Editing Lucy Stone (section)

=== Keeping her name ===
Stone viewed the tradition of wives abandoning their own surname to assume that of their husbands as a manifestation of the legal annihilation of a married woman's identity. Immediately after her marriage, with the agreement of her husband, she continued to sign correspondence as "Lucy Stone" or "Lucy Stone – only."<ref>Stone note appended to Henry B. Blackwell to Augustus O. Moore, May 26, 1855; Stone to Susan B. Anthony, May 30, 1855; Stone to Antoinette L. Brown, August 18, 1855, all in Blackwell Family Papers, Library of Congress.</ref> But during the summer, Blackwell tried to register the deed for property Stone purchased in Wisconsin, and the registrar insisted she sign it as "Lucy Stone Blackwell." The couple consulted Blackwell's friend, [[Salmon P. Chase]], a Cincinnati lawyer and future Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who was not immediately able to answer their question about the legality of her name. So, while continuing to sign her name as Lucy Stone in private correspondence, for eight months, she signed her name as Lucy Stone Blackwell on public documents, and she  allowed herself to be so identified in convention proceedings and newspaper reports. But upon receiving assurance from Chase that no law required a married woman to change her name, Stone made a public announcement at the May 7, 1856, convention of the [[American Anti-Slavery Society]] in Boston that her name remained Lucy Stone.<ref>Million, 2003, pp. 196, 202, 225-26, 304n. 37.</ref> In 1879, when Boston women were granted the franchise in school elections, Stone registered to vote. But officials notified her that she would not be allowed to vote, unless she added "Blackwell" to her signature. This, she refused to do, and so, she was not able to vote. Because her time and energy were consumed with suffrage work, she did not challenge the action in a court of law.<ref>Kerr, 1992, pp. 203-03.</ref>