This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
WILLARD.
WILLIAMS.
783

child according to its needs, the law of liberty in the development of every faculty and freedom for every right ambition were observed carefully. In early youth her daughter, Frances, wrote: "I thank God for my mother as for no other gift of his bestowing. My nature is so woven into hers that I think it would almost be death for me to have the bond severed, and one so much myself gone over the river. I verily believe I cling to her more than ever did any other of her children. Perhaps because I am to need her more." "Enter every open door" was her constant advice to her daughter, and much of the daughter's distinguished career has been rendered possible because of the courage and encouragement of her mother. The widened horizon and the fame which came to the mother in later years was in turn through her daughter, and thus the centripetal and centrifugal forces united in the shaping of an orbit ever true to its foci, God and humanity. Preserving her mental powers undimmed to the last. Madame Willard died after a brief illness, 7th August, 1892, at the age of nearly eighty-eight years. At her funeral it was said, "She was a reformer by nature. She made the world's cause her own and identified herself with all its fortunes. Nothing of its sorrow, sadness or pain was foreign to her. With a genius, a consecration, a beauty and a youth which had outlived her years, a soul eager still to know, to learn, to catch every word God had for her, she lived on. a center of joy and comfort in this most typical and almost best known home in America. She stood a veritable Matterhorn of strength to this daughter. Given a face like hers, brave, benignant, patient, yet resolute, a will inflexible for duty, a heart sensitive to righteousness and truth, yet tender as a child's, given New England puritanism and rigor, its ha hits of looking deep into every problem, its consciousness full of God, its lofty ideal of freedom and its final espousal of every noble cause, and you and I shall never blame the stalwart heart, well-nigh crushed because mother is gone. "The birthday motto adopted in the famous celebration of Madam Willard's eightieth birthday was "It is better further on," and her household name was "Saint Courageous."


WILLIAMS, Miss Adele, artist, born in Richmond, Va., 24th February. 1868. She comes of a family many members of which have been well known and conspicuous in the communities in which they lived. Her descent is thoroughly English. She is a descendant, on her mother's side, of Rev. Peter Bulkeley, who came from England to America in 1836; she is a great-great-granddaughter of Capt. Sylvanus Smith, of Revolutionary times, and a granddaughter of H. M. Smith, of Richmond, a man known throughout the country as an inventor and draughtsman. From him she inherited her talent. Her father, John H. Williams, was for many years a resident of San Francisco, Cal., and there accumulated considerable wealth. ADELE WILLIAMS. In her eleventh year reverses came to the family, and her subsequent education was acquired in the public schools of Richmond. At the age of fifteen she was graduated from the high school at the head of her class. Her attention since then has been almost entirely devoted to art. She went to New York in 1886 and became a pupil in the Woman's Art School of Cooper Union. After three years of study she was graduated, having twice won medals in the different classes. During the period spent in New York she was at times a pupil of the Art Students' League, of the Gotham Art School and of many of the most prominent teachers. Her first picture on exhibition was accepted for the exhibition in the Academy of IX-sign in 1888. Since that time she has been a regular contributor to the exhibitions of the American Water Color Society, and of the New-York Club since its formation, in 1889, besides being represented in many minor exhibitions. As a pupil of Mrs. Rhoda Holmes Nicholls, her attention was chiefly directed to the study of watercolors. In June, 1892, she went to Europe, and. spending three months in travel, settled down to study in Paris, France. Her home is in Richmond.


WILLIAMS, Mrs. Alice, temperance reformer, born in Gallatin, Mo., 19th January, 1853. Her father, Franz Henry Von Buchholz, was the younger son of a titled German family. The older son inherited the family estate, and there was little left for the younger son, save the title, on which he found it difficult to live. At the age of twenty-eight he embarked for America. Here he found no difficulty in winning his way, and two years after settling in Lexington, Ky., he was married to Miss Harriette Thwaits, the daughter of a wealthy slave-owner of Lexington. The mother had all the conservative ideas of the South concerning woman, her sphere and her work, and in Alice's girlhood was shocked the first time she heard a woman's voice in the social prayer-meeting. At the immature age of sixteen, with the approval of her parents, Alice became the wife of R. N. Williams, a Christian gentleman, some years her senior. Into their home came a daughter and a son; then followed years of invalidism. During years of suffering Mrs. Williams read, studied and thought much. When the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was formed in Missouri, she became an active local worker. In 1884 she went with her husband to Lake Bluff, Ill., to a prohibition conference. There, at the request of Missouri's State president. Alice Williams' voice was first heard from the platform in a two-minute speech. She was appointed superintendent of young woman's work in Missouri and