further agitation by the
appearance of _The Revolution_ in 1868 in New York, which was
hailed by the women of California (as elsewhere) as the harbinger
of a brighter and better era. Its well filled pages were eagerly
read and passed from hand to hand, and the effect of its
startling assertions was soon apparent. Mrs. Pitts Stevens had
about that time secured a proprietary interest in the _San
Francisco Mercury_, and was gradually educating her readers up to
a degree of liberality to endorse suffrage. Early in 1869 she
became sole proprietor, changing the name to _Pioneer_, and threw
the woman suffrage banner to the breeze in an editorial of marked
ability.

The organization of the National Woman Suffrage Association in
New York, May, 1869, gave fresh impetus to the movement, and the
appointment of Mrs. Elizabeth T. Schenck as vice-president for
California by that association, met with the app