The Part Taken by Women in American History/Women in Professions
Women in Professions.
MARY GARARD ANDREWS.
Mrs. Andrews was born in Clarksburg, W. Va., March 3, 1852. Is a Universalist minister. Left to struggle with the adverse elements she developed a strong character and overcame many difficulties and acquired such education as she had wished. In Hillsdale College she completed the English Theological course, and during this time she had charge of two churches, preaching twice every Sunday for three years. For five years she was in charge of the Free Baptist Church, but she severed her connection with this faith and united with the Universalist Church. She has been a close student and active worker. Since her marriage she has made Omaha her home.
MARTHA WALDRON JANES.
Mrs. Martha Waldron Janes was born in Northfield, Michigan, in June, 1832. Her father, Leonard T. Waldron was a native of Massachusetts. Her mother, Nancy Bennett, was a native of New York. She educated herself by doing housework at $1.00 a week. She was converted when very young, and by her religious zeal and exhortations became so conspicuous that many considered her mentally unsound. In October, 1852, she married John A. Sober, who died November, 1864, leaving her with two young children. In 1867 she married her second husband, H. H. Janes, and though she had preached for some time from the pulpits of the Free Baptist Church she was not regularly ordained until 1868, being the first woman ordained in that conference. She was actively engaged in the work of women's suffrage and temperance.
MARY C. JONES.
ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL.
Mrs. Blackwell was born in Henrietta, Monroe County, New York, May 20, 1825. Daughter of Joseph Brown, of Thompson, Conn, and Abby Morse, of Dudley, Mass. Her ancestors belonged to the early English colonists of New England. When but sixteen years of age, she taught school in order to pay for a collegiate course. She was a graduate of Oberlin College. In 1848 she published her first essay in the Oberlin Quarterly Review. After she had completed her theological course, she found she could not obtain a license, but she preached wherever an opportunity offered, and gradually all obstacles melted away, and in 1852, she became an ordained pastor of the Congregational Church in South Butler, Wayne County, New York. In 1856 she married Samuel C. Blackwell. Her life as a preacher, lecturer and writer has been a busy and useful one. She is the author of "Studies in General Science," "A Market Woman," "The Island Neighbors," "The Sexes Throughout Nature" and "The Physical Basis of Immortality."
FLORENCE E. KOLLOCK.
Miss Florence E. Kollock was born January 19, 1848, in Waukesha, Wis. Daughter of William E. Kollock and Anne Margaret Hunter Kollock. Her first work was in the missionary field at Waverley, Iowa, in 1875. Later she removed to Blue Island, 111., then to Englewood, where she has since made her home. Her first congregation was in Englewood. There meetings were held in the Masonic Hall until through the efforts of Miss Kollock a church was built. She is recognized as a woman of great ability as an organizer in various branches of church work. She is the possessor of wonderful personal magnetism. In her preaching she has gathered about her a large circle. During one of her vacations she established a church in Pasadena Cal., which is now the largest Universalist Church on the Pacific Coast. She is prominent in all reformatory and educational work, the woman's suffrage and temperance movements.
MARY LYDIA LEGGETT.
Miss Mary Lydia Leggett was born April 25, 1852, in Sempronius, New York. Daughter of the Rev. William Leggett and Freelove Frost Leggett. In 1887 she was ordained in the Liberal Ministry in Kansas City, Mo. She built and dedicated a church in Beatrice, Neb., of which she was the minister until 1891, when she became pastor of a church near Boston. This church in Green Harbor, Mass., was founded by the granddaughter of the statesman, Daniel Webster, whose summer home was in this quaint little town on the old Plymouth shores. Miss Leggett has in her study the office table on which the great orator wrote his famous speeches.
ESTHER TUTTLE PRITCHARD.
Born January 26, 1840, in Morrow County, Ohio. Her father, Daniel Wood, was a minister. Her husband, Lucius V. Tuttle, was a volunteer in the Civil War, and died in 1881. In 1884 Mrs. Tuttle was chosen by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Board to edit the Friends' Missionary Advocate, which was published in Chicago. Here she married Calvin W. Pritchard, editor of the Christian Worker, and became proprietor of the Missionary Advocate, which, in 1890, she presented to the Woman's Foreign Missionary Union of Friends. She was well known as a teacher of the English Bible in the Chicago Training School for the City, Home and Foreign Missions, and as superintendent of the Systematic-giving Department of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
ANNA WEED PROSSER.
