# The Part Taken by Women in American History/Women as Temperance Workers

Women as Temperance Workers.
From Mrs. Sarah D. La Fetra,
President Woman's Christian Temperance Union, District of Columbia.
"I am especially glad to know that you are writing this book, to do justice to the women workers for the benefit of mankind, as heretofore not enough has been said or written of women's achievements.
Very cordially yours, Sarah D. La Fetra."
FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD.
In the Capitol at Washington, a statue of Frances E. Willard stands in the great circle of honor to represent the prairie state of Illinois, and in the great circles of reformers gathering through all ages, her place is forever secure. The early home life of Frances Willard was pre-eminently Christian. Her father, Josiah F. Willard, was a descendant of Major Simon Willard, of Kent, England, who, with Reverend Peter Bulkeley, settled in Concord, Massachusetts, less than fifteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Major Willard was a man of great force of character and of distinguished public service and his descendants included many men and women who inherited his talents with his good name.
Inheriting many of the notable gifts of both parents and of more remote ancestors, Frances Willard grew up in an atmosphere most favorable to the development of her powers. Early in her life her parents moved to Oberlin, Ohio, that the father might carry out a long cherished plan of further study ​ and that the family might have the advantages of intellectual help and stimulus. But in May, 1846, Mr. Willard's health demanded a change of climate and life in the open. He moved his family to Wisconsin, then a territory, and settled on a farm, near the young village of Janesville. Miss Willard wrote many years afterward of their pioneer life here on a farm, half prairie, half forest, on the banks of the Rock River. She says that her career as a reformer had its root and growth in the religious character of the family in this log cabin neighborhood. Their abode was named Forest Home, and in the earlier years without what a Yankee would call "near neighbors" the family were almost entirely dependent upon their own resources for society. Mrs. Willard was poetical in her nature and she made herself at once mentor and companion to her children. The father, too, was near to nature's heart in a real and vivid fashion of his own. And so the children, reared in a home which was to their early years a world's horizon, lived an intellectual and yet a most helpful life. Miss Willard enjoyed entire freedom from fashionable restraint until her seventeenth year, clad during most of the year in simple flannel suits, and spent much of the time in the open air, sharing the occupations and sports of her brothers. Her first teachers were her educated parents; later an accomplished young woman was engaged as family teacher and companion for the children. Her first schoolmaster was a graduate of Yale College. At the age of seventeen she, with her sister Mary, was sent from home to school, entering Milwaukee Female College, in 1857. She completed her education at the Northwestern Female College, in Evanston, Illinois. After several years of teaching, her soul was stirred by the reports of the temperance crusade in Ohio during the winter of 1874, and in this she felt she heard the divine call of her life work. Of all her friends, no one stood by her in her wish to join the crusade except Mrs. Mary A. ​ Livermore who sent her a letter full of enthusiasm for the new line of work, and predicted her success therein. In the summer of 1874, while in New York City, a letter reached her from Mrs. Louise S. Rounds, of Chicago, who was identified there with the young temperance association. "It has come to me," wrote Mrs. Rounds, "as I believe, from the Lord, that you ought to be our president. We are a little band without money or experience, but with strong faith. If you would come, there will be no doubt of your election." So it happened that Miss Willard turning from the most attractive offers entered the open door of philanthropy in the West. Within a week she had been made president of the Chicago Woman's Christian Temperance Union. For months she carried on this work without regard to pecuniary compensation, many a time going without her noon-day lunch downtown, because she had no money, and walking miles because she had not five cents to pay for a street car ride. Yet she declared that period the most blessed of her life so far, and that her work baptised in suffering grew first deep and vital, and then began to widen. With the aid of a few women she established a daily gospel meeting in Lower Farwell Hall for the help of the intemperate, and her gospel talks came to be in demand far and wide. Every dollar earned by writing or lecturing not needed for current expenses was devoted to the relief of the needy or to the enlargement of her chosen work. The Chicago Woman's Christian Temperance Union from that day of small things in the eyes of the world, has gone on and prospered until now it is represented by a wide range of established philanthropy.
Miss Willard continued wielding a busy pen, speaking in Chautauqua, addressing summer camps in New England and the Middle States, and in 1876, while engaged in Bible study and prayer, she was led to the conviction that she ought to speak for women's ballot as a protection to the home from the tyranny ​of drink, and in the autumn, in the national convention, in Newark, N. J., disregarding the earnest pleadings of conservative friends, she declared her conviction in her first suffrage speech. She originated the motto, "For God and home and native land." This was first the motto of the Chicago Union. It was then adopted by the Illinois State Union; in 1876 beame that of the National Union, and was adapted to the use of the World's Union in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass., in 1891, then becoming, "For God, and home and every land." Miss Willard was one of the founders of the National Woman's Temperance Union Paper, Our Union in New York, and of the Signal, the organ of the Illinois Union. These, in 1882, were merged in the Union Signal which is now one of the most widely circulated papers in the world.
In the autumn of 1877 she declined the nomination of the presidency of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, but she accepted it in 1879, when she was elected in Indianapolis, Ind., as the exponent of a liberal policy including state rights for the state societies, representation on a basis of paid membership and the advocacy of the ballot for women. At that time no Southern state except Maryland was represented in the national society and the total yearly income was only about $12.00. In 1881 Miss Willard made a tour of the Southern states, which reconstructed her views of the situation and conquered conservative prejudice and sectional opposition. Thus was given the initial impetus to the formation of the home protection party which it was desired should unite all good men and women in its ranks. During the following year Miss Willard completed her plan of visiting and organizing every state and territory in the United States, and of presenting her cause in every town and city that had reached a population of ten thousand. She visited the Pacific coast, and California, Oregon, and even British Columbia, were thoroughly organ​ ized, and more than twenty-five thousand miles of toilsome travel enabled her to meet the national convention, in Detroit, Michigan, in October, 1883, to celebrate the completion of its first decade with rejoicing over the complete organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in each one of the forty-eight sub-divisions of the United States, Alaska not then included. In 1885 the national headquarters were removed from New York to Chicago and the White-Cross movement was adopted as a feature of the work of the national union. Because no other woman could be found to stand at the helm of this new movement, Miss Willard did so. No other movement of the work developed so rapidly. A great petition for the better legal protection of women and girls was presented to Congress with thousands of signatures. Mr. Powderly, chief of the Knights of Labor, through Miss Willard's influence, sent out ninety-two thousand petitions to local assemblies of the Knights to be signed, circulated and returned to her. Through the efforts of the temperance workers the same petition was circulated and presented for legislative action in nearly every state and territory.
The sacrifices which Miss Willard has so freely made for this work were repaid to her in abundant measure. She was called by Joseph Cook the most widely known and best-beloved woman in America, and the widespread influence of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in England, Canada and America is an imperishable monument to her place among the great of the world.
The end of the career of Francis Willard, so far as her earthly life was concerned, was as truly religious as the great days of her power. As she lay upon her last bed of sickness after a hard day, she suddenly gazed intently on a picture of the Christ directly opposite her bed. Her eyes seemed to meet those ​ of the compassionate Saviour and with her old eloquence, in the stillness, she said:
"I am Merlin, and I am dying,
But I'll follow the gleam."
And a little later she said to the friends who gathered about her, "Oh, let me go away, let me be in peace; I am so safe with Him. He has other worlds, and I want to go." And so still following the Christ gleam with a brave heart and a courageous step, the dauntless soul went on to follow her Lord to all worlds, whithersoever He may lead her.
ANNIE ADAMS GORDON.
Miss Annie Adams Gordon, vice-president of the National Women's Christian Temperance Union and honorary secretary of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union, is one of the most unique figures in the temperance reform of to-day. Miss Gordon came into the work with Miss Willard. In 1877 when Miss Willard was conducting a women's meeting for Mr. Moody, there was no one to play the organ. An earnest appeal was made and after waiting some moments, a young girl stepped forward and offered, saying. "As no one volunteers, I will do the best I can." This was Annie Gordon. Miss Willard was so attracted by her modesty and sweet nature that she persuaded her to come to her as private secretary, and thus began her work in the Women's Christian Temperance Union of this country.
Miss Gordon was born in Boston but early in her childhood her family removed to Auburndale, one of the suburbs of the former city. She was educated by a course in the Newton High School, Mount Holyoke College and Lasell Seminary. The many and varied offices held by Miss Gordon indicate ​ the breadth of her view and the wide scope of her abilities, and identified with the interests of the Women's Christian Temperance Union almost from its inception, she has conserved and served these interests with love and loyalty. Loyalty may be said to be the crowning virtue of her character, a character possessing many of those sterling qualities which we have come to regard as the birthright of the native-born New Englander.
Through her extensive travels on behalf of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Miss Gordon has acquired an added breadth and culture which make her equally at home in social and official life. As honorary secretary of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union, Miss Gordon enjoys almost a world-wide reputation, but it is as "the friend of the children" that she is best known on both sides of the Atlantic.
​ Miss Gordon is altogether a strong, well-poised, gentle and lovable woman, and has made for herself a noble place in the world's work. Willard Fountain, which stands at the entrance of Willard Hall, in Chicago, is the embodiment of her own thought and work. The money for its erection was raised by having the children give their dimes and sign total abstinence pledges on red, white and blue cards, which were used to decorate the Women's Christian Temperance Union rooms at the Columbian Exposition.
She was Miss Willard's constant companion during the last years and especially the last weeks of Miss Willard's life. The life use of Rest Cottage, at Evanston, 111., was given to Miss Gordon by Miss Willard, but she has never used it as a source of income to herself, but has held the gift as a sacred trust, keeping the property in order, and providing a caretaker, so that tourists and friends of the Women's Christian Temperance Union may visit the rooms and home made sacred by Miss Willard.
LILLIAN M. N. STEVENS.
Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens, national president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was born in Dover, Me., and has always made her home within the borders of the Pine Tree state. Like so many women of the New England states, Mrs. Stevens' first public work was in the schoolroom as a teacher, but she early left this sphere and at the age of twenty-one married Mr. M. Stevens, of Stroudwater, at that time a charming little suburb of Portland, Me. Born a prohibitionist, Mrs. Stevens early began her temperance activities and the following data holds an interest for all : "Mrs. Stevens first met Miss Willard at Old Orchard, Me., in the summer of 1875, and there aided in the organization of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which she was elected treasurer. She held this position for three years.
"For many years Mrs. Stevens was reckoned as Neal Dow's chief coadjutor, and since his death she is recognized throughout the state as the leader of the prohibition forces. Indeed, in the well-fought battle of 1884 which placed prohibition in the state constitution, Mrs. Stevens won for herself a fame as organizer and agitator hardly second to Neal Dow himself. Some of the triumphs of the Maine Woman's Christian Temperance Union under her leadership have been the raising of the age of protection to sixteen years, a strong Scientific-Temperance-Instruction law, and the constitutional amendment to which we have already referred." ​ Mrs. Stevens, in addition to her temperance work, is prominently identified with many other reform and philanthropic movements of her city and state. She is one of the chief promoters of the Temporary Home for Women and Children in Portland and the State Industrial School for girls. She represented the state of Maine on the board of lady managers at the World's Columbian Exposition. To the executive ability essential to successful administration, Mrs. Stevens adds rare gifts as a speaker. Socially as well as officially, she has won recognition from some of old England's noblest houses and her home is the gathering place for the multitude of her co-laborers, her many friends and the philanthropic people of the city of Portland.
MRS. WOOD-ALLEN CHAPMAN.
