Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/122

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND
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a deaf ear to their appeals nor sends them away empty-handed. She not only gives liberally to recognized charities, but helps with generous and wise consideration families and individuals who need assistance. Her quiet deeds of charity are as numerous as those which are generally known. For fourteen years she has represented the church as director of the Diet Mission, in which she holds the offices of room committee and ward visitor. This society supplies food and dainties to the impoverished sick of the city. Mrs. Ripley has also been a working member of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Y. M. C. A. for many years and a member of the Female Samaritan Association, which is the oldest charitable association in Portland, and celebrated its seventy-fourth birthday on March 4, 1901. She is one of the oldest members of the Portland Associated Charities as well as a ward visitor. She belong^ also to the Portland Provident Association, and is a worker in the Fraternity House, a social settlement. Mrs. Ripley is likewise a member of the Conklin Parliamentary Club, the Cresco Literary Club, the Woman's Literary Union of Portland, the Equal Suffrage Club, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, the. Elizabeth Wadsworth Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of Portland, Me., and the National Society of U. S. Daughters of 1812, State of Maine.

Guy Livermore Ripley, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Ripley, died at the age of twenty years, four months. A handsome memorial to him has been placed in the Portland High School.


ANNIE COOLIDGE RUST was born in Richmond, Va., one of a family of nine children. Her father, Thomas Adams Rust, a very successful hardware merchant in Richmond, was a native of Salem, Mass. His wife, Miss Rust^s mother, in maidenhood Phoebe Cutler Chamberlain, was born in New Hampshire, but had removed to Boston with her parents when she was a child. She was well educated and very active in church affairs in Boston, being a member of the parish of the Rev. Robert C. Waterston, by whom their marriage ceremony was performed in 18— .

Richmond in those days seemed a long distance for the bride to be going from her home and mother, and it was agreed by the husband that a part of each year should be passed in "dear old Boston." The house in which they lived in Richmond, and in which Miss Rust was born, was a typical Southern house of many large rooms, the servants' quarters and kitchen being in a separate building. In this Southern home many Boston friends, also friends and business associates from England, were hospitably entertained.

While their children were still young, Mr. and Mrs. Rust, being anxious that they should have the best educational advantages, removed to Cambridge, Mass., and, after some of the children were graduated from the Cambridge schools, the family removed to Boston. The mother believed that it would be of great advantage to every young woman to have a knowledge of the Froebelian principles of education, known as the Kindergarten System, which applies to the life of the little child, but knew not of any such school in this vicinity. While visiting a friend in Cambridge one day, the conversation turned upon a "play school" that had been opened in Boston, where the children had no books. The term "play school" interested the mother. She looked into the matter, and learned that the name was given in irony by those who did not know what it was. To her great delight, it was a Kindergarten and Normal Class, which Madame Kreige and her daughter. Alma Kreige, from Berlin, had opened in Boston, they having been requested by their teacher, Baroness von Marenholtz Bülow, to come to America and introduce this system of education. Mrs. Rust was much pleased to find just what she had been looking for, and at her earnest request her daughter entered the school as a pupil in one of the first Normal Classes. Miss Rust brought to this work, besides an aptitude for it and the enthusiasm of youth, rare insight into child nature, a cultivated mind, and deep religious feeling. Moreover, ideas gained from conversations with her teacher were so unlike those by which she had been governed