Born October 15, 1846. An invalid for many years, she believed her recovery due to prayer, and immediately entered upon her evangelical work in gratitude for her restored health. She worked for some time under the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, ultimately establishing a mission of her own, known as the Old Canal Street Mission, in Buffalo, of which she took charge and was assisted in this work by reformed men whom she had saved from lives of sin. After ten years spent in ministry among the poor and unfortunate class, she entered the general evangelical work and became president of the Buffalo Branch of the National Christian Alliance.
MARIAN MURDOCH.
Was born October 9, 1849, in Garnaville, Iowa, and is one of the successful ministers of that state. Her father, Judge Samuel Murdoch, was a member of the territorial legislature of Iowa, also of the state legislature, a judge of the District Court and is well known throughout the state. She was educated in the Northwest Ladies' College, at Evanston, 111., and the University of Wisconsin. On deciding to take up the ministry she entered the School of Liberal Theology in Meadville, Penna., in 1882, receiving her degree of D.D. in 1885. Her work in the ministry began while she was yet a pupil. After completing her course, she was called to the Unity Church of Humbolt, Iowa, and later to the First Unitarian Church in Kalamazoo, Mich. Later she took a course of lectures at Oxford, England. Miss Murdoch is essentially a reformer, preaching on questions of social, political and moral reform.
CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE.
CORA BELLE BREWSTER
Miss Brewster was born September 6, 1859, at Almond, New York. She was one of the students of the Northwestern University. Later she removed to Baltimore, Maryland, and began the study of medicine. In 1886, she graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, of Boston. Completing her course, she returned to Baltimore, and formed a partnership with her sister, Flora A. Brewster, M.D., and in 1889 they began the publication of the Baltimore Family Health Journal. This was later changed to the Homeopathic Advocate and Health Journal. In 1890 she was elected gynecological surgeon to the Homeopathic Hospital and Free Dispensary, of Maryland. She has achieved marked success as a medical writer, surgeon, editor and practicing physician.
HANNAH E. LONGSHORE.
Was born in Montgomery, May, 1819. She was among the first women to practise medicine in this country. Her father Samuel, and her mother Paulina Myers were born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and belonged to the Society of Friends. When but a small child her family removed to Washington, District of Columbia. After her marriage to Thomas E. Longshore she made her home in Philadelphia and here read medicine with her brother-in-law, Professor Joseph S. Longshore. Her death occurred in 1901.
JENNIE DE LA MONTAGNIE LOZIER.
Physician and president of the Sorosis Club, of New York City, where she was born. Her father was William de la Montagnie, Junior. Her ancestors were Huguenot French. She is a graduate of Rutger's Female Institute, now Rutger's Female College, which conferred upon her in 1891 the degree of Doctor of Science. She received a very thorough and liberal education and traveled extensively after leaving school. When but nineteen years of age she was instructor in the languages and literature of Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, and was later chosen vice-principal of the women's department of this college. In 1872 she married Doctor A. W. Lozier, of New York City. Her interest in medicine was brought about through her mother-in-law, Doctor Clemence S. Lozier, who was founder and for twenty-five years dean of the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women. Mrs. Lozier graduated from this college after her first child was born and was made professor of psysiology in that institution serving also on the hospital staff. Before retiring from her professorshp she was invited to address the Sorosis Club on physical culture. She soon became a member and prominent in the councils of this club. She is a cultured woman, brainy, broad-minded, and forceful speaker. She served on the various important committees of the Sorosis Club, and in 1891 was elected president of this organization and re-elected in 1892. In this year she was sent as a delegate to the council of the Women's Federation of Clubs held in Chicago, reading before this gathering an able paper on "Educational Influences of Women's Clubs." In 1889 she was sent to represent the New York Medical Club and Hospital for Women in the International Homeopathic Congress in Paris, before which she read a paper in French on the "Medical Education of Women in the United States." She has been the president of the Emerson and Avon Clubs. Was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Women and also the "Patria Club." She has read papers of great merit before the various literary and reform associations of New York City and the United States. She always speaks for the liberal and thorough education of women not only in art and music but also in chemistry, social economics, psychology, pedagogy, and physiology. Mrs. Lozier has exerted a wide influence among the club women of this country and occupies a commanding position in the fields open to women for advancement in social, literary and general culture.
