Woman of the Century/Elizabeth Augusta S. Russell

RUSSELL, Mrs. Elizabeth Augusta S., philanthropist and reformer, born in Mason, N. H., 3rd October, 1832. She was educated in the common schools and in the academy in New Ipswich, N. H. She was trained in habits of industry, morals and the severe theologies of the day, after the belief of the Congregationalists. Her father and mother were Yankees, the father from Rindge, N. H., and the mother from Ashburnham, Mass. Mrs. Russell was married in Worcester, Mass., and all her married life was spent in Ashburnham in the same State. There her husband and many of her people are buried. When the war began, she was teaching a school in Florence, Ala. During the first fight at Big Bethel she returned to the North. A few months after, at the time of the first battle of Bull Run, she took charge of the New England Soldiers' Relief Association in New York City, and was not mustered out until the close of the war During those years in the hospital she did not content herself with a superficial knowledge. She visited Washington to study hospital methods. After the close of the war she was actively engaged in the Freedmen's Bureau. She had entire charge of the colored orphan asylum in New Orleans. Later she spent four years in Togus Springs, Augusta, Me., where she was matron of the Soldiers' Home. She then took up hotel work. She took charge of the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia, Pa., and remained there eight years. After seven months abroad she spent two years in charge of the Grand Union Hotel, in Saratoga Springs, N. Y. Afterwards she was in Manhattan Beach, the Oriental on Long Island, the Neil house, Columbus, Ohio, and the West Hotel, Minneapolis, Minn. Then she went into the white-ribbon work and took charge of the Woman's Christian Temperance ELIZABETH AUGUSTA S. RUSSELL. Union Coffee House in Minneapolis, Minn., a little unpretentious structure and a business that every one said would be a failure. The women of the Central Woman's Christian Temperance Union realize that it was through the untiring energy and ceaseless endeavor of their manager, that the large restaurant and boarding-house has been brought to its present standing among hotels, a restaurant that furnishes from sixteen-hundred to two-thousand meals per day. She was made superintendent of coffee- house work for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union in its convention in 1891. She will have charge of the World's Fair Temperance Hotel, located in Harvey, Ill., during the exposition. Mrs. Russell's great energy gives form promptly and successfully to all her philanthropic conceptions.