Mrs. Wood-Allen Chapman, born at Lakeside, near Toledo, Ohio, is the only daughter of Dr. Mary Wood-Allen, the noted lecturer, author and editor. She attended various schools, including what is now known as Lake Erie College, and the Ann Arbor High School, from which she graduated in 1895. The following fall she entered the University of Michigan. Being unable, because of threatened ill-health, to finish the year's work, she accompanied her mother on a trip and made her first appearance on the lecture platform. Two years of college followed, when failing health on the part of her mother called her from her studies to take up the duties of acting editor of the magazine owned and edited by her mother, then known as "The New Crusade," still being published under the name of "American Motherhood." With this she remained associated both in the business management and editorially until her marriage, in 1902, to Mr. William Brewster Chapman, of Cleveland, Ohio.
For several years following this event her home was in northern Michigan, from whence she began to contribute to such periodicals as The Congregationalist, The Ladies' World, The Union Signal, The Christian Endeavor World, etc.
In 1905 New York City became her home and she at once joined The Woman's Press Club, The Mother's Club, The Woman's Forum, The Pen and Brush Club, and The American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis. In August, 1905, her only child, a son, was born. In October, 1907, she was appointed national superintendent of the Purity Department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In this capacity she wrote a large number of articles and leaflets, including her book "The Moral Problem of the Children." In April, 1910, she became editor of a department in the Ladies Home Journal, and in June of the same year, was appointed associate superintendent of the Moral Educational Department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This position, however, together with her national superintendency she resigned in the spring of 1911 on account of threatened ill-health, and in order to devote herself more exclusively to her literary work.
SARAH DOAN LA FETRA
Mrs. Sarah Doan La Fetra, temperance and missionary worker, was born in Sabina, Ohio, June 11, 1843. She is the daughter of Rev. Timothy and Mary ​ Ann Custis Doan, her mother being of the Virginia Custis family. In early youth, religious truths made a deep impression on her mind and heart, and at sixteen she was converted and became an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She improved every opportunity for study in the public schools and prepared herself in the Normal School of Prof. Holbrook in Lebanon, Ohio, for teaching. She taught in a graded school in Fayette County, Ohio, for some time before her marriage with George Henry La Fetra, of Warren County, Ohio. Three sons were born to them, the youngest dying in infancy.
Mrs. La Fetra was a charter member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of the District of Columbia, was the treasurer for some time, and from 1885 served as president for eight years. She was one of the founders of the Florence Crittendon Hope and Help Mission in Washington. All local missionary work has had her sympathetic support. She presided for years over a temperance hotel in the heart of the nation's Capital, and not only did she make it attractive but successful financially.
She is connected with the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church. She has at various times been president of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and of the Ladies' Association. She is the vice-president of the Washington District, Association for Foreign Missions. A recent honor has been conferred on her by the Baltimore branch of the Woman's Foreign Society in voting to erect a building at Bidar, India, to be called "The Sarah D. La Fetra Memorial," in recognition of her effective labors in that society.
Mrs. La Fetra possesses a warm heart and generous public spirit, so that it has been said of her "every woman's work is made lighter by coming in touch with her." She is an intensely patriotic woman and the historic Metropolitan Methodist Church, so well known as the church of Grant, Logan and McKinley, is supplied with beautiful flags largely through her efforts.
FRANCES E. BEAUCHAMP.
Mrs. Beauchamp, reformer and lecturer, was born in Madison County, Kentucky, in the home of her paternal ancestor, General Samuel Estill, and was of the fifth generation born on the old farm which was taken up from the Commonwealth of Virginia by his progenitors. She was an only child, of a highly imaginative temperament and spent her childhood in dreamland. Trees, flowers and animals became sentient beings with a vivid personality, among which she moved and conversed. Hours were daily given to this imaginative existence and but for the fact that her parents were intensely practical and insisted on regular habits and a systematic performance of the tasks assigned, she would probably have gone through life a visionary, and not the highly sensitive, keenly responsive, and eminently practical woman that her mature years have given to her day and generation. She attended a private school in Richmond, Kentucky, until her ninth year and established herself at the head of her classes, being prominently expert in mathematics. She was devoted to her teacher, the Reverend R. L. Breck, and was deeply grieved when her parents removed her from this school to Science Hill, Shelbyville, Kentucky. Her education covered the English branches, ​ music and French. She was graduated from this institution in her sixteenth year and was to have been finished abroad, but instead married during the year, J. H. Beauchamp, a rising young lawyer, who ever shared her ambitions and encouraged her work. She has been devoted to her church and a local philanthropist from her youth. In 1886 she joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in the fall of that year was made corresponding secretary of the State Union. The following year she was appointed superintendent of juvenile work for Kentucky. In 1894 she was made one of the recording secretaries of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in 1895 was elected president of the Kentucky Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which office she is ably filling at the present time. She is a speaker of rare quality, uniting eloquence and force in a logical presentation of facts.
JENNIE McKEE GRANDFIELD.
Mrs. Jennie McKee Grandfield, the wife of the first assistant postmaster general, was born in Troy, Missouri. Her father, Hon. A. V. McKee, a distinguished lawyer of Troy and a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention, died in 1884. Her mother, who is still living, was Miss Clara Wheeler, daughter of Captain Wheeler, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, who served with distinction in the Seminole and other Indian wars. Miss McKee attended the public schools of Troy and was graduated from the Troy Collegiate Institute in 1884. She was a noted belle in a town famed for its beautiful women. On December 23, 1885, she married Charles P. Grandfield and returned with him to Washington, where he was employed in the post office department, and they have since resided in the Capital city.
Mrs. Grandfield has taken an active interest in church work ever since, and at present is a member of the Gurley Memorial Presbyterian Church. Many years ago she joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and has been an active worker in that organization. At present she is treasurer of the District of Columbia Branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She is also a prominent member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and is regent of her chapter in that association. Mrs. Grandfield is possessed of a fine personal presence and is universally beloved by all who know her.
She has two charming daughters. The elder, Mrs. Clara C. White, is the wife of Mr. H. F. White, an attorney-at-law in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania. The younger daughter, Miss Helen, was graduated from the Central High School of Washington in June, 1911.
LELIA DROMGOLD EMIG.
Lelia Dromgold Emig, eldest daughter of Walter A. and Martha Ellen Shull Dromgold, was born near Saville, Perry County, Penna. Left motherless at the age of nine, her father moved to York, Pa., where he has since engaged in extensive manufacturing business. ​ In 1890 she accompanied members of the Young Women's Christian Temperance Union on a Flower Mission visit to the county jail and became interested in temperance reform.
In 1894 she was married to Clayton E. Emig, an attorney-at-law, of Washington, D. C. Here she immediately became associated with the District Woman's Christian Temperance Union and has served as a local president, general secretary of work and state corresponding secretary; and has written several temperance leaflets of merit.
Mrs. Emig is active in church and rescue mission work and is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, tracing her ancestry to the following patriots of the Revolutionary War: John Hench, Jacob Hartman, Zachariah Rice, Nicholas Ickes, John Hartman, Frederick Shull, Thomas Donally and Abigail Rice, of Pennsylvania. "The Dromgold family in America" is her latest published contribution to genealogy.
In 1909 she organized a Society of Children of the American Revolution, which was named by Mrs. William Howard Taft in honor of her distinguished ancestor, Thomas Welles, the fourth colonial governor of Connecticut. The society has 100 members and includes many of the official families of Washington.
Mrs. Emig is the mother of three daughters, Evelyn, Gladys, and Lelia, who are enthusiastic followers in her philanthropic work.
MAUD CLARK HARVEY.
Mrs. Maud Clark Harvey, Sunday school and missionary worker, was born in Plattsburg, New York, August 8, 1865, and is the daughter of Judge George Lafayette and J. Ann Walling Clark, and is the sister of Dr. Nathaniel Walling Clark, now the efficient superintendent of the Italian mission work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Rome, Italy. This fact may possibly serve to accentuate Mrs. Harvey's interest in foreign missions.
She was educated in the public and high schools of Plattsburg and was married to Evert Lansing Harvey, of Boonville, N. Y., on June 10, 1890. Coming to reside in Washington, D. C, they connected themselves with the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, of which Mr. Harvey is recording steward. They have two sons, George Lansing and Walling Evert, who are both students at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., of which institution their uncle, John Cheeseman Clark, is president of the board of trustees.
Mrs. Harvey is district secretary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of Washington District and superintendent of the young people's work of the Baltimore Branch; she teaches a large class of young men in the Sunday school and is recording secretary of the Ladies' Association. She is a Daughter of the American Revolution and is possessed of a fine personal presence and great repose of spirit.
SUSAN LUCRETIA DEWHIRST.
Mrs. Susan Lucretia Dewhirst, missionary worker and organizer, was born in Washington, D. C, on February 19, 1876. and is the daughter of Mary Kath​ erine and Junewell Simonds Hodgkins. Her father was a cousin of Justice Salmon P. Chase. She was educated in the public schools of Washington, graduating in 1892. She is possessed of a deeply sympathetic nature and a philanthropic spirit.
Connecting herself in early life with the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, she became engaged in Sunday school, Epworth League and other church activities. For years she has been the efficient president of one of its missionary societies, "The World Wide Circle," and has been highly successful in raising funds for the support of orphans, Bible women, etc., in foreign lands. She has been acting treasurer of the Washington District Woman's Foreign Missionary Society for some years, and is the statistical secretary for the Baltimore branch of that association.
She was married to William Sherman Dewhirst, of Illinois, in 1897, he having connected himself with government service in Washington, D. C. He is a steward of the Metropolitan Church. They have one son, twelve years of age.
Mrs. Dewhirst is a daughter of the American Revolution and recording secretary of "Our Flag" Chapter. She has fine financial ability and is a welcome ally in every good work.
THERESA A. WILLIAMS.
Mrs. Theresa A. Williams, temperance worker and philanthropist, was born September 22, 1853, in Detroit, Michigan, and is the daughter of J. A. and Martha Hepburn Riopelle. She is descended on her mother's side from the Clements of New England, through whom she has common ancestry with Frances E. Willard, and on her father's side with the well-known French family of Riopelles, of Detroit.
She was blest with a liberal education and a broad and generous public spirit. She was married to Henry E. Williams on November 15, 1876, residing for many years in Washington, D. C. Mr. Williams is assistant chief of the United States weather bureau and has always been in the fullest accord with her temperance and philanthropic work. Mrs. Williams is prominently connected with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the District of Columbia, which she joined in 1882, and is official parliamentarian for that body. She is president of Chapin Union, its pioneer auxiliary, and was for many years district treasurer. She was so efficient that an article printed in the daily papers giving a sketch of the officers who planned the great national convention of 1900 called her the "Sherman Financier." She served for ten years as treasurer of the National Missionary Association of the Universalist Church of which society she is now the president.
EMMA SANFORD SHELTON.
​ She was educated in the public schools of Washington, and in October, 1872, was married to Charles William Shelton, of Boston, Mass. They have one son, Arthur Bentley Shelton.
Mrs. Shelton has been connected with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of the District of Columbia from the time of its organization in 1874. As superintendent of narcotics, she was instrumental in securing the passage by Congress of a law prohibiting the sale of cigarettes and tobacco to minors under sixteen years of age. While working for this law, she secured petitions in its favor signed by nearly every physician in the city, the superintendent of public schools, all the supervising principals and nearly every teacher, as well as by pastors of all denominations. The petitions were ordered printed by the United States Senate and attracted such attention and created such an interest on the subject, that the bill prepared by her was speedily reported by the senate committee with favorable recommendations, and became a law.
