IN MEMORY OF MRS. NARCISSA WHITE KINNEY.
By MRS. HENRIETTA BROWN, Albany, Or.
NARCISSA WHITE KINNEY was born in Grove City, Penn., in 1854, and died in Portland, Or., January 5, 1901. She was reared by Christian parents in the United Presbyterian Church, and in her girlhood was a member of the Harmony Congregation of Grove City. In this congregation her father, grandfather and great-grandfather worshipped. She always spoke of this "as my home church." After the old building was removed and a new edifice erected, she placed in it a "memorial window" as a token of her loyalty and affection.
Miss White received her primary education in the Grove City public school, and was later graduated from the State Normal School of Pennsylvania, with high honors, showing such marked ability as a teacher that she was immediately elected principal of the training school of Edinboro, Pa., where she taught with great acceptance. In the meantime the temperance crusade and its outgrowth, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, were claiming public attention. Miss White studied carefully the aims and methods of this new organization, and soon became deeply impressed with the importance of its work. She felt it her duty to take up the cause of temperance under that organization. She at once joined the White Eibbon ranks, and was elected president of the Grove City Union. She was soon called to take a place in the state executive, in the position of superintendent of Scientific Temperance Instruction. In that position she did a vast amount of work, lecturing, writing and pledging legislators to the support of temperance measures. Miss Willard said of her that next to Mrs. Hunt she was probably the most able specialist in that department. She organized the State of Pennsylvania by counties and arranged the departments so systematically that the organization in that state was hold up as a model.
Miss White was next appointed a national organizer and lecturer, and in that capacity visited every state and territory in the Union and also made a tour of Canada. Her success as a platform orator was remarkable. Her presence was magnetic, her manner winning.
