Woman of the Century/Electa Amanda Johnson

JOHNSON, Mrs. Electa Amanda, philanthropist, born in the town of Arcadia, Wayne county, N. Y.. 13th November, 1838. Her maiden name was Wright Her father was of revolutionary stock, and her mother, born Kipp, was of an old Knickerbocker family. While she was still a child, her parents moved west and settled near Madison, Wis. She attended the common schools of the neighborhood and finished her school life in the high school in Madison. After that she became a successful teacher in that city. In 1860 she became the wife of D. H. Johnson, a lawyer of Prairie du Chien, Wis. In 1862 she and her husband settled in .Milwaukee, where he is now a circuit judge, and where they have ever since resided. Her attention was early directed to works of charity and reform. She was one of the founders of the Wisconsin Industrial School for Girls, was for many years its secretary, and is now an active member of its board of managers. It commenced operations as a small local charity in Milwaukee and has grown to be a great State institution. Mrs. Johnson has been several times commissioned by the Governor of Wisconsin to represent the State in the national conferences of charities and reforms, and in that capacity has participated in their deliberations in Washington, Louisville, St Louis, Madison and Sin Francisco. She has interested herself in the associated charities of Milwaukee. Her views of public charity strongly favor efforts to aid and encourage the unfortunate to become self-supporting and self-respecting, in preference to mere almsgiving. She recognizes the necessity of immediate pecuniary assistance in urgent cases, but deprecates that met nod of relief, when it can be avoided, as the cheapest, laziest and least beneficial of all forms of charity. A close and thoughtful student of all forms and schemes of relief and repression, she has little faith in any plan for the immediate wholesale redemption of the criminal and improvident classes, but hopes and strives for their gradual diminution through the judicious and unselfish organized efforts ELECTA AMANDA JOHNSON. of good men and women. She is an active member and was for two years corresponding secretary of the Women's Club of Wisconsin. She is not a professional literary woman, but her pen has been busy in the preparation of short articles and brief stories for publication, and numerous papers to be read before the societies, conferences, clubs and classes with which she has been affiliated.