Blackwell Family
Lucy Stone


Subject File
Boston School Board Voting ControversyMassachusetts in the Woman Suffrage
Movement.

 p. 35.
"In 1879, desiring to vote under the new
law allowing women to vote for school committees,
she applied for registration under her own name,
of Lucy Stone. The Registrar of voters gave the opinion
that as her married name was Blackwell, her
request could not be granted, and the matter being
referred to the City Solicitor of Boston, he confirmed
this view of the subject. Not willing to make
this concession of principle to an old tradition,
Lucy Stone . . .  . never became a voter."


Current
Comments of the press.
"Thus far not more than fifty women have presented
themselves for registration in order to be able 
to vote for the Boston School Board at the next
municipal election. The first is to present herself
was Mrs Lucy Stone (Blackwell), but she was told
that she could not be registered without presenting
to the registrars as a paid tax-bill -- a matter
which she failed to do. She was passed by, and
another lady, Mrs. Dr. Spaulding, who had come
fortified with the necessary city document, received 
the honor of a first registry, which she
(Mrs. Blackwell) had aspired to, and to which she
was entitled by virtue of long and leading services
in the cause of woman suffrage. Mrs. Stone (Blackwell)
has made no reply to the secretary of the assessors
in regard to the opinion given by the city solicitor,
which is that she must be assessed in her husband's
name, and so registered, in order to vote with her
sex, who will have complied with the legal requirements.
It is understood that she has advisedwith-her counsel as to her rights in these premises,
and one venerable gentleman of the legal profession
told the writer that he is now looking up
the laws of the land and the English authorities upon
the subject. Mrs. Stone (Blackwell) has lady friends
who insist that she should not be hindered from
being legally assessed and registered as Lucy Stone,
because that is the name which she has always been
known by in public and in society. Rather than
give up her idiosyncratic theory, however, the persistent
leader of the woman's suffrage movement
will sacrifice the vote for which she has labored
for forty years. At least her friends say that she
will not vote unless as Lucy Stone."

The [Boston?] Post of June 5, 1879, under the
caption "Pride or Principle" has this to say:
"The habit of agitation no matter how worthy
its cause, has this disadvantage that it remains inconveniently
active when its ostensible and legitimate
object is attained. The recent problem which Mrs.


Lucy Stone Blackwell has forced upon the City
Registrars and the City Solicitor, and which we think
they have solved in the only way possible under the
circumstances, illustrates our meaning. We yield to
no one in our respect for the lady who has labored
with so much devotion, energy, intelligence and
sincere conviction to break down the barriers
which she has believed kept her sex from its full
rights and privileges. She has done more perhaps
than any other single person to bring into the cause
of woman suffrage a host of powerful friends, and
with their aid she has elevated it into the horizon
of a hopeful future. More than that, she has led
her forces up to the attack again and again undismayed
by repeated repulses until the outworks
have been brilliantly carried, and we
congratulate her upon the result. But now she
seems disposed to demand rather unusual
terms before she will avail herself of what she
has been so long in winning. . . . . We hope
there will be no change in the present customby which the wife takes the name of her husband.
Were this convenient arrangement to cease, almost
endless family complications would ensue. If it
is a hardship for a wife to take the name of her husband
it would be equally so for a daughter to be compelled
to take the name of her father, and if all the children
in a family were allowed to choose any names 
they pleased in the family or out of it, there would
in time be a very pretty chaos of nomenclature.
It is better for society and better for the family 
that some definite system of names should
exist, and what plan could be proposed more
simple and convenient than the scheme which
man obtains? We trust Mrs. Blackwell will
not insist upon this freak or fancy, but will
use the new strength that is given her in a 
sensible and straightforward manner to accomplish
the great good of which she is capable."


Lucy Stone's name.

