page_title: Caroline Brown Buell
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Caroline Brown Buell / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Caroline Brown Buell
context_page_description: Caroline Brown Buell was an American activist who lectured and wrote on behalf of temperance and suffrage. She served as the assistant recording secretary, corresponding secretary, and a member of the Our Union publication committee of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union; as well as the president and corresponding secretary of the Connecticut WCTU. She also originated the plan of the Loyal Temperance Legion, the children's society of the WCTU. Buell wrote extensively for temperance publications, and other papers and magazines. She made her home in East Hampton, Connecticut.
context_section_description: On August 25, 1862, in East Hampton, Connecticut, the day before he left to join the Union Army in the Civil War, she married Lt. Frederick W. H. Buell, of the 18th Connecticut Infantry Regiment. He died during the war in 1865. During the war her father, husband and three brothers also served the Union, three in the army and two brothers in the navy. Her father was the chaplain of her husband's regiment, and in war, he earned the name of "The Fighting Chaplain." During those years, Buell worked, watched and waited, and in the last year of the conflict, her husband died, leaving her alone with her only son.  The war record of her family made her a favorite with the veterans of the war.
  In ensuing years, after the death of her eldest brother's wife, Buell hastened to take the care of his motherless children. Here, she spent more than three years of her life. It was here she was found when, in 1876, she was chosen to be the Corresponding Secretary of the WCTU of Connecticut, which had been organized in some measure the preceding year. She entered at once into the work devolved upon her, and gave to the organization the benefit of her executive ability, so that speedily, the WCTU in Connecticut was put into orderly and effective shape. Her sound judgment, her powers of discrimination, her energy, her acquaintance with facts and persons, and her facile pen made her at once a power in the association. She came into office when much was new and experimental, and she gave positive direction to the work and originated many plans of procedure. It was in her first year as Corresponding Secretary of the Connecticut Union that she devised the plan of quarterly returns, that went on to be  adopted all over the country by the various State Unions. Annually, since that period, Buell was honored by re-election to the Corresponding Secretary's position.
  At an executive meeting held at the close of the WCTU's Newark Convention in 1876, a publishing committee was appointed, which included Buell, representing Connecticut, as well as Mary Towne Burt, New York; Jane M. Geddes, Michigan; Frances E. Willard, Illinois; Esther Pugh, Ohio, Harriet Maria Haven, Vermont and Zerelda G. Wallace, Indiana. Buell, Burt, and Willard were made a quorum for the transaction of business. The quorum at once renamed the WCTU organ to Our Union, made Burt publisher, and Margaret Elizabeth Winslow, of Brooklyn, editor. According to Gifford (1995), Buell, Pugh, and Frances H. Rastall went on to use the Union Signal to promote their private businesses.
  In 1880, in the Boston convention, Buell was chosen corresponding secretary of the National WCTU, and in that position she did effective work with her writing and lecturing for the association. She was re-elected to that office regularly for twelve years. Upon the platform, as a speaker before an audience, she was always self-poised, self-unconscious, earnest, and impressive. She was a dignified presiding officer and an accomplished parliamentarian, and in State conventions she had often filled the chair in emergencies.
  Buell was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the National Purity Association, Sorosis, and the Century Study Clubs. She died in 1927 and is buried at Lakeview Cemetery, East Hampton, Connecticut.
caption: Caroline Brown Buell
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