Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/731

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Part Taken by Women in American History

Ohio. In her youth she accompanied her father to Saratoga Springs, New York, to attend a national convention and was the only woman in that meeting. On the twenty-third of December, 1873, in her own town, Hillsborough, Ohio, she opened the temperance movement that in a few weeks culminated in the Woman's Temperance crusade, and the great success of that movement as it swept from city to town throughout the state is accorded to Mrs. Thompson.

Mrs. Anna Augusta Truitt was one of those who marched, sang and prayed with the crusaders in that remarkable movement in Indiana, and she remained a faithful worker in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. President of the Delaware County Woman's Christian Temperance Union for many years, she was selected by the union to represent them in state and district meetings, as well as in the national conventions. Her addresses, essays and reports proved her a writer of no mean talent. She was an advocate of woman's suffrage, believing that women's votes would go far towards removing the curse of intemperance. In the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she adhered always to the principle of non-partisan, non-sectarian work, and in spite of various hostile attacks she fought on until the temperance union in her city of Munsey, Indiana, was so strongly established, and so influential that no criticism nor persecution could turn the workers she left in the field from their path of duty.Mrs. Mary Evalia Warren, for many years prominent in temperance reform, was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union from its first organization and she had a field of her own for propagating the work at Wayland University, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where she had furnished money to erect a dormitory for girls called the "Warren Cottage." She joined the Good Templars' order in 1878 and filled all the subordinate lodge offices to which women usually aspire, and as grand-vice-templar she lectured to large audiences in nearly all parts of the state.

Mrs. Lucy H. Washington was a leader in the crusade movement, and when temperance organization was sought in her town of Jacksonville, Illinois, in response to the needs of the hour she was brought into public speaking. Her persuasive methods, Christian spirit, and her eloquence made her at once a speaker acceptable to all classes. Her first address in temperance work outside her own city was given in the Hall of Representatives in Springfield, Illinois. Commendatory press reports on this led to repeated and urgent calls for further lecture work and opened the door of service which was never closed during her life. During succeeding years she was in various official capacities largely engaged in Woman's Christian Temperance Union work giving addresses in twenty-four states and extending her labors from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the great campaigns for constitutional prohibition in Iowa, Kansas, Maine and other states she bore a helpful part and in difficult emergencies, when great interests were imperiled, her electric utterances often produced a decision for victory. Her temperance hymns have been sung throughout the country.

Mrs. Margaret Anderson Watts, always a deep thinker on the most advanced social and religious topics, occasionally published her views on woman, in her political and civil relations. She was the first Kentucky woman who wrote and advocated the equal rights of women before the law. During the revision of the