A true story based on two Smith sisters living in Glastonbury, Connecticut in the 1870’s.  The town leaders, all men, decided to impose a tax on only ‘single female landowners’.  The yearly amount would have been $4,000 in today’s dollars.  Refusing to pay, their cows were auctioned off, only to be purchased by the Smith sisters through the benevolence of neighbors who believed they were being treated unfairly.  Their land was seized and each year brought a new fight against the system.  Women were not allowed to vote, not even allowed to say anything at a town meeting.  Their premise was that this was ‘taxation without representation,’ the same thing the colonists had fought one hundred years ago, a reason for the American Revolution.  The story is interesting, but the author’s note at the end of the story is also very interesting.  The Smith family was very, very educated, their father graduated from Yale.  Although this story took place when the Smith sisters were quite elderly, I am surprised that there weren’t some male relatives who weren’t on the town council to make taxation more fair.  Even without relatives, I find it hard to believe a town would actually do that.  But stranger things have happened.  It’s an amazing story.