Mrs. Shelton was recording secretary of the District of Columbia Woman's Christian Temperance Union for more than twenty years, and for several years was the assistant national superintendent of the department of legislation. When, in 1901, it was decided by the District Union to secure a building of its own, the matter was placed in the hands of a board of trustees, of which Mrs. Shelton was made financial secretary. The building, 522 Sixth Street, which is the Woman's Christian Temperance Union Headquarters, was purchased and entirely paid for within eight years by money raised almost entirely by the members of the organization under the efficient leadership of the president of the board of trustees.
Mrs. Shelton has been for many years an active member of the Vermont Avenue Christian Church, a teacher in the Sunday school, and was for several years president of the board of Deaconesses of that church. She is a vice-president of the Interdenominational Missionary Union of the District of Columbia, and also represents her denomination in the Interdenominational Council of Women for Christian and Patriotic Service, whose headquarters are in New York City. She has recently been appointed on the advisory board of the Washington Seminary for young ladies.
Mrs. Shelton has developed great ability as a leader in temperance and other Christian work, and has the peculiar genius of being able to secure the hearty co-operation of her associates in carrying out the plans formulated by herself and other leaders in the movements in which she is interested for the uplift of humanity.
MARGARET DYE ELLIS.
​ Four children were born to them, two of whom with their father have passed on. During 1873-1874, Mrs. Ellis with her family were sojourning for a time in California. The great "temperance crusade," which had started in Ohio, found its way to the Pacific coast, and Mrs. Ellis, with other women, united in a movement to bring about better conditions in that western state. Upon their return to New Jersey in 1876, she identified herself with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of that state, and in 1880 was elected corresponding secretary of the state union, a position she held for fifteen years. In 1895 she was appointed legislative superintendent for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, a position she still holds. For sixteen years she has spent her winters, or the time during the sessions of Congress at Washington, D. C, looking after the interests of temperance legislation. Mrs. Ellis has done much platform work, also, having spoken at Chautauquas, conventions, etc., in nearly every state in the union. Mrs. Ellis was appointed by President Taft as delegate to the Thirteenth International Non-Alcoholic Congress which met at The Hague in September, 1911, an official certificate from the department of state making her a representative of this government
ELLA ALEXANDER BOOLE.
Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole was born at Van Wert, Ohio, where she attended the graded and high schools, after which she entered the University of Wooster at Wooster, Ohio, being graduated in the classical course in 1878. Her record in college was second in her class of thirty-one, twenty-eight of whom were young men, and she was awarded the first prize in the Junior Oratorical Contest. After her graduation, she served as assistant in the high school in her native town for five years and in 1883 was married to the Rev. William H. Boole, an honored member of the New York East Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Her interest in the temperance work began at the time of the Crusade when as a schoolgirl she came in touch with that mighty movement. Her platform work began in 1883 and since that time she has been actively engaged in the prosecution of religious, temperance and philanthropic work. She has served New York Woman's Christian Temperance Union as an officer since 1885, having been elected corresponding secretary, first vice-president, secretary of the Young Woman's Branch, and in 1898 was elected president of the state. In 1903 she was elected secretary of the Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, United States of America, and her active leadership in home missionary work was felt not only in that church but in Interdenominational home missionary endeavor. In 1909 she was again elected president of New York State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which position she still holds.
ELLA HOOVER THACHER.
Mrs. Ella Hoover Thacher is of old Holland and English descent. She taught school when she was fifteen and one-half years old; was prepared for college, but too young to enter; married at 17; began her temperance work when only five years old; joined church at twelve years of age; taught a Sunday school class of three little children when eleven years of age; moved to Florence, New Jersey, after her marriage and with the help of her husband, organized a Sunday school there, from which a church grew, with an attendance of more than 600 people. They organized settlement work — cooking, sewing classes, boys' and girls' clubs, evangelistic work and helpers in work with boys in library; began Woman's Christian Temperance Union work with children of the town and a Woman's Christian Temperance Union followed; was elected county president of Burlington County Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1893 ; made national superintendent of soldiers' and sailors' work; made world's superintendent of soldiers' and sailors' work; has traveled all over the United States and many foreign countries in interest of this department ; visited every National Soldiers' Home and many State Homes; organized Christian Temperance Unions. Over 10,000 soldiers and sailors in forts, barracks, navy yards and on the large battleships and cruisers have pledged against strong drink through her influence; many of these are filling places of trust in the business world to-day. Some of them are preaching the Gospel of Christ.
Mrs. Thacher has been sent by the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union to Mexico where President Diaz became interested in the work; also sent to Cuba and the Bahama Islands. Visiting government reservations while the canteen was in them, she learned of the dreadful havoc it was making and traveled extensively telling the people of the country of its dreadful wickedness; also arousing her own organization which, with other temperance societies and the Christian people of the nation, helped in the abolishing of the curse.
For twenty-five years she was treasurer of an associational Woman's Foreign Missionary Society; is connected with the National Congress of Mothers and is on many local boards of philanthropic societies. For years she was the only woman on the executive board of the New Jersey State Red Cross Society, having been instrumental in its organization.
MARY HARRIS ARMOR.
Mrs. Mary Harris Armor of Eastman, Georgia, was called "The Southern Joan of Arc." She is state president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and has electrified the whole community, North and South with her matchless eloquence, her unanswerable logic, and her magnetic personality, as she has gone from city to city pleading the cause of prohibition. Mrs. Armor is credited with being the main factor in the passage of the state prohibitory law for Georgia, and she is now in constant demand as a speaker at Chautauquas and all over the country. Mrs. Armor's chief claim to distinction, aside from her platform work, ​ is the fact that she raised a subscription of $7,000.00 in a single evening, for the work of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. One who was present at that memorable meeting, said: "A panic was on, the banks had closed down. Everyone who had money had it glued to the bottom of his pocket. When the little Georgia woman announced that she was going to raise $5,000 before she sat down, everybody smiled. She made no speech but talked simply, but the appeal went to the hearts of every one present. She was pleading passionately for her people, she was a Joan of Arc calling on her countrymen to rise, buckle on the sword and defend themselves. She was eloquent, formidable, tragic. Her humor would steal a smile from the lips of grief; she was malevolent and objurgatory against her enemies; she was strong in her rhetorical efforts and intensity. Chaste, eloquent and moving a marvelous woman truly!" She said all that S,ooo people could stand and $7,000 was raised. Mrs. Armor is in demand all over the country to speak for temperance and philanthropy.
EDITH SMITH DAVIS.
Mrs. Edith Smith Davis is of English descent and was born and bred near the childhood home of Frances E. Willard in Wisconsin. Milton College, Lawrence University, and Wellesley College contributed to her education. From Lawrence University she received the degree of A.B., A.M. and of Litt. D. After taking post-graduate work at Wellesley College, she taught English literature for three years in Clark University. In 1884 she was married to the Reverend J. S. Davis, D.D., and began her active work in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In this organization she has held a great variety of offices and departments, aiding as much by her pen as by her voice. She is the author of a number of books, and has constantly written for the press. Her business ability was manifested when she aided in the raising of three hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of her "Alma Mater." After the death of Mrs. Mary Hunt in 1905, Mrs. Davis was elected to the superintendency of the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction and Scientific Temperance Investigation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. During the five years that she has held this position she has been sent at a delegate to the Anti-Alcoholic Congress held at Stockholm in 1907, to London in 1909, and to The Hague in 1911. Mrs. Davis considers her most important work to be the incorporation of courses of study in the higher schools, the publication of the "Temperance Educational Quarterly," and the holding of prize essay contests in the public schools.
SUSAN HAMMOND BARNEY.
Mrs. Barney, evangelist, was born in Massachusetts. In 1854 she married Joseph K. Barney, of Providence, Rhode Island. She was the founder of the Prisoners' Aid Society of Rhode Island. Has done work with the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and was the first president of the Rhode Island Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Is an evangelist of note, and was largely instrumental in making prohibition a constitutional enactment in Rhode Island in ​ 1886; and also to her is due the securing of police matrons for the station houses of large cities. She has been one of the helpful women in America to the cause of her sisters.
JESSIE WILSON MANNING.
Author and lecturer. Was born October 26, 1855, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. An active worker and eloquent speaker on literary subjects and for the cause of temperance.
TEMPERANCE LEADERS.
Mrs. Mary Osburn, born in Rush County, Indiana, July 28, 1845, while matron and teacher of sewing and dressmaking in the New Orleans University accomplished much as superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union among the colored people throughout Louisiana.
Mrs. Mary Jane Walter is secretary of the department of evangelistic work in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Iowa, and co-worker with J. Ellen Foster. She has attended many conventions, notably one in which the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Iowa withdrew from auxiliaryship with the national association, because of its opposition to the political women's Christian temperance work.
Mrs. Mary Brook Allen's remarkable executive talent in reform and philanthropic work, combined with all the grace of a born orator, have made her such a power in the work for temperance that she has received the unqualified praise of such noted men as Doctor Heber Newton and Doctor Theodore Tyler.
Miss Julia A. Arms, to her the white ribbon and the silver cross were the symbols of life and her short life was crowned with the success of her brilliant work as editor of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union Department in the Chicago Inter-Ocean and as editor of the Union Signal.
Mrs. Ruth Allen Armstrong, as national superintendent of heredity for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, issued leaflets and letters of instruction to aid in the development of the highest physical, mental and spiritual interest in those of her sex. Her lectures on heredity and motherhood were the first public instruction issued by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and their effect for social purity has been tremendous. They carried convictions that for the highest development of manhood and womanhood, parentage must be assumed as the highest, the holiest, and most sacred responsibility entrusted to us by the Creator.
Mrs. Lepha Eliza Bailey, whose girlhood was passed in Wisconsin when that part of the country was an almost unbroken wilderness, afterwards became a lecturer of national repute upon temperance and women's suffrage. In 1880 Mrs. Bailey was invited to speak under the auspices of the National Prohibition Alliance. She responded and continued to work in the East until that society disbanded, and finally merged with the prohibition party, under whose auspices she worked for years over the temperance field.
Mrs Frances Julia Barnes, who in 1875 became associated with Frances E. Willard, in conducting Gospel temperance meetings in lower Farwell Hall, Chi​ cago, was afterwards given charge of the young women's department of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Later she was made superintendent of the world's Young Women's Christian Temperance work and during every year she traveled extensively giving addresses and organizing new local unions. She was one of the most effective organizers that the cause of temperance had in the early days.
Mrs. Josephine Penfield Cushman Bateman is one of the most devoted missionaries in the cause of temperance, for years managing the interests of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at Asheville, North Carolina. When she was sixty-one years old, but with the same ardor for temperance as burned in her heart at the opening of the temperance crusade, twenty years before, made a lecture tour of every state and territory and through the Hawaiian Islands. She traveled sixteen thousand miles and gave three hundred lectures. She has also published a long line of valuable leaflets on temperance.
Mrs. Mary Frank Browne is the author of an interesting temperance book, "Overcome," portraying the evils of fashionable wine drinking and intemperance. In 1876 she organized the San Francisco Young Women's Christian Association, and it was through her efforts that the first free kindergarten among the very poorest people was established. Later she assisted in organizing the California Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which she served as president for many years.
Mrs. Caroline Buell, the daughter of an itinerant minister, knew the trials of hard living and high thinking pertaining to that life and came out of it to work for temperance with her character developed on ruggedly noble lines. She entered heartily into the work, and her sound judgment, her powers of discrimination, her energy and her acquaintance with facts and persons made her at once a power in the temperance association. For many years she was reelected as corresponding secretary of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Sarah C. Thorpe Bull, wife of the late Ole Bull, the famous violinist, was long the superintendent of the department of sanitary and economic cooking in the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Bull was largely instrumental in securing the monument to Ericsson on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Her home was for years in Cambridge, Mass.
Mrs. Helen Louise Bullock gave up her profession of music, in which she had achieved some prominence, to become a practical volunteer in the work for suffrage and temperance. In 1889 she was appointed national organizer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and in that work went from Maine to California, traveling 13,000 miles in one year. During the first five years of her work she held over twelve hundred meetings, organizing a hundred and eight new unions and securing over ten thousand new members, active and honorary.
​ Miss Julia Colman originated the Temperance School that marked a new-departure in the temperance work among children, using text-books, tracts, charts and experiments. For fifteen years she was superintendent of literature in the Woman's National Temperance Union.
Mrs. Anna Smeed Benjamin, of Michigan, is one of the best known orators in the cause of temperance. She was a logical, convincing, enthusiastic speaker, with a deep powerful voice and urgent manner, which made her a notable presiding officer. She was also a skilled parliamentarian and became superintendent of the national department of parliamentary uses in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The drills which she conducted in the white ribboners' "School of Methods" and elsewhere were always largely attended by both men and women.
Mrs. Sarah Hearst Black bore the labor of self-denial incident to the life of a home missionary's wife in Kansas, Nebraska and in Idaho, and achieved a splendid work of organization as president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Nebraska.
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, daughter of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, has come forward in the cause of temperance, as is shown in the small weekly paper of which she is the editor. This is called The Woman's Column and is also largely devoted to suffrage.
Mrs. Ellen A. Dayton Blair, of Iowa, as national organizer in the temperance cause, visited nearly every state and territory as well as Canada, and is a member of nearly every national convention.
Mrs. Ann Weaver Bradley has done notable work for temperance in Kansas and Michigan. From young womanhood she has had an inherent hatred for the destroying agents in narcotics, and has done splendid work for the cause, being especially fitted for it by her gifts of persistence, thoroughness of research and her love of humanity.
Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown worked strenuously as organizer of the National Prohibition Alliance and made her husband's newspaper the vehicle of a vigorous warfare against the liquor traffic. Later, her husband and she were appointed to the presidency and vice-presidency of Cincinnati, Wesleyan College, which offered them a field for propagating ideas of temperance in the young minds brought under their control.
CYNTHIA S. BURNETT.
Miss Cynthia S. Burnett passed her early life in Ohio, but her first "White Ribbon" work was done in Illinois, in 1879, later answering calls for help in Florida, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1885 she was made state organizer of Ohio, and the first year of this treaty she lectured one hundred and sixty-five times, besides holding meetings in the daytime and organizing over forty unions. Her voice failing, she accepted a call to Utah as teacher in the Methodist Episcopal College, in Salt Lake City. While living there she was made territorial president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and eight unions and fifteen loyal legions were organized by her. Each month one or more meetings were held by her and the work was further indorsed in a column of a Mormon paper which she ​ edited. Later, she spent a year as state organizer in California and Nevada, and for these efficient services in the West she was made a national organizer in 1889. She spends the evening of her life as preceptress of her Alma Mater, which has become Farmington College.
Mrs. Mary Towne Burt began her work for temperance with the first crusade in Ohio and continued without intermission for many years. In March, 1874, she addressed a great audience in the Auburn Opera House on temperance and immediately afterward was elected president of the Auburn Woman's Christian Temperance Union, holding the office two years. She was a delegate to the first national convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, 1874, an d was eventually promoted in the organization until she was made managing editor of the Woman's Temperance Union, the first official organ of the national union. In 1877 she was elected corresponding secretary of the national union, retaining the position for three years, and during that term of office she opened the first headquarters of the national union in the Bible House, New York City. In 1882 she was elected president of the New York State Union and during the years of her presidency it increased from five thousand to twenty-one thousand members, and from a hundred and seventy-nine to eight hundred and forty-two local unions.
Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, whose young son was run over and instantly killed by a wagon driven by a drunken man through the streets of Chicago, was brought by this tragedy to register a vow that until the last hour of her life she would devote every power of which she was possessed to annihilate the liquor traffic. She has been president of the Chicago Central Woman's Temperance Union since 1878. To Mrs Carse is due the credit of establishing the first creche in Chicago, known as the Bethesda Day Nursery. Besides this, several other nurseries, two free kindergartens, two gospel temperance unions, the Anchorage Mission, a home for erring girls; a reading room for men, two dispensaries for the poor and two industrial schools have been established through Mrs. Carse's energetic management, and these charities are supported at a cost of over ten thousand dollars yearly. Mrs. Carse personally raised almost the entire amount and yet she has never received any compensation whatever for her services to the public. She founded the Woman's Temperance Publishing Association and in January, 1880, the first number of the Signal was published. This was a large sixteen page weekly paper and two years later when Our Union was merged with it, it became the Union Signal, the national organ of the society. In this publishing business Mrs. Carse started the first stock company composed entirely of women as no man can own stock in the Woman's Temperance Publishing Association. Mrs. Carse was president and financial factor of this association from its inception. The great building, the national headquarters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, is a monument to her life work.
​Mrs. Sallie F. Chapin, has always been a firm believer in prohibition as the sole remedy for intemperance. In the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she was conspicuous for years, serving as state president and she did much to extend that order in the South where conservatism hindered it for a long time. In 1881 she attended the convention in Washington, where she made a brilliant reply to the address of welcome on behalf of the South. A forceful and brilliant writer, she was at one time president of the Women's Press Association of the South. In the Chicago Woman's Christian Temperance Convention in 1S82 when the Prohibition Home Protection Party was formed, she was made a member of the executive committee and by pen and voice she popularized that movement in the South.
Mrs. Louise L. Chase, in 1886, represented her state of Rhode Island, in the national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in Minneapolis, Minn. In 1891 she was elected state superintendent of scientific instruction in the schools of Middletown, R. I.
Mrs. Elizabeth Coit, of Ohio, a well-known humanitarian and temperance worker throughout the West. During the Civil War she was a member of the committee of three appointed to draft the constitution of the Soldiers' Aid Society. She was chosen president of the first Woman's Suffrage Association organized at Columbus and for many years served as treasurer of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association.
Mrs. Cordelia Throop Cole, of Iowa, took a most conspicuous part in the temperance crusade of her state, riding many miles on her lecture trips to meet appointments with the mercury twenty degrees below zero, and sometimes holding three or four meetings at different points within twenty-four hours. In 1885 she was made the Iowa superintendent of the White Shield and White Cross work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Her earnest talks to women were always a marked feature of her work and later her published leaflets "Helps in Mother Work" and "A Manual for Social Purity Workers" have been of admirable effect.
Mrs. Emily M. J. Cooley began her temperance work in 1869, and when once awakened to the extent of the liquor evil she became one of its most determined foes. Although grown white-haired in the service is an indefatigable worker in the cause of prohibition. She served for years as state organizer in Nebraska and some time as national organizer speaking in every state in the Union. She did long service as president of the Second District Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of Nebraska.
Mrs. Mary A. Cornelius, despite the cares of motherhood and the responsibilities of her position as a pastor's wife, found time and energy to act for years as president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of Arkansas. While leading an effort for prohibition in her state her life was threatened by the desperate element in the capital of Arkansas and personal violence attempted. Still she persevered, her pen never idle. Poems, numerous prose articles and voluminous newspaper correspondence testified to her industry and enthusiasm in the temperance cause.
Mrs. Mary Helen Peck Crane delivered addresses on several occasions before the members of the New Jersey legislature when temperance bills were pending and she greatly aided the men who were fighting to secure good laws. At the ​ Ocean Grove camp meeting, as the pioneer of press work by women, she gave valuable service and her reports for the New York Tribune and the New York Associated Press during the last ten years of those great religious and temperance gatherings at that noted Mecca of the Methodist Church, are models of their kind. She led the life of a sincere Christian, and died December 7, 1891, after a short illness contracted at the national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Emma A. Cranmar of Wisconsin has lectured on literary subjects and on temperance in many of the cities and towns of the Northwest. An earnest worker in the white ribbon movement, with which she has been connected for years, she served with great efficiency as president of the South Dakota Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Lavantia Densmore Douglas has shown during her long life such ardent enthusiasm and untiring zeal in her work for prohibition that it made her name in her own community of Meadville, Pennsylvania, a synonym for temperance. She became a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and for many years was president of the Meadville Union. Arriving home from a trip to Europe on the twenty-third of December, 1873, the day of the great woman's crusade, and finding Meadville greatly aroused, she went immediately to the mass meeting that had been called and effected the temperance organization, which under one form or another has existed up till the present time.
Miss Cornelia M. Dow is the youngest daughter of Neal Dow, almost the original temperance reformer in the United States, and it is most natural that the greater part of her time should be given to works of temperance. For years she was officially connected with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Portland, Maine. She was president of the Union in Cumberland County, one of the superintendents of the state union as well as one of the most effective vice-presidents. Her mother died in 1883 and Miss Dow became her distinguished father's housekeeper and companion up to the time of his death.
Mrs. Marion Howard Dunham, of Iowa, entered upon the temperance field in 1877 with the inauguration of the red ribbon movement in her state, but believing in more permanent effort she was the prime mover in the organization of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In 1883 she was elected state superintendent of the Department of Scientific Temperance and held the office for four years lecturing to institutes and general audiences on that subject most of the time. She procured the Iowa State Law on the subject in February, in 1886. When the Iowa State Temperance Union began to display its opposition to the national union she came to be considered a leader on the side of the minority who adhered to the national and when the majority in the state union seceded from the national union October 16, 1890, she was elected president of those remaining auxiliary to that body. She spends a large part of her time in the field lecturing on temperance, but is interested in all reforms that promise to better the system and condition of life for the multitudes.
Mrs. Edward H. East, of Tennessee, has spent much of her time and money in the cause of temperance. When the prohibition amendment was before the people of Tennessee she was active in the work to create sentiment in its favor. ​ A large tent that had been provided in the city as a means of conducting Gospel services she had moved to every part of the city. For a month she procured for each night able prohibition speakers. She was a delegate to every national convention after her first appearance in 1897.
Mrs. Lucie Ann Morrison Elmore, of West Virginia, was always a pronounced friend to all oppressed people, especially the colored people of the United States. She is an eloquent and convincing speaker on temperance and after coming to live in Englewood, N. J., she held several important editorial positions and she used these opportunities to present to the public her belief in freedom, quality and temperance.
Mrs. Rhoda Anna Esmond was married, and fifty-three years of age when first the influence of the woman's crusade of the West reached Syracuse, N. Y., where she was living, and she helped organize a woman's temperance society of four hundred members. Henceforth her life was devoted to the cause. She was made a delegate to the first state Woman's Christian Temperance Union Convention held in Brooklyn in February, 1875, with instruction to visit all the coffee houses and friendly inns in Brooklyn, New York, and Poughkeepsie, to gather all the information possible for the purpose of opening an inn in Syracuse. The inn was formally opened in July, 1875. As chairman of the inn committee she managed its affairs for nearly two years with remarkable success. In the first state Woman's Christian Temperance Union Mrs. Esmond has been made chairman of the committee on resolutions and appointed one of a committee on "Memorial to the State Legislature" and many other offices were tendered her in the state and national associations. In 1889 she resigned the presidency of her local union having held that office nearly six years, and she then devoted herself to her duties as state superintendent of the Department of Unfermented Wine, to which she gave her most earnest efforts for many years.
Mrs. Harriet Newell Kneeland Goff entered the temperance lecture field in 1870, and has traveled throughout the United States, Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, speaking everywhere and under various auspices. In 1872 she was made a delegate by three societies of Philadelphia, where she then resided, to attend the prohibition convention in Columbus, Ohio, and there she became the first woman ever placed upon a nominating committee to name candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States. Through her presence and influence at that time was due the incorporation of woman suffrage into the platform of the prohibition party. She then published her first book (Philadelphia, 1876), "Was it an Inheritance?" and early the next year she became traveling correspondent to the New York Witness, besides contributing to Arthur's Home Magaisne, the Independent and other journals. In 1880 she published her second book of which six editions were issued in one year. Her third volume (1887) was, "Who Cares?" Early in 1874 she had joined and lectured in several states for the Woman's Temperance Crusade. She became a leader in the organization and work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Philadelphia, and was a delegate therefrom to the first national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in Cleveland, Ohio, and again from the New York Union to the convention in ​ Nashville, Tennessee in 1887. Her special work from 1886 to 1892 was for the employment of police matrons in Brooklyn, N. Y., then her place of residence. For this she labored long, drafting and circulating petitions, originating bills, interviewing mayors, commissioners, councilmen, committees of senate and assembly, and individual members of those bodies in behalf of the measure, and by personal observations in station houses, cells, lodging rooms, jails and courts she substantiated her every argument, and as a result she procured such amendments of the law as would place every arrested woman in the state in the care of an officer of her own sex. Mrs. Goff is probably one of the most effective reform workers who ever fought for women's benefit in America.
Mrs. Jennie T. Gray, though of Quaker descent, became a zealous worker and a zealous speaker in the cause of temperance. Her greatest work was in the Woman's Temperance Union of Indiana, her home state, but she has traveled extensively, and in all her travels from ocean to ocean and from gulf to lake she endeavored to carry the strongest possible influence for temperance, often finding suitable occasions for advocating her claim in a most convincing way.
Miss Elizabeth W. Greenwood, already devoting her life to philanthropic work, when the Woman's Temperance Crusade opened she found her sympathies at once enlisted for the cause and she became conspicuous in the white ribbon movement, not only throughout New York State, but throughout the country. When scientific temperance instruction in the New York schools was being provided for, Miss Greenwood did important work with the legislature as state superintendent of that department. She served as national superintendent of juvenile work, and she was for years president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Brooklyn, where she did splendid work as lecturer and evangelist. In 1888 she was made superintendent of the evangelistic department of the National Woman's Christian Union, and in 1889 she visited Europe, and there continued her reform methods.
Mrs. Eva Kinney Griffith was lecturer and organizer of the Wisconsin Woman's Temperance Union for seven years. Her illustrated lectures won her the name of "Wisconsin Chalk Talker." She wrote temperance lessons and poems for the Temperance Banner and the Union Signal. She published a temperance novel "A Woman's Evangel" (Chicago, 1892), having already put out a volume named "Chalk Talk Handbook" (1887), and "True Ideal," a journal devoted to purity and faith studies. In 1891 she moved to Chicago where she became a special writer for the Daily News-Record, and afterwards an editor on the Chicago Times, and by this means she made public her views on temperance.
Mrs. Sophronia Farrington Naylor Grubb during four years of the Civil War was one of those who gave time and strength in hospital, camp and field, and finally when the needs of the colored people were forced upon her attention she and her sister organized a most successful freedman's aid society. At the close of the war she returned to St. Louis, and here as her sons grew to manhood, the dangers surrounding them as a result of the liquor traffic, led Mrs. Grubb to a deep interest in the struggle of the home against the saloon. She saw there a conflict as great and needs as pressing as in the Civil War and she gradually concentrated upon it all her powers. In 1882 she was elected national ​ superintendent of the work among foreigners one of the most onerous of the forty departments of the national organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and by her effort and interest she brought that department up to a thoroughly organized, wide-reaching and flourishing condition. She published leaflets and tracts on all the phases, economic, moral, social and evangelistic of the temperance question and in seventeen languages. At the rate of fifty editions of ten thousand each, per year, these were distributed all over the United States. She established a missionary department in Castle Garden, New York City, through which instructions in the duties and obligations of American citizenship were given to immigrants in their own tongue as they landed. She also served long as president of the Kansas Woman's Temperance Union.
Mrs. Anna Marie Nichols Hammer's connection with the work of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union was as superintendent of three departments, work among the reformed, juvenile work, and social or parlor work. In all these branches she was eminently successful. She was also vice-president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union for the state of Pennsylvania, and ranked high as a clear, forceful and ready speaker.
Mrs. Sarah Carmichael Harrell was a member and the secretary of the educational committee among the World's Fair managers of Indiana. Her greatest work was the origination and carrying to successful completion the plan known as the "Penny School Collection Fund of Indiana" to be used in the educational exhibit in the Columbian Exposition. From this work came to her the idea of temperance work among school children, and she was made superintendent of scientific temperance instruction for Indiana, and was moreover responsible for the enactment of a law to regulate the study of temperance in the public schools.
Mrs. Mary Antoinette Hitchcock was living with her husband, Rev. Alfred Hitchcock, in Kansas, when the Civil War cloud hung over the country, and being imbued by nature and training with Union and anti-slavery sentiments, she was all enthusiasm for the cause and ready to lend her aid in every way possible. At that time many of the leaders passed through their town to Osawatomie to form the Republican party and she housed and fed fifty of them in one night, among them Horace Greeley. Later in her life having moved to Fremont, Nebraska, where her husband accepted a pastorate, she became an enthusiastic member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and impressed with the idea that a state organization was necessary for its lasting influence she, in 1874, started the movement that resulted in the state organization. She was called to Sioux City, Iowa, on account of the death of her cousin, George G. Haddock, the circumstances of whose untimely murder at the hands of a drunken ruffian caused general indignation and horror. Over his lifeless body she promised the sorrow stricken wife to devote the remainder of her life to the eradication of the terrible liquor evil, and she fulfilled her promise. She accepted the state presidency of the Nebraska Temperance Union and for years traveled continually over the state, organizing unions and attending conventions.
Mrs. Emily Caroline Chandler Hodgin was one of the leaders in the temperance crusade of Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1872, and was a delegate to the convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where the crusading spirit was crystallized by the ​ organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. After that she began work of organizing forces in neighboring parts of the state. She became president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in her own county and secretary of the State Temperance Association, and she has greatly aided the cause from the lecture platform, for though a member of the Society of Friends, she availed herself of the freedom accorded to the speaker in meeting.
Mrs. Jennie Florella Holmes began her public work at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, by giving good service to the Soldier's Aid Society of Jerseyville, Ill. Earnest and untiring in her advocacy of the temperance cause and all equal political rights for women, on her removal, at marriage, to Tecumseh, Nebraska, she immediately allied herself with these elements and in the winter of 1881 she became a member of the first woman's suffrage convention held in that state and labored for the amendment submitted at that session of the legislature. She was chairman of the executive committee of the state suffrage society from 1881 to 1884. In 1884 she was elected president of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which office she held for three years. She was elected delegate-at-large from Nebraska to the National Prohibition Party Convention held in Indianapolis in 1888, and in her ardent love for the cause she considered this the crowning honor of her laborious life. She remained, however, with all her love for the temperance cause an active member of the Woman's Relief Corps and was sent a delegate to the Woman's Relief Corps Convention held in Milwaukee in 1889. She died in her home in Tecumseh the twentieth of March, 1892.
Mrs. Esther T. Housh became a prominent temperance worker in 1883 but she had done editorial work in the periodical Woman's Magazine published by her son in Brattleboro, Vermont, and when she attended the national convention in Detroit, she was immediately elected press superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She held that position until 1888, instituting the National Bulletin which averaged eighty thousand copies a year. In the national conventions in Nashville and New York she furnished a report of the proceedings to a thousand selected papers of high standing. In 1885 she was elected state secretary of the Vermont Woman's Christian Temperance Union and was given editorial charge of Our Home Guards, the state organ. Her literary work has been of the most valuable character for the cause.
Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, after a careful study of the sentimental, religious, and legal phases of temperance reform became convinced that if the nation were to develop on a high plane the liquor evil must be abolished by the wide dissemination of actual knowledge concerning the nature of the effects of alcohol upon the body and mind of man. She felt she must reach the children through the medium of the public schools. To reach the public schools with authority to teach, she must have behind her the power of the law, and her plan of operation she decided must include direct attack upon legislation, and to secure an influence over legislation there must be a demand from the people. Miss Hunt laid her plan before the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union and there was created an educational department of which she became the national superintendent. By an appeal to the American Medical Association in their annual meeting of 1882, ​ she secured a series of resolutions from hat body concerning the evil nature and effects of alcoholic beverages. These resolutions were made the text for her successful appeals before legislative bodies. She superintended this work in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the world, bringing the people to see the need of compulsory temperance education. Her work meant years of journeying from state to state addressing audiences almost continually, but it also meant victory in thirty-five states, in the national military and naval academies and in all Indian and colored schools under national control. It meant the creation of a new school of literature, the revision of old text-books, and the actual creation of new ones covering the entire course of instruction concerning the welfare of the body. All in all Miss Hunt's work has been of extremely practical benefit to the cause of temperance.
Mrs. Henrica Iliohan was born in Vorden, province of Gelderland, kingdom of the Netherlands, but the love of liberty and independence seemed to have been instilled in her from birth, and when she had come to America and was obliged to earn her living, the disability of sex became of more and more importance as she thought and studied over her situation. In trying to read English she noted for the first time an article on woman suffrage in the Albany Journal. In 1871, when Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake addressed the assembly and asked the question: "Whom do you think, gentlemen of the committee, to be most competent to cast a ballot, the mother who comes from the fireside or the father who comes from the corner saloon?" Mrs. Iliohan again pondered deeply. This was a query that struck home to this young foreign woman, living at that time in Albany, and she made inquiries as to why women did not and could not vote in this land of the free. Very much interested she read all that was accessible on the subject and when, in 1877, the first Woman's Suffrage Society of Albany was organized she became an earnest member. With the remembrance of woman's share in the brave deeds recorded in Dutch history, she gained courage and enthusiasm and began to express her views publicly. Her first appearance on the lecture platform was a triumph. She was a foreigner no longer, but an American woman working for the rights of all American women. Encouraged by many she gained in experience and became one of the acknowledged leaders of the society. She was elected four times a delegate from her society to the annual convention in New York City and worked during the session of the legislature to obtain the consideration of that body. Mrs. Iliohan has also done some good work in translation. "The Religion of Common Sense," from the German of Professor L. Ulich, was one of her valuable contributions. In 1887 she moved to Humphrey, Nebraska, and thereafter became identified with Nebraska and the subjects of reform in that state and as she had done in the East, she endeared herself to the leaders and to the public.
Mrs. Ella Bagnell Kendrick, of Hartford, Connecticut, has always been an earnest advocate of temperance. When in 1891 her husband became a business manager of the New England Home, one of the leading prohibition newspapers of the country, she accepted the position of associate editor and through the columns waged a systematic campaign against all liquor traffic. She was an efficient member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and served through several terms as assistant secretary of the Hartford Prohibition Club. ​ Mrs. Ada Miser Kepley, inheriting strong anti-slavery principles from both maternal and paternal ancestors, this intense hatred of slavery took with her the form of hatred for the bodily slavery to alcoholic drink. And although she studied law and later was ordained a minister in the Unitarian denomination, Mrs. Kepley will be best remembered for her work for the abolition of alcoholic drinking and of the laws which tended to perpetuate that evil habit. In her law practice she made a specialty of exposing the hidden roots of the liquor trade in her town and county of Illinois. Through the paper Friend at Home which she edited, her readers learned who were the granters, grantees, petitioners and bondsmen for all the liquor shops there. She and her husband built in Effingham, 111., "The Temple," a beautiful building which was made the headquarters for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, prohibition and general reform work.
Mrs. Narcissa Edith White Kinney found her place in the white ribbon ranks in the fall of 1880, bringing to the work the discipline of a thoroughly drilled student and successful teacher. Her first relation to the Woman's Christion Temperance Union was as president of the local union in her town, Grove City, Pennsylvania, and next of her own county, Mercer, where she built up the work in a systematic way. She did an immense amount of thorough effective work, lecturing, writing and pledging legislatures to the hygiene bill, for she had made herself a specialist in that department after much study in regard to the best method of teaching hygiene to the young. In 1888 she was sent to assist the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Washington State in securing from the legislature the enactment of temperance laws, and, under her persuasive eloquence and wise leadership, the most stringent scientific temperance laws ever enacted were passed by a unanimous vote of both houses, also in spite of the bitter opposition of the liquor trade a local option bill was passed submitting to the vote of the people the prohibition of liquor traffic in each precinct. Miss White assisted in that campaign and had the gratification of seeing prohibition approved by a majority vote. After her marriage she came to reside permanently in Astoria in Oregon, and she liberally supported the Chautauqua movement for temperance in that state.
Mrs. Janette Hill Knox, in 1881, was elected president of the New Hampshire State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and as the responsibilities connected with that office drew her out from the quieter duties of home to perform those demanded by her public work, her executive ability developed and the steady and successful growth of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union during the years she held office bore testimony to the strength of her work. Her re-election year by year was practically unanimous.
Mrs. Mary Torans Lathrop was licensed to preach in Michigan in 1871, and was laboring as an evangelist when the woman's crusade swept over the state. She took an active part in the crusade, was one of the founders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in 1882 was made president of the state union of Michigan. Gradually her work became that of organization and she labored in various states as a strong helper in securing scientific instruction laws, in Michigan, Nebraska and Dakota amendment campaigns. In 1878 she secured the passage of a bill in the Michigan legislature appropriating thirty ​ thousand dollars for the establishment of the Girls' Industrial Home, a reformatory school in Adrian, Michigan. Mrs. Lathrop's lectures have always been successful and she is equally at home on the temperance platform, on the lecture platform, or at the author's desk. Her memorial ode to Garfield was widely quoted and her brilliant oratory won for her the title "The Daniel Webster of Prohibition."
Mrs. Olive Moorman Leader, on her marriage in 1880, going to live in Omaha, Nebraska, immediately identified herself with the active work for the temperance cause. She introduced the systematic visiting of the Douglas County jails and she was one of the first workers among the Chinese, being first state superintendent of that department. For twelve years she was identified with the suffrage cause and an adherent and devout believer in the efficacy of Christian Science.
Mrs. Harriett Calista Clark McCabe, in April, 1874, wrote the constitution of the Woman's Temperance Union of Ohio, which was the first union organized. After serving the union for nine years she withdrew from public life but in time yielded to earnest persuasion to aid in the National Woman's Indian Association, and then in the Woman's Home Missionary Society, becoming the editor of Woman's Home Missions the official organ of that society.
Mrs. Caroline Elizabeth Merrick, wife of Edwin T. Merrick, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana at the time of the Civil War, began her work for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at a time when the temperance cause was widely agitated in the South, though its reception on the whole was a cold one. She was for many years state president for Louisiana. She has written extensively on the subject but her chief talent was impromptu speaking and she developed into a very successful platform orator, holding an audience by the force of her wit and keen sarcasm. Her sympathies were also aroused upon the question of woman's suffrage and for years she stood comparatively alone in her ardent championship of the cause. She was the first woman in Louisiana to speak publicly in behalf of her sex. She addressed the state convention in 1879, and assisted in securing an article in the constitution making all women over twenty-one years of age eligible to hold office in connection with the public schools. It required considerable moral courage to side with a movement so derided in the South at that time, but Mrs. Merrick never faltered in her work for the emancipation of women; moreover, she always took active part in the charitable and philanthropic movements of New Orleans, her native city.
Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt after being prominent in New England temperance work for years was elected president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Boston, and national organizer of the society. In 1883 she accepted from the president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Miss Willard, a roving commission as pioneer for the temperance union which was organized in that year. Thenceforth Mrs. Leavitt's work has been without parallel in the records of labor in foreign missions and for temperance. When volunteers were asked for a canvas of the Pacific Coast states she was the first one to answer, and she was also the first to go abroad in the interests of the new organization. The association offered to pay her expenses but she decided not to accept it. She bought her ocean ticket with her own money and in 1883 sailed from Cali​ fornia for the Sandwich Islands. In Honolulu the Christians and white ribboners aided her in every way, and after organizing the Sandwich Islands she went on to Australia where she promptly established the new order. Leaving Australia she visited all the other countries of the East and completed her tour over all the lands in the European continent. She organized eighty-six Woman's Christian Temperance Unions and twenty-three branches of the White Cross, held over one thousand, six hundred meetings, traveled nearly a hundred thousand miles and had the services of two hundred and twenty-nine interpreters in forty-seven languages. After her return to the United States in 189 1, she published a pamphlet, The Liquor Traffic in Western Africa. During her great tour of the world she never in seven years saw a face she knew and only occasional letters from her enabled the home workers to know where she was laboring.
Mrs. Addie Dickman Miller, while teaching at Philomath College in Philomath, Oregon, where her husband was also a professor, the temperance movement in that state became a critical issue and she and her husband identified themselves with the cause. Mrs. Miller indeed gave up teaching and devoted herself to the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. After moving to Portland, Oregon, and while caring for her children, she found time to serve several terms as president of the Portland Temperance Union arraying the motherhood of the city against the evil of intemperance. Besides her platform work she for years edited the woman's department in the West Shore, a Portland periodical. She also published "Letters to Our Girls" in an Eastern magazine—a series of articles containing many valuable thoughts for the young women to whom they were addressed.
Mrs. Cornelia Moore Chillson Moots knew the state of Michigan in its pioneer days, her parents taking her there in 1836. Abigail Chillson, the grand-mother, went with them and as the new settlements were without preachers this elderly woman and ardent Methodist even supplied the itinerary by preaching in the log cabins and the schoolhouses of the early pioneers. Mrs. Moots' father was a temperance advocate also and staunch anti-slavery man, and the Chillson home was often the refuge of the slave seeking liberty across the line. With such inheritance and under such influence it was only natural that Mrs. Moots should become a forceful evangelist herself. After years of activity in exhorting and organizing new branches, a new field opened to her as a temperance worker and like her father she turned her force into the broad channel of temperance reform. She served many terms as state evangelist in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and in spite of her radical views on temperance, equal suffrage and equal standard of morals for men and women, she was one of the most popular and most beloved speakers in the cause.
Miss Ellen Douglas Morris was reared according to the strictest sect of the Presbyterians and never dreamed of becoming a public speaker, until happening to attend a district convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Savannah, Missouri, where she was teaching, the state president believed she saw the latent power in the quiet looker-on and said to the local union, "Make that woman your president." After great entreaty on their part and great trepidation on hers this was done. The next year saw her president of the district, which ​ she quickly made the pioneer of the state. When a state's secretary was needed Miss Ellen Morris was unanimously chosen and installed at headquarters. Her success in every position she held in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was due to the careful attention she gave to details and the exact fulfillment of her service.
Mrs. Josephine Ralston Nichols, a popular lecturer, was attracted to the temperance movement by an address delivered in Maysville, Ky., her home, by Lucretia Mott. She was soon drawn into the movement and added to her lectures a number devoted to temperance. The scientific aspect of the work received her special attention and some of her lectures have been published by the Woman's Temperance Publishing Association. Her greatest triumphs, however, have been won in her special department as superintendent of the exposition department of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, where she worked for years, beginning in 1883. In state and county fairs all over the country she aided the women in making them places of order, beauty, and sobriety instead of scenes of disorder and drunken broil. In many cases she entirely banished the sale of intoxicants either by direct appeal to the managers or by securing the sole privilege of serving refreshments and in all cases banners and mottoes were displayed, and cards, leaflets and papers and other literature given away. So general was the satisfaction that several states passed laws prohibiting the sale of intoxicating drinks on, or near the fair grounds. In 1885 the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Indiana made her its president, but she continued her practical work for the national society, extending and illustrating knowledge of the aims of the cause.
Mrs. Martha B. O'Donnell's work for temperance was accomplished through the society of Good Templars. It was most effective and she became president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of her county in New York State. Having long been identified with the independent order of Good Templars she began in 1868 the publication of the Golden Rule, a monthly magazine in the interest of this order. In 1869 she was elected one of the board of managers of the Grand Lodge of the state of New York. In 1870 she was elected grand vice-templar and was re-elected in 1871. At her first attendance in the right worthy grand lodge of the nation she was elected right grand vice-templar. Interested deeply in the children she was the moving spirit in securing the adoption of the "Triple Pledge" for the children's society connected with the order. She had charge of introducing the juvenile work all over the world. Her activity in this direction led her to visit Europe as well as many parts of the United States and always with success. Late in her life she became president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of her own county and passed many quiet years at her home in Lowville, New York.
​ Colorado, where her husband's business had called him. Her love for children induced her to organize a Band of Hope which grew to an immense membership. During that time she was, moreover, presiding officer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Boulder. Yet another move in her life brought her fresh opportunity for temperance work. In Buffalo, New York, she united with the Good Templars, serving as chaplain, vice-councillor, and select councillor. Her council sent her as its representative to the grand council in February, 1890, and on her introduction into that body she was made chairman of the committee on temperance work and was elected grand vice-councillor, being the first woman to hold that position in the jurisdiction of New York. In the subsequent sessions of the grand council in February, 1891, and February, 1892, she was re-elected grand vice-councillor, being the only person ever reelected to that office.
Mrs. Florence Collins Porter's early surroundings were those incidental to the new country, her father, Honorable Samuel W. Collins, being one of the early pioneers in Aroostook County, Maine. Later she left the little town of Caribou, where she had been writing for newspapers and periodicals, since she was fifteen years of age, and in Ohio she became greatly interested in public temperance reform with considerable success as a lecturer. At the formation of the non-partisan Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Cleveland, Ohio, she was chosen national secretary of literature and press work and in that capacity she worked for many years.
Miss Esther Pugh of Ohio, early became interested in moral reforms and she was one of the leaders in the crusade joining the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in its first meetings. She was an officer of the Cincinnati Union from the beginning, giving the best years of her life to the work. She was publisher and editor of Our Union for years, and her management as treasurer of the national society repeatedly aided the organization in passing through financial difficulties. She traveled on temperance work through the United States and Canada, lecturing and organizing unions by the score. She was called "The Watch-dog of the Treasury."
Mrs. Lulu A. Ramsey of South Dakota is exceptionally broad in her aims and charities, and a firm believer in woman's power and influence, yet for the field wherein to exert her best energies and benevolences, she chose the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She was for years president of the local union, took an active part in the work of her district for which she filled the office of corresponding secretary and which selected her as its representative in the national convention in Boston, in November, 1892. Her ambition was to found an industrial school which should be so broad and practical in its aims and methods that each pupil should be self-supporting while there and leave the institution as master of some occupation. For years she labored to organize such a school and make it the special charge of a National Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Mary Bynon Reese came to Alliance, Ohio, just before the breaking out of the temperance crusade, and led the women of the city to a prohibition success. While lecturing in Pittsburgh and visiting the saloons with the representative women of the place, she was arrested and with thirty-three others imprisoned in the city jail, an event which aroused the indignation of the best people and ​ made countless friends to temperance. After the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she was identified with the state work of Ohio as lecturer, organizer and evangelist. She was the first superintendent of the Department of Narcotics and in 1886 she was made one of the national organizers and sent to the North Pacific Coast, where her work was very successful. She afterwards made her home a few miles from Seattle, which city became her headquarters as state and national organizer.
Mrs. Anna Rankin Riggs has won many honors in the white ribbon army, her principal field being Portland, Oregon. On her coming to the Northwest, Portland had no home for destitute women and girls and in 1887 the Portland Temperance Union, under the auspices of Mrs. Riggs and a few noble women, opened an industrial home. The institution was kept afloat by great exertion and personal sacrifice until it was merged into a refuge home and incorporated under the laws of the state. Mrs. Riggs was almost continuously in office as president of the Oregon Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In 1891 she started the Oregon White Ribbon which proved a successful publication. A prominent feature of her work in Oregon was a school of methods which proved an inspiration to the local unions in their department work. Mrs. Riggs has also represented Oregon at conventions and was president of the International Chautauqua Association for the Northwest Coast.
Mrs. Ellen Sergent who has held the highest office open to a woman in the order of Good Templars, was a member of the board of managers of the first state Woman's Christian Temperance Union, established in Syracuse, N. Y., and was one of a committee sent from that convention to appeal to the Albany legislature for temperance laws. But for all these honors she is best remembered in the white ribbon ranks for her children's stories on temperance. These were published in the Sunday School Advocate and Well Spring, and are delightful and poetic as well as instructive.
Mrs. Jennie E. Sibley of Georgia showed such courage in temperance work that she gained a reputation throughout the land. It has been said of her that "She worked with her hand, her purse, her pen, her eloquent tongue, with all the force and ferver of a crusader, and the most purifying and regenerating results followed her efforts in every field."
​ Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens devoted her life to educational and temperance work on the Pacific Coast. She started an evening school for working girls; she organized the Woman's Co-operative Printing Association, and edited the Pioneer, a woman's paper produced entirely by women on the basis of equal pay for equal work. She was aided by prominent men in placing the stock of the company and through it she exercised great influence in advancing the cause of women in California. After the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in California she labored earnestly in that society. She contributed to the columns of the Bulletin, Pharos, and Pacific Ensign, and served as state lecturer. She joined the prohibition party in 1882 and she led the movement in 1888 to induce the Woman's Christian Temperance Union to endorse that party. As far back as 1874, she instituted the Seaman's League in San Francisco, and in 1875 the old Seaman's Hospital was donated by Congress to carry on the work, and the institution became firmly established. The inception of this splendid work together with many other California reforms in those days was from the mind of Mrs. Stevens.
Mrs. Lillian M. N. Stevens of Maine, co-worker with Neal Dow for the prohibition of Hquor traffic, her first attempt as a speaker was made in Old Orchard, Maine, when the Woman's Christian Temperance Union for the state was organized. This movement fired her soul with zeal and she threw her whole heart into reform work. She was treasurer of the Maine union for the first three years of its existence and then was made its president. She was also one of the secretaries of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union and corresponding secretary for Maine of the national conference of charities and corrections, treasurer of the National Woman's Council of the United States and was one of the commissioners of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago is 1893. She was one of the founders of the temporary home for women and children near Portland and one of the trustees of the Maine Industrial School for Girls. In all these manifold lines of work she proved herself an honorable daughter of a state noted for its distinguished sons.
Mrs. Eliza Daniel Stewart, a leader in all movements, whose purpose was the happiness and upholding of humanity, in 1858 became a charter member of a Good Templar Lodge organized in her town of Piketon, Ohio, and she remained a warm advocate of the order for the rest of her life. She delivered her first public temperance address before the Band of Hope in Pomeroy, and continued thereafter to fight for the temperance cause with voice and pen. When the boom of cannon upon Sumter was heard she devoted her time to gathering and forwarding supplies to the field and hospital, and at length she went South herself, to aid in the hospital work. She remained at the front during the Civil War and became convinced that in the appetite for drink that had come to so many of the soldiers the country was fostering a foe even worse than the one which the soldiers had conquered by force of arms. On the twenty-second of January, 1872, she delivered a lecture on temperance in Springfield, which was her first step into crusade movements. Two days later a drunkard's wife prosecuted a saloon keeper under the Adair law and Mrs. Stewart, called Mother Stewart since the war, going into the courtroom, was persuaded by the attorney to make ​ the opening plea to the jury. And to the consternation of the liquor fraternity, for it was a test case, she won the suit. It created a sensation and the press sent the news over the country. Thereafter Mrs. Stewart was known to the drunkard's wives, if not as attorney, at least as a true friend and sympathizer in their sorrows and they sought her aid and counsel. Her next case in court was on the sixteenth of October, 1873, and a large number of the prominent women accompanied her to the courtroom. She made the opening charge to the jury, helped examine the witnesses, made the opening plea, and again won her case amid great excitement and rejoicing. Next, in order that the intensity of interest already awakened should not die down, Mrs. Stewart, with the co-operation of the ministers of the city, held a series of weekly mass meetings which succeeded in keeping, the interest at white heat. On the second of December, 1873, she organized a woman's league that was the first organization ever formed in what came to be known as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union work. Soon after she went to a saloon in disguise on Sunday, bought a glass of wine and had the proprietor prosecuted and fined for violating Sunday ordinance. That was an important move because of the attention it called to the open saloon on the Sabbath. Then the world was startled by an uprising of women all over the state in a crusade against the saloons, and Mother Stewart was kept busy in addressing immense audiences and organizing and leading out bands through her own and other states. She was made president of the first local union of Springfield, formed January 7, 1874. The first county union ever formed was organized in Springfield in 1874 with Mother Stewart as president. In June, 1874, the first state union was organized in her state, her enthusiastic labors throughout the state contributing duly to that result. In the beginning of the work Mrs. Stewart declared for legal prohibition and took her stand with the party which was working for that end. In 1876 she visited Great Britain by invitation of the Good Templars. There she spent five months in almost incessant work, lecturing and organizing associations. A great interest was awakened throughout the kingdom, her work resulting in the organization of the British Woman's Temperance Association. In 1878 she was called to Virginia and there introduced the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the blue ribbon work. Two years later she again visited the South and introduced Woman's Christian Temperance Union work in several of the Southern states organizing unions among both the white and the colored people. Age and overwork necessitating rest, she wrote, "Memories of the Crusade," a valuable and interesting history, also "A Crusader in Great Britain," an account of her work in that country. Her long work finished, though still young of heart, she passed her last years in Springfield, Ohio.
Mrs. Anna Elizabeth Stoddard going South in 1883 to engage in Christian work she stayed for several years, laboring in various parts of that country along lines of reform. Always an advocate of temperance she had united at an early age with the Good Templars in Massachusetts, and had occupied every chair given a woman in that association, but feeling a desire for more practical aggressive work against the liquor traffic she severed her connection with the order and gave her energies to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, just then coming to the front. It was this reform that she actively espoused in the South, organiz​ ing in different parts Woman's Christian Temperance Unions and Bands of Hope. Having been located in Washington, D. C, for a year or more she was led to establish a mission school for colored children, to whom she taught the English branches, with the addition of work in an industrial department. Later she returned to Boston, Mass., where her labors were numerous and her charities broad and noble. She believed that "To oppose one evil to the neglect of others is not wise or Christian."
Miss Missouri H. Stokes, while in charge of the Mission Day School in Atlanta, and very successful in that missionary field, found herself drawn into the crusade for temperance which invaded even the South. She became a member of the first Woman's Christian Temperance Union organized in Georgia, and in 1881 was made secretary, going in 1883 to be corresponding secretary of the state union organized that year. She worked enthusiastically in the good cause, writing much for temperance papers and she was for years the special Georgia correspondent of the Union Signal. She took an active part in the struggle for the passage of the local option law in Georgia, and she made a most valiant attempt to secure from the state legislature scientific temperance instruction in the public schools, a state refuge for fallen women, a law to close the barrooms throughout the state, and she fought on for these acts of legislation for years despite the fact that she and her co-workers were everywhere met with the assertion that all these measures were unconstitutional. After being a conspicuous figure in the temperance revolution in Atlanta, Mrs. Stokes made several successful lecture tours in Georgia paying her expenses from her own slender purse and never allowing a collection to be taken in one of her meetings.
Mrs. Lucy Robins Messer Switzer is one of the most prominent temperance workers which Washington Territory, now State, has ever known. In 1882 she was appointed vice-president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union for Washington Territory, and before Miss Willard's visit in June, and July, 1883, she had organized unions in Spokane Falls, Waitsburg, Dayton, Olympia, Port Townsend and Tacoma. She arranged for the eastern Washington convention in Cheney, the twentieth to the twenty-third of July, 1883, and she acted as president for the Eastern Washington State Union, then formed, for many years. Her work in the campaign of 1885-1886 for scientific instruction and local option and constitutional campaigns for prohibition are matters of record, as representing arduous work and wise generalship. She traveled thousands of miles in the work, having attended the national conventions in Detroit, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Chicago and Boston. She was active during the years from 1883 to 1888, when women had the ballot in Washington, voting twice in territorial elections and several times in municipal and special elections. She wrote many articles in forceful and yet restrained style on all the phases of woman's temperance work and woman's suffrage, and it is safe to conclude that the present equal suffrage law in Washington State was made easier of accomplishment through the earlier works of such strong, thoughtful women as Mrs. Switzer.
Mrs. Eliza J. Thompson was early led into temperance work both by her own inclination and by the influence of her father, the late Governor Trimble of ​Ohio. In her youth she accompanied her father to Saratoga Springs, New York, to attend a national convention and was the only woman in that meeting. On the twenty-third of December, 1873, in her own town, Hillsborough, Ohio, she opened the temperance movement that in a few weeks culminated in the Woman's Temperance crusade, and the great success of that movement as it swept from city to town throughout the state is accorded to Mrs. Thompson.
Mrs. Anna Augusta Truitt was one of those who marched, sang and prayed with the crusaders in that remarkable movement in Indiana, and she remained a faithful worker in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. President of the Delaware County Woman's Christian Temperance Union for many years, she was selected by the union to represent them in state and district meetings, as well as in the national conventions. Her addresses, essays and reports proved her a writer of no mean talent. She was an advocate of woman's suffrage, believing that women's votes would go far towards removing the curse of intemperance. In the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she adhered always to the principle of non-partisan, non-sectarian work, and in spite of various hostile attacks she fought on until the temperance union in her city of Munsey, Indiana, was so strongly established, and so influential that no criticism nor persecution could turn the workers she left in the field from their path of duty.Mrs. Mary Evalia Warren, for many years prominent in temperance reform, was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union from its first organization and she had a field of her own for propagating the work at Wayland University, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where she had furnished money to erect a dormitory for girls called the "Warren Cottage." She joined the Good Templars' order in 1878 and filled all the subordinate lodge offices to which women usually aspire, and as grand-vice-templar she lectured to large audiences in nearly all parts of the state.
Mrs. Lucy H. Washington was a leader in the crusade movement, and when temperance organization was sought in her town of Jacksonville, Illinois, in response to the needs of the hour she was brought into public speaking. Her persuasive methods, Christian spirit, and her eloquence made her at once a speaker acceptable to all classes. Her first address in temperance work outside her own city was given in the Hall of Representatives in Springfield, Illinois. Commendatory press reports on this led to repeated and urgent calls for further lecture work and opened the door of service which was never closed during her life. During succeeding years she was in various official capacities largely engaged in Woman's Christian Temperance Union work giving addresses in twenty-four states and extending her labors from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the great campaigns for constitutional prohibition in Iowa, Kansas, Maine and other states she bore a helpful part and in difficult emergencies, when great interests were imperiled, her electric utterances often produced a decision for victory. Her temperance hymns have been sung throughout the country.
Mrs. Margaret Anderson Watts, always a deep thinker on the most advanced social and religious topics, occasionally published her views on woman, in her political and civil relations. She was the first Kentucky woman who wrote and advocated the equal rights of women before the law. During the revision of the ​ constitution of Kentucky she was chosen one of six women to visit the capital, and secure a hearing before the committees on education, and municipalities, and on the Woman's Property Rights Bill then pending. When the woman's crusade movement was initiated she happened to be living in Colorado where business affairs called her husband for several years, but her sympathies were with the women of Ohio who formed the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and as soon as she returned to Louisville she joined the union there. She worked actively in various departments of that organization, her special work being given to scientific temperance instruction in the public schools. In this and in many benevolences for her city Mrs. Watts accomplished much positive good.
Mrs. Delia L. Weatherby, inheriting the same temperament which made her father an abolitionist, became an active worker in the order of Good Templars. She could endure no compromise with intemperance and in the various places she lived she was always distinguished as an advanced thinker and a pronounced prohibitionist. She was a candidate on the prohibition ticket in 1886, for county superintendent of public instruction in Coffey County, Kansas, and she was elected a lay delegate to the quadrennial meeting of the South Kansas Lay Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1888. In 1890 she was placed in nomination for the office of state superintendent of public instruction on the prohibition ticket. In 1S90 she was unanimously elected clerk of the school board in her home district. She was an alternate delegate from the fourth congressional district of Kansas to the national prohibition convention in 1892, and also secured the same year for the second time by the same party, the nomination for the office of public instruction in her own county. All this experience in political life greatly enhanced her value as a member of the white ribbon army, in which cause she has always been prominent. She was president of the Coffey County Woman's Christian Temperance Union for several years and as superintendent of the Press Department of the Kansas Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and state reporter for the Union Signal she proved herself one of the strongest women that this enterprising state has ever given to the temperance cause.
Miss Mary Allen West of Galesburg, Illinois, was a wise practical leader of the temperance cause. When the Civil War came she had worked earnestly in organizing women into aid societies to assist the Sanitary Commission, and after the war she accomplished a remarkable piece of editorial work, editing in Illinois the Home Magazine, which was published nearly one thousand miles away in Philadelphia, but later she left pen and desk for active work in the temperance cause. When the woman's crusade sounded the call of woman, the home and God against the saloon her whole soul echoed the cry, and after the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union had been effected she became an earnest worker in its ranks, giving efficient aid in organizing the women of Illinois and becoming their president. In that office she traveled very extensively throughout Illinois and became familiar with the homes of the people. It was that knowledge of the inner life of thousands of homes that made her work for temperance direct, practical and efficient. She was often called upon to help in the editorial labors of Mrs. Mary B. Williard, the editor of the Signal, published in Chicago, and later whom it had been merged with our Union, into the ​ Union Signal and Mrs. Willard gone to Germany to reside, the position of editor-in-chief was given to Miss West who moved to Chicago to accept it. As editor of that paper, the organ of the National and the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, her responsibilities were immense but they were always carried with a steady hand and an even head. She met the demands of her enormous constituency with a remarkable degree of poise. A paper having a circulation of nearly one hundred thousand among earnest women, many of them in the front rank of intelligence and advancement of thought and all of them on fire with an idea, needs judicious and strong, as well as thorough and comprehensive editing. This the Union Signal under Miss West has had and the women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union repeatedly, in the most emphatic manner, endorsed her policy and conduct of the paper. Soon after she went to Chicago some women of that city, both writers and publishers, organized the Illinois Woman's Press Association, its avowed object being to provide a means of communication between women writers and to secure the benefits resulting from organized efforts. Miss West was made president and filled the position for several consecutive terms. Her work in that sphere was a unifying one. She brought into harmony many conflicting elements and helped to carry the association through the perils which always beset the early years of an organization. She had an unusual capacity for vicarious suffering; the woes of others were her woes and the knowledge of injustice or cruelty wrung her heart. That made her an effective director of the protective agency for women and children, but the strain of that work proved too great and she stepped outside its directorship, although remaining an ardent upholder of the agency. Miss West in 1892 visited California, the Sandwich Islands, and Japan in the interests of temperance work. She died in Kanazawa, Japan, first of December, 1892.
Mrs. Dora V. Wheelock of Nebraska was one of the earliest women temperance workers of that state. In 1885 she became an influential worker for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, serving for several years as local president in Beatrice, and three years as president of the Gage County Union. She was state superintendent of press work and reporter for the Union Signal for Nebraska. She has written much, her articles appearing in the Youth's Companion, Union Signal and other publications, and in every way she has accomplished all that a variously gifted woman might, as one of the advance guard in the cause of temperance.
Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard, sister-in-law of Francis Willard, was called to assume the editorship of the Signal, the organ of the Illinois Woman's Christian Temperance Union and during years of successful work for it she displayed remarkable ability both in the editorial sanctum and as organizer and platform speaker. The Signal under her leadership came quickly to the front and it was said that no other paper in America was better edited. But Mrs. Willard's health had become impaired from the constant strain of overwork and with her two daughters she went to Europe. In the autumn of 1886 she opened in Berlin, Germany, her American Home School for Girls, unique in its way and which for years she managed on the original plan with much success. It combined the best features of an American school with special advantage in German and ​ French and the influence and care of a refined Christian home. In the years of her residence in Europe Mrs. Willard's gifts and wide acquaintance have ever been at the service of her countrywomen and she stood there as here as a representative of the best phases of total abstinence reform.
Mrs. Alice Williams during years of suffering and invalidism read, studied and thought much on temperance subjects, and when restored to health the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was formed in her state of Missouri. She became an active local worker. In 1884 she went with her husband to Lake Bluff, 111., to a prohibition conference there. At the request of Missouri state president, Mrs. Williams' voice was first heard from the platform in a two minutes' speech. She was appointed superintendent of the young woman's work in Missouri and was called to every part of the state to speak and organize. She always commanded large audiences and her lectures presented the truth of the temperance question and social purity in an unusually strong, yet not offensive manner.
Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing's father was a Canadian "patriot," who lost all in an attempt to secure national independence, and was glad to escape to the States with his family to begin life again in the New West, so that this inherited love of freedom and a mixture of heroic English, Scotch and Irish blood in her veins, naturally brought Mrs. Willing to the fore when the great temperance crusade swept over the land. For several years she was president of the Illinois State Woman's Temperance Union, and with Emily Huntington Miller she issued the call for the Cleveland convention, presiding over that body in which the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized. For a few years she edited its organ now the Union Signal. Mrs. Willing was drawn into public speaking by her temperance zeal and soon found herself addressing immense audiences in all the great cities of the country. As an evangelist she held many large revival services with marked success, and after moving to New York City in 1899, her life was as full of good works as it would seem possible for any human being's to be. She was interested in foreign mission work conducting her evangelistic services, was superintendent in an Italian mission and the bureau of immigration with its immigrant girls' homes in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Her English sturdiness, Scotch persistence, and Irish vivacity, her altogether usefulness made her an ideal type of an American woman.
Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, although originally famous for her work in the Women's Relief Corps, has done no less efficient service for the temperance cause. When the Civil War broke out she became Iowa's volunteer agent to distribute supplies to the army and was the first sanitary agent for the state, being elected by the legislature. She received a pass from Secretary of War Stanton, which was endorsed by President Lincoln and throughout the Civil War she was constantly in the field ministering to the sick and wounded in the hospital and on the battlefield. She was personally acquainted with the leading generals of the army and was a special friend of General Grant and accompanied him and Mrs. Grant on the boat of observation that went down the Mississippi to see six gunboats and eight wooden steamers run the blockade. While in the service she introduced a reform in hospital cookery known as the special diet kitchens, which was made a part of the United States Army system and which saved the lives of thousands of soldiers who ​were too ill to recover on coarse army fare. But after the war she turned to temperance work with the same courage and zeal that kept her coolly working even while under fire during the war. She was the first president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in Iowa, and beginning without a dollar in the treasury she won the influence of the churches and the support of the leading people until her efforts were crowned with success. She established the Christian Women, in Philadelphia, and was editor for eleven years. She also contributed lectures, articles in periodicals, and a numerous collection of hymns to the cause of temperance.
Mrs. Mary Brayton Woodbridge was one of the most prominent women in the Ohio temperance movement. She joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and filled many important offices in that organization. She was the first president of the local union in her own home town, Ravenna, then for years president of her state union, and in 1878 she was chosen recording secretary of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, a position which she filled with marked ability. Upon the resignation of Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, in the St. Louis National Woman's Christian Temperance Union Convention, in October, 1884, Mrs. Woodbridge was unanimously elected national superintendent of the department of legislation and petition. Her crowning work was done in conducting a constitutional amendment campaign. She edited the Amendment Herald, which gained a weekly circulation of a hundred thousand copies. From 1878, she was annually reelected recording secretary of the national union. She was secretary of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union and in 1889 attended the world's convention in England. She died in Chicago, Illinois, October 25, 1894.
Mrs. Caroline M. Clark Woodward entered the field of temperance in 1882 as a temperance writer and she proved herself a consistent and useful worker for the cause. In 1884 she was elected treasurer of the Nebraska Woman's Christian Temperance Union and in 1887, vice-president at large of the state. In 1887 she was appointed organizer for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union and was twice reappointed. In the Atlanta convention she was elected associate superintendent of the department of work among railroad employees. She was a member of each national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, including the memorable St. Louis convention of 1884. She was a delegate to the national prohibition party convention in 1888, held in Indianapolis and as a final and well-earned honor she was nominated by that party for regent of the state university of Nebraska and led the state ticket by a large vote.
The roll call of temperance workers in America further includes: Mrs. Mary L. Doe; Mrs. Martha M. Frazier; Mrs. Elizabeth P. Gordon; Mrs. Clara Cleghorn Hoffman; Mrs. Eliza B. Ingalls; Mrs. Lide Meriweather, well known for her work to obtain constitutional prohibition in Tennessee; Mrs. Ann Viola Neblett, indefatigable worker for temperance in Greenville, South Carolina, and the first woman in her state to declare herself for woman suffrage over her own signature in public print, which was an act of heroism and might have meant social ostracism in the conservative South; Mrs. Sarah Mariah Clinton Perkins, Mrs. Laura Jacinta Rittenhouse, of Illinois; Miss Mary Scott, an earnest advocate in Canada, whose writings on temperance have had wide circulation among our Woman's Christian ​