A lengthy article published in the New York Tribune 
of November 25, 1879 is from the pen of an occasional
correspondent of Boston. Parts of it are as follows:
"One of the most interesting features of the coming
municipal election [in Boston] will be the voting of 
women for members of the School Committee. This
privilege has long been contented for by the friends of
woman suffrage, the prominent leaders of the
movement being Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
Wendell Phillips and others, and Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs.
Claflin, wife of ex-Governor Claflin, Edna Dow Cheney
and such well-known reformers, whose views 
have for some time found expression in the columns
of the lively and bright local publications, The Woman's
Journal. This is the first opportunity ever afforded the
women of Massachusetts to appear at the polls, and this
privilege was only wrested from the Legislature at its
last session. The committees of the two Houses have 
been besieged for years by the persistent leaders
of the cause and it is doubtless due to the importunity 
off the applicants, rather than to any widespread conversion of popular sentiment to their
theories, that this point was at last conceded to them.
. . . If the members of the Legislature believed however,
that this slight concession of allowing women to vote
for members of the school committee would relieve
them of further hearings, and free them from the 
unpleasant duty of refusing applications from women
who desired all the civil rights which men enjoy, they
quite failed to appreciate that charming persistency
which is one of the prominent characteristics of the
gentler sex, and showed themselves very superficial 
students of human nature. The incoming Legislature
is likely to be badgered quite as much as any of its 
predecessors upon this subject. . . . . Leaving secured what
they asked for, the leaders of the movement are dissatisfied 
with the price they have had to pay for it, and
will demand of the Legislature that the poll-tax on
women shall be reduced from the present rate of $2
to half that amount. They argue that if a man
by paying $2 can enjoy the right to vote for
National, State and Municipal officers, a 


woman ought not to pay more than $1 to vote
for school committee merely, and in the country
towns, where the "town meetings" are not held 
until March, women are generally delaying
registration until they know whether the price
of a ballot is to be reduced or not. . . . .
Although the assessors have little sympathy 
with the new movement. . . . . no pains have been 
spared to give the women fair play. . . . . No 
complaints have been made of the way in which
the law has been interpreted and carried out.
Exception must be made, however, in the 
case of Mrs. Lucy Stone Blackwell, who has proved
a thorn of great magnitude in the sides of the unhappy
officers of the election. The trouble all arises out of her
name. When she married Mr. Blackwell, it was with
the understanding, to which both parties submitted, that
she should retain her maiden name, and be known
at all times as Lucy Stone. . . . . There is no statute
in this State which compels a woman, on marrying, 
to take her husband's name, but common law sanctionsthe custom; a woman can transfer her right 
of dower or be a party to a legal transaction only in
the name which her husband gives her, and only
a special enactment of the Legislature can restore 
her right to be known by the name she owned before
marriage. In view of these facts therefore, the assessors
and registrars refused to accept her taxes
or place her name on the voting list except as
Mrs. Blackwell, and this name she strenuously
refused to acknowledge. By a curious train of circumstances
which have not been made public, she
appears on the assessors' books as "Lucy Stone" to the
great confusion of the officials. When it became
known that she was determined to vote as Lucy
Stone, or not at all, strict orders were given that
under no circumstances was she to be allowed
the privilege of the law except as Mrs. Blackwell.
Before this however, a clerk in the Assessors'
office who had never heard of her except as Lucy Stone
happened to be on duty when she presented herself to
pay her taxes, and as he happened to have heard


nothing of the order he made out her bill in her
maiden name, received her dues and receipted
for them. Armed with the receipted bill she moved
from the Board of Registration, and by a most
extraordinary piece of good luck found in the office
the only clerk who would take her name -- a
young man who had just come into the office,
and who had somehow failed to hear the prohibition.
As soon as the officials found out how easily she
had evaded all their snares -- and innocently 
too, for she had heard nothing of the safeguards
taken against her -- they were naturally much 
chagrined, and were compelled to resort to the unpleasant
necessity of erasing her name from the
lists and sending her a notification that a 
mistake had been made, and that she must
not attempt to take advantage of it.
This strong insistence upon a name seems
to those outside the movement rather a fine point,
but it has always been a matter of principle with
Mrs. Stone. She has refused to serve as a memberof the School Committee, because, if she became
a candidate, she must allow her name to be
used as Mrs. Blackwell, and several legal
transactions of her husband have nearly fallen 
through because of her refusal to sign documents 
with any other than her maiden name. . . . . .