page_title: Emeline S. Burlingame
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Emeline S. Burlingame / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Emeline Stanley Aldrich Burlingame
context_page_description: Emeline S. Burlingame was an American editor, evangelist and suffragist. She served for seven years as president of the Rhode Island Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and was the first president of the Free Baptist Woman‘s Missionary Society. She was a licensed preacher, and was three times a delegate to the free baptist triennial conference. Burlingame held positions with several religious publications, including, for eight years, editor of the Missionary Helper for many years.
  Burlingame was a potent factor in securing Rhode Island State constitutional prohibition for 1884–1887. Considered a suffrage luminary, she authored the leaflet, “An Appeal to Women’s Missionary Societies Urging Church Women to Support Woman Suffrage as a Step Toward More Efficient Missionary Work, ” which was printed and distributed by the National American Woman Suffrage Association among missionary societies.
context_section_description: After completing her education, she taught for five years. On Thanksgiving Day, November 1859, she married Luther Rawson Burlingame, a Brown University man, class of 1857, from Pennsylvania. Mr. and Mrs. Burlingame lived for two years at Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, where Mr. Burlingame was principal of the Academy, six years at Whitesboro, New York, where Mr. Burlingame was Professor of Greek and Latin in the Free Baptist Seminary, and then seven years in Dover, New Hampshire. Mr. Burlingame became Publishing Agent in the Free Baptist Publishing Establishment. In Dover, she began her public career of writing and speaking. She contributed articles to the Morning Star, Little Star, and The Myrtle, becoming editor of the latter during the remainder of her stay in Dover. 
  In 1869, Dr. Dio Lewis gave the lecture in Dover that he gave three years later in Hillsboro, Ohio, where it inspired the woman's temperance crusade and led to the organization of the W. C. T. U. In Dover, a committee of women was appointed, meetings held and saloons visited. Burlingame was a member of this committee, presided at the great mass meetings held, and was offered the leadership of the movement, which she declined. “In June, 1873,” said Burlingame, “Mrs. M. M. H. Hills came to my house and told me I had been elected president of the Free Baptist W.M.S., just organized at the New Hampshire Yearly Meeting. I at once decided that if president in name, I would be in fact. It had been the custom for women's societies in the denomination to ask a minister to preside, read reports and conduct all public business. I arranged at the first meeting after my election for the women to do their own work. I well remember the first time I presided at the Anniversaries in 1873 at Farmington, N. H." The prominent men, Dr. O. B. Cheney, Rev. Ebenezer Knowlton, who had formerly conducted the exercises for the women, sat in the front pew, ready to grasp the helm should anything go wrong. Ascending the steps to the platform, Burlingame was too abashed to stand behind the pulpit, so she stood beside it. Other officers sustained their parts well. At the close of the exercises Rev. Knowlton came and congratulated her and said, "The brethren will have to look out for their laurels after this.”
  While living in Dover, she served as editor of The Myrtle, under Dr. Day, and, at his request, contributed regularly to the Little Star, under the pseudonym, "Aunt Stomly", while in The Myrtle, for articles not editorial, her pen name was "Cousin Emeline". She was also a contributor to the Morning Star for several years. On her removal to Providence, she assisted her husband in editing Town and Country, a temperance paper. She served as president of the Free Baptist W.M.S. from 1873 to 1886 when she was elected editor of the Missionary Helper, the organ of the society, introducing features which made it useful to missionary' workers.
  In 1879, she was elected corresponding secretary and organizer for the R.I. W.C.T.U., and began at once to address audiences and to organize unions in different parts of the State. In 1884, she was elected president of the Union and devoted the next seven years to speaking and planning in its interest.  Her addresses were given from pulpits of nearly all denominations, before religious conferences, legislative committees, Sunday schools, day schools, at camp meetings, and wherever the people could be reached. In the securing of a prohibitory amendment to the constitution of Rhode Island, the W.C.T.U. was the acknowledged leader, and to that work Burlingame gave all her attention, continuing with equal vigor the struggle for the retention of the amendment when attacked by the combined powers of the liquor traffic.
  In 1874, the family moved to Providence. In the fall of that year the General Conference met with Roger Williams Church. It was notable as the first General Conference at which a woman presided over the public meeting of the W.M.S. As President of the W.M.S., she was asked to make the dedicatory address at Myrtle Hall, Storer College, May 30, 1879
caption: Emeline Burlingame (1889)
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