Woman of the Century/Emma Pow Smith

SMITH, Mrs. Emma Pow, evangelist, born in Adams, Mich., 11th March, 1848. She comes from a long line of American ancestry. Her father, J. Henry Smith, M. D., was born and bred in Royalton, N. Y., in which place he lived with his parents until he attained his majority. At the age of twenty-four he was married to Mariah Brooks. who was also a thoroughbred American. In 1843 they emigrated from New York State and settled on a farm in the heart of the dense woods of Michigan, where their daughter Emma was born, the seventh child of a family of twelve. As a child she was eccentric and given to seeking seclusion and solitude. Even in childhood she seemed to have a wonderful reverence for God in nature, and her thoughts then, as now, were of the spiritual rather than the temporal things of life. In April, 1867, she became the wife of a man who proved to have a fatal tendency to strong drink, and with whom she spent seven most unhappy years. Feeling that her life must pay the forfeit of her mistake, should she remain in that unholy state, she broke the bond, and, the court deciding in her favor, she regained her maiden name. Being converted, she was in the month of June, 1879, called and endowed by the spirit of God to preach the gospel. Closing her dressmaking business, she went directly from Grand Rapids, Mich., to California, where she labored most earnestly for five years as a gospel missionary in the city of San Francisco. Her powers of oratory won for her a host of friends from all grades of society. Six years ago she was EMