The Fortieth annual convention, Oct. 15-21, 1908, celebrated a notable event, as it was the 60th anniversary of the first Woman's Rights Convention, that famous gathering of July 19-20, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N. Y., the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The celebration was appropriately held in Buffalo, the largest city in the western part of the State, and was one of the most interesting and successful of the organization's many conventions.[56] The evening before it opened the president and directors of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy gave a large reception to the officers, delegates, members and friends of the association. The convention met in the Young Men's Christian Association building but this proved to be entirely too small for the evening sessions, which were held in the large Central Presbyterian Church. The excellent program was the work of Miss Kate Gordon, national corresponding secretary, and the admirable arrangements were due to Mrs. Richard Williams, president for the past eight years of the Political Equality Club, with a corps of local helpers, but an accident on the first day prevented her from welcoming the convention or taking part in its proceedings. With the national president, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, in the chair, it was opened with prayer by the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.[57] Mrs. Helen Z. M. Rodgers, a lawyer of Buffalo, extended a welcome from women in the professions, who, she said, "had only penetrated the ante-rooms and the annexes--the teachers never able to reach the salaries paid to men; the doctors shut out from the advantage of hospital positions; the lawyers allowed to help interpret the laws but not to help make them." "To get much further," she said, "we must be invested with full citizenship." Mrs. John Miller Horton gave a cordial welcome for the City Federation of Women's Clubs, of which she was president, and for the Buffalo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the Daughters of 1812 and the Nellie Custis Branch of the Children of the Revolution, as regent of each of them. She presented to Dr. Shaw a large cluster of American Beauty roses tied with the blue and gold of the federation and the blue and white of the D. A. R., which was accepted in the name of Susan B. Anthony and reverently laid over her portrait that stood on an easel. Dr. Ida C. Bender, president of the Women Teachers' Association, spoke earnestly in behalf of "the army of teachers who are training the future citizens of the republic," and Dr. Shaw commented: "Political nonentities can hardly be expected to inspire a political entity with enthusiasm."