ANNA LUKENS.
Was born in Philadelphia, October, 1844. Her family were residents of Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and belonged to the Society of Friends. She was graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, in 1870. Was a member of the class attending clinics in the Pennsylvania Hospital, November, 1869, when the students from the Woman's Medical College were hissed by the male members of the clinic. Miss Lukens and a Miss Brumall led the line of women students who passed out of the hospital grounds amid the jeers and insults of the male students, who even threw stones and mud at them, but these brave women were not discouraged by such conduct and might be considered to have blazed the way for other women who to-day enjoy the privilege. In 1870, Miss Lukens entered the Woman's Hospital of Philadelphia, as an interne and in 1871 she began to teach in the college as an instructor in the chair of physiology. In 1872 she taught pharmacy in the college by lectures and practical demonstrations in the dispensary of the Women's Hospital. She was the first woman to apply for admission to the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. Not meeting with much encouragement, owing to the opposition which existed at that time against all women taking up this vocation, she entered the College of Pharmacy in New York City, and took a course in analytical chemistry in the laboratory of Dr. Walls. In 1873 sne became attending physician of the Western Dispensary for Women and Children, and at some portions of the time paid the rent for this dispensary out of her own pocket in order to keep up the work. In 1873 she was elected a member of the New York County Medical Society. In 1877 she was appointed assistant physician in the Nursery and Child's Hospital of Staten Island, assuming entire charge of the pharmaceutical department. In 1880 she was appointed resident physician of the Nursery and Child's Hospital. Two papers which she read before the Staten Island Clinical Society were published in the New York Journal and copied in the London Lancet and received favorable notice by the British Medical Journal. In 1884 she went abroad for study in children's diseases in the principal hospitals of Europe, and later opened an office for private practice in the city of New York. She was elected consulting physician of the Nursery and Child's Hospital of Staten Island, and a fellow of the New York State Medical Society. Was appointed in 1876, one of the vice-presidents of the New York Committee for the Prevention and State Regulation of Vice. She is a member of the Sorosis Club, and is considered a woman of marked executive ability for hospital administration. Her work is of a high standard and she occupies a conspicuous position for a woman in the profession which she has chosen.
DOROTHEA LUMMIS.
Was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, November, i860. Her father was Josiah H. Rhodes, of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, and her mother, Sarah Crosby Swift was descended from a New England Puritan family. Although a successful student of music in the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, in 1881, she entered the musical school of Boston University and graduated with honor in 1884. In 1880, she married Charles F. Lummis, and in 1885 removed to Los Angeles, California, where she began the practice of medicine. She has served as dramatic editor of the Los Angeles Times and also musical editor and critic on that journal. She was instrumental in the formation of a humane society which was brought about through her observations of the neglect and cruelty to the children of the poor, and Mexican families, visited in her practice. She is a writer for Puck, Judge, Life, Women's Cycle, San Francisco Argonaut, and the Californian, as well as contributing many important papers to the various medical journals of the United States.
MARY PUTNAM JACOBI.
HARRIET B. JONES.
Miss Harriet B. Jones was born June, 1856, in Ebansburg, Pennsylvania. She is of Welsh ancestry. Appreciating the necessity for women physicians, after her graduation from the Wheeling Female College she went to Baltimore, to take a course as a medical student there, and graduated with honors from the Women's Medical College, in May, 1884. Wishing to make nervous diseases her specialty she accepted the position of assistant superintendent of the State Hospital for the Insane in Weston, West Virginia. In 1892 she established in Wheeling a private sanatorium for women and nervous diseases. She is an active worker in the temperance cause.
