This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
100
BLOOMER.
BLYE.

facilities for printing and carrying so large a mail as her four-thousand papers from that new land, at so early a day, Mrs. Bloomer disposed of the "Lily" before leaving Ohio, and intended henceforth to rest from her public labors. But that was not permitted to her. Calls for lectures were frequent, and to these she responded as far as possible, but was obliged to refuse to go long distances on account of there being at that day no public conveyance except tin- old stage coach. In the winter of 1856 Mrs. Bloomer, by invitation, addressed the legislature of Nebraska on the subject of woman's right to the ballot. The Territorial house of representatives shortly afterwards passed a bill giving women the right to vote, and in the council it passed to a second reading, but was finally lost tor want of time. The limited session was drawing to a close, and the last hour expired before the bill could come up for final action. Mrs. Bloomer took part in organizing the Iowa State Suffrage Association and was at one time its president Poor health has compelled her of late years to retire from active work in the cause.


BLYE, Miss Birdie, pianist, born in New York City, in 187-. Her parents are Americans of English descent Miss Blye early manifested a love of music. Her talent was developed under able masters in London, Paris and Germany. When eleven years of age she made her debut in orchestral concerts in London and on the Continent with success. She played from memory concertos, sonatas and other compositions by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Schumann, Rubinstein, Liszt, Schubert and Chopin, and could play the whole clavichord without notes and transpose in every key. BIRDIE BLYE. She received many certificates and medals, and was feted and admired as the little "wonder child." Within the past three years she has played in more than two-hundred concerts and musicales in chief American, English and European cities with gratifying success. She is an excellent violinist, a pupil of the Joachim School of Berlin. Miss Blye is highly educated, is a linguist of note, and paints like an artist in oil and water colors. She studied in the Grosvenor Art Gallery in London. Her first exhibited picture, painted when she was fourteen years of age, was sold for seventy-five dollars.


BODLEY, Miss Rachel L., scientist and doctor of medicine, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, 7th December, 1831. Her parents were Anthony RACHEL L. BODLEY. R. and Rebecca W. Talbot Bodley, who settled in Cincinnati in 1817. Her paternal ancestry was Scotch-Irish. The American head of the family, Thomas Bodley, came from the north of Ireland early in the eighteenth century. His wife was Eliza Knox, of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her maternal ancestry runs back to John Talbot, an English Friend, who settled in Virginia Rachel was the oldest daughter and the third child in a family of five. Her mother taught a private school, in which Rachel studied until she was twelve years old. She entered the Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati in 1844, only two years after the opening of that institution, which was the first chartered college for women in the world. She was graduated in 1849, and in 1860 she was made preceptress in the higher collegiate studies. Dissatisfied with her own attainments, she went to Philadelphia, Pa., and entered the Polytechnic College as a special student in physics and chemistry. After two years of study she returned to Cincinnati and was made professor of natural sciences in the Cincinnati Female Seminary, which chair she filled for three years. While there she distinguished herself by classifying the extensive collection of specimens in natural history bequeathed to the seminary by Joseph Clark. Her work on that collection is crystallized in a catalogue that was recognized by Asa Gray, the eminent botanist, as a valuable contribution to science. In 1867 and 1868