ANNA M. LONGSHORE POTTS.
Born April 16, 1829, in Attleboro, Pennsylvania. She was one of the class of eight brave young Pennsylvania Quaker girls graduating from the Woman's Medical College of Philadelphia, in 1852. This was the first college in which a woman could earn and secure a medical degree and at the time mentioned, when Miss Longshore graduated, they were received with faint applause from their friends and marks of derision from the male medical students. In 1857, she became the wife of Lambert Potts, of Langhorne, Pennsylvania. After removing to Michigan, she made a tour of the Pacific coast, New Zealand, Sidney, New South Wales, England and the United States lecturing on the prevention of sickness.
ANN PRESTON.
Born December, 1813, in West Grove, Pennsylvania, and died in Philadelphia, April 18, 1872. She was a daughter of Amos and Margaret Preston, members of the Society of Friends. When the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania was opened in 1850, Miss Preston was among the first applicants for admission and graduated at the first commencement of the college. She remained as a student after graduation and in the spring of 1852, was called to the vacant chair of physiology and hygiene, of this college. She lectured in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia on hygiene. Miss Preston and her associates obtained a charter and raised funds to establish a hospital in connection with the college, and when it was opened she was made a member of its board of managers, its corresponding secretary and its consulting physician, positions which she held until her death. In 1866 Doctor Preston was elected dean of the faculty. In 1867, she was elected a member of the board of corporators of the college. During the twenty years of her medical practice she saw the sentiment towards women physicians gradually become more liberal, until they were admitted to hospital clinics with men.
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.
The first woman physician in the United States was born in England, February 3, 1821, but her father brought his family to New York when she was eleven years old. After five or six years in that city, his business failed and he moved to Cincinnati. He had been there but a few weeks when he died, leaving a widow and nine children in very embarrassed circumstances. Elizabeth, who was his third daughter, together with her two oldest sisters opened a Young Ladies' Seminary and supported the family. Finding a better opportunity for private teaching in South Carolina, she went there in 1845, teaching music and French in a few wealthy families, while she read medicine with Doctor Samuel H. Dickson, of Charleston. After two or three years of hard labor in South Carolina, and about two years more devoted to the study of medicine in Philadelphia and Geneva, New York, she received her medical diploma. In receiving it from the head director, she replied, "I thank you sir. With the help of the Most High it shall be the effort of my life to shed honor upon this diploma." Nor was this resolution in vain. Elizabeth Blackwell may be said to be the dean of the corps of splendid women physicians in the United States, and few if any have exceeded her in conscientious skill.
FLORA L ALDRICH.
Mrs. Aldrich was born in Westfield, New York, October 6, 1859. Her ancestors were among the early Dutch settlers of the Hudson Valley. Her maiden name was Southard, but little is known of her family. Her great-grandfather only remembered that his name was Southard and that he was stolen from a port in England. She married Doctor A. G. Aldrich, of Adams, Massachusetts, in 1883, and this resulted in her immediately taking up the study of medicine and surgery. Later removing to Minnesota, she graduated from the Minnesota Medical College and took post-graduate courses in many of the best schools of the country.
SARAH B. ARMSTRONG.
Miss Armstrong was born in Newton near Cincinnati, on July 31, 1857. She was educated in the schools of Cincinnati and later in Lebanon, Ohio, where the family made their home. At sixteen she became a teacher. She received the degree of B.S., in 1880, from the Lebanon University and the highest honors in a class of sixty-six members. She later became a teacher in this school and while engaged in this work, obtained her degree of B.A. and later that of M.A. In 1886 she took her first degree in medicine and was appointed physician to the college. Later she spent some time in New York taking a course in the hospitals of that city. She inherits the love for the profession from her great-grandmother who was the first woman to practice medicine west of the Alleghany Mountains. Miss Armstrong possesses a very fine voice and has also literary talents.
ALICE BENNET.
Miss Bennet was born in Wrentham, Massachusetts, January 31, 1851. She taught in the district schools in her early youth but took up the study of medicine in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated in March, 1876. Spent one year as an interne in the New England Hospital, of Boston. After graduating, engaged in dispensary work in the slums of Philadelphia. In 1876 she pursued a course of scientific study in the University of Pennsylvania, from which she received her degree of Ph.D., in 1880, and that year she was elected superintendent of the department for women of the State Hospital for the Insane, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. The placing of a woman in charge was without precedent and the results were awaited with anxiety by the public and the profession. At the end of twelve years the hospital was acknowledged to be the leading institution of the kind in the state, if not in the country, and this experiment has been the cause of this course being adopted by other states and the question is being very generally agitated as to whether this should not be generally adopted. When Miss Bennet entered upon this field of her labors she had but one patient and one nurse. More than two thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five insane women have been cared for, and in 1892 there was a force of ninety-five nurses under her. She is a member of the American Medical Association, of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, of the Montgomery County Medical Society, of which she was made president in 1890; of the Philadelphia Neurological Society, of the Philadelphia Medical Jurisprudence Society, and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She has several times delivered the annual address on mental diseases before the State Medical Society and was appointed by Governor Pattison, of Pennsylvania, as a member of the board of five commissioners to erect the new hospital for the insane of the state.
MARTHA GEORGE RIPLEY.
Born November 30, 1843, in Lowell, Massachusetts. She married William W. Ripley, June 25, 1867, and removed to Boston, where she entered the Boston School of Medicine, in 1880. At her graduation in 1883 she was pronounced by the faculty one of the most thorough medical students who had ever received a diploma from the university. Soon after she settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and founded the Maternity Hospital. Mrs. Ripley was always deeply interested in the cause of woman's suffrage, and in 1883 she was elected president of the Minnesota Woman's Suffrage Association, serving as such for six years.
CLARA HOLMES HAPGOOD NASH,
KATE PIER
Was born June 22, 1845, in St. Albans, Vermont. Her father was John Hamilton and her mother's maiden name was Meakinn. Mrs. Pier gave the name of Hamilton to each of her three daughters. In 1866 she became the wife of C. K. Pier, of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. She has accomplished what we believe no other woman in this country has—she made lawyers of herself and her three daughters. Mrs. Pier began her legal life by managing the large estate left by her father so successfully that other business of a like character was attracted to her. She was made court commissioner at one time and has enjoyed a successful professional career. She has accomplished much for women in her work before the legislature of her state in looking after bills in the interest of women.
ALICE PARKER.
Miss Alice Parker was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, April n, 1864, and was the daughter of the well-known Doctor Hiram Parker, of Lowell, Massachusetts. She was admitted to the Massachusetts bar, in 1890. Miss Parker published an interesting series of articles in the Home Journal, of Boston, under the title of "Law for My Sisters," of great value to women. They contained expositions of the law of marriage, widows, breach of promise, wife's necessaries, life insurance, divorce, sham marriages and names. She is the author of many amendments before the Massachusetts legislature affecting the property rights of women, and has made it her special work to procure such legislation at each session as will accomplish this end.
MYRA BRADWELL.
Lawyer and editor. Mrs. Bradwell was born in Manchester, Vermont, February 12, 1831. Daughter of Eben and Abigail Willey Colby. When quite young, her parents removed to New York City, and when she was about twelve years of age, to Chicago. In 1852, she married James B. Bradwell, whose father had been one of the leading pioneers of Illinois. She studied law in her husband's office. Passing the required examination, she was the first woman in America to ask to be admitted to the bar, but was refused on the grounds of being a married woman. This only added indignation to her desire, and she never ceased her efforts until this disability was removed, and finally received a certificate based upon her original application, and was the first woman to be admitted to the Illinois Bar Association. She was the editor of the first legal paper published in the Western states, known as the Chicago Legal News, and she remained its manager and editor until her death. The legislature of Illinois gave her a special charter for this paper, and it became a valuable medium for the publication of legal notices. Mrs. Bradwell drew up the bill making the law giving to married women their own earnings, and its passage was secured by her efforts in 1869. The work of editing and managing her paper became so arduous that her husband, Judge Bradwell, retired from the bench to assist her in this work. She was always prominent in all charitable and philanthropic work of her home city—Chicago. She was a member of several of the prominent associations for literary and philanthropic work. Both of her children, a son and daughter, were admitted to the bar.
ELLA FRANCES BRAMAN.
Mrs. Braman was born March 23, 1850, in Brighton, now a part of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1867 she was married to Joseph Balch Braman, a member of the Boston bar. She commenced her life as a lawyer by assisting her husband, and proved so competent that he decided to ask for her appointment as commissioner for different states, and acted as such during her husband's absence. On their removal to New York City, she became a full partner with her husband.
ELLA KNOWLES.
Miss Ella Knowles was born in 1870 in New Hampshire. When quite young she gave dramatic readings. In 1888 she took up the study of law in the office of Judge Burnham, of Manchester, New Hampshire. In 1889 she went to Iowa as a teacher of French and German and taught through the West for a number of years. While a resident of Helena, Montana, she finished her law course. In 1889 she was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Montana. In 1890 she was admitted to practice before the District Court of the United States and also before the Circuit Court of the United States. In 1892 she was named for attorney general of Montana, by the Alliance Party She is regarded as a woman of great ability, tact and courage and is well known throughout the Northwest.
NELLIE BROWN POND,
MARY E. MILLER.
Miss Miller, a distinguished woman lawyer of Chicago, is a farmer's daughter, and was born on a Michigan farm, in Calhoun County, December 28, 1864. Her early education was obtained in a country district school. She afterwards attended the Marshall High School, and graduated in the Latin course. She then attended the Michigan State Normal School located at Ypsilanti, from which she graduated in 1886. The following year she taught school at Portland, Michigan. The next summer she entered the office of the county clerk, of Calhoun County, and there learned to use the typewriter. In the winter of 1888, Miss Miller went to Chicago, and entered a shorthand school, and in the following autumn took a position as stenographer and typewriter with A. C. McClurg & Co., publishers, remaining with them until the following spring. She followed the occupation of a stenographer until 1894, occupying places during that period in the offices of some of the most prominent lawyers in the city of Chicago.
Miss Miller began the study of law about the 1st of October, 1893, attending the Chicago College of Law, from which college she received her diploma in June, 1896, being admitted to the bar at that date. She afterwards took a post-graduate course in law, and received the degree of B.L., from the Lake Forest University. She commenced the practice of law about the 1st of July, 1895, and opened her office in Chicago.
It is something to have earned a $30,000 fee, but what Miss Mary E. Miller has done for the poor is of far more importance to the public. Miss Miller, who has been practising law in the Chicago courts for thirteen years, received her largest fee for winning a suit in behalf of the heirs of a millionaire and secured a court order for the immediate distribution of $3,000,000. It was a triumph that attracted attention to her, but what she considers her real success at the bar was in a suit in which she received no fee whatever. Miss Miller possesses a high sense of eternal justice of right, and when she discovered that the Illinois courts had deprived the poor of their rights of "a day in court," she forthwith took up the cause of the pauper and fought to restore to him equal rights before the law with the rich. The case which brought her into the white light was a petition for mandamus, compelling the judge to examine the relator, and certain documents presented by her, and to determine whether she could sue as a "poor person" under the Illinois statutes. The judges of the Superior Court had enacted a rule regulating suits brought under the statute as poor persons, whom the rule styled "paupers," which was so burdensome and oppressive both to the lawyer and the client, that it was naturally impossible to comply with it conscientiously. The rule worked to the benefit of the corporations, traction companies, and others against whom personal injury suits were brought, as it deprived many of the opportunity of going into court. Miss Miller won her case for the "poor person," and the Supreme Court held the unjust rule null and void, overruling the law enacted by the eleven judges of the Superior Court. Miss Miller thereupon brought suit for her client, a "poor person," and won damages of $1,000, the verdict, however, was set aside and a second trial called. Miss Miller's fee in this case was less than nothing, her client being a poor negress, born a slave, but the suit established the right of so-styled "poor persons" to fight in court for their right against the rich. "It restored," says Miss Miller, "the rights of the poor to sue, a right of which the court had shamelessly deprived them."
She has always been very much interested in procuring suffrage for women, and has devoted more or less time to that purpose. For a short time in i8g6 she published a little suffrage paper in Chicago. For a number of years she was also connected with various women's clubs, but has dropped her membership in all save the Chicago Political Equality League. She is the organizer of Cook County for the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, and has devoted considerable time to that work.
Through her acquaintance obtained in the suffrage work, she became interested in the Norwegian Danish Young Women's Christian Home, and is now vice-president of the executive committee which has this home in charge. The home was instituted for the purpose of furnishing Norwegian and Danish servant girls in Chicago a safe, clean, and attractive residence. There is also connected with it a free employment bureau, which investigates the applications for servant girls by employers and ascertains whether they are desirable and safe positions. By this means it is hoped to save numerous girls from white slavery, as they are frequently lured into dens through the employment agencies.
Miss Miller has spoken for suffrage in the automobile tours through Illinois, and at the parlor and hall meetings in the city of Chicago.
J. ELLEN HORTON FOSTER.
For many years the figure of Mrs. J. Ellen Horton Foster was a familiar one in Washington. Familiarity did not, however, dull the respect and honor which the women of the Capital felt for her. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, November 3, 1840, the daughter of Reverend Jotham Horton, a Methodist Minister. She was educated in Lima, New York, and subsequently moved with her parents to Clinton, Iowa, where in 1869 she became the wife of E. C. Foster, a lawyer. She studied law and was admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court, of Iowa, in 1872, being the first woman to practice before that court. She followed the legal profession for years, at first practicing alone but subsequently forming a partnership with her husband.
Her fame as a lawyer in Iowa has been equaled by her work for temperance, the Methodist Church, Home and Foreign Missions, Philanthropy, Education, Patriotism and other great reforms. She joined the temperance workers with such ardor that when her home in Clinton, Iowa, was burned it was suspected that it was the work of enemies of the temperance cause.
As a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she has been able to give the most valuable service in the legislative department of that organization. Her legal knowledge enabled her to direct wisely the movements for constitutional amendments in many states, aimed to secure the prohibition of the sale and manufacture of alcoholic liquors. Maintaining as she did that no organization has the right to prejudice the rights of its members to any other organization for any purpose, these views led her to affiliate with the non-partisan league, and she served that body for several years as corresponding secretary, having her office in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1887 she visited Europe, where she rested and studied the temperance question. After her return from England, she moved to Washington City and rapidly became prominent in public affairs. She was sent by Secretary Hay, with Clara Barton, as a delegate to the International Congress of the Red Cross. She was an official member of the Taft party to the Philippines, and then went on to other lands to visit branches of the Foreign Missions of the Methodist Church. Her last appointment was to investigate the conditions of women and children workers, and the condition of the Federal prisons. She succeeded in causing a special wing lor women to be established in the Leavenworth penitentiary. She continued her activities in the cause of humanity until the day of her death, August II, 1910.
BELL A. MANSFIELD.
Mrs. Bell A. Mansfield was the first woman admitted to the practice of law in the United States. She was admitted to the bar in 1868 in the state of Iowa. Her death occurred August 1, 1911, at the home of her brother, Judge W. J. Babb, of Aurora, Illinois. She was in her sixty-fifth year at the time of her death.
ELLEN SPENCER MUSSEY.
Born at Geneva, Ohio, in 1850. Was the daughter of Piatt R. Spencer, (the author of the Spencerian system of writing,) and Persis Duty Spencer. She read law in the office of her husband, General Mussey, whom she married June 14, 1871. She established the Washington College of Law for Women in 1899. In 1893 she was first admitted to the bar and practiced law even before her husband's death. Was counsel for some of the foreign legations, and several national, patriotic, and labor organizations. She secured the passage of the bill through Congress giving mothers in the District of Columbia the same right to their children as their fathers and giving married women the right to do business and to control their own earnings, and also an appropriation for the first public kindergarten in the District of Columbia. She was one of the founders of the National Red Cross, a member of the Legion of Loyal Women, ex-vice-president-general Daughters of the American Revolution, and is now a member of the Board of Education of Washington, District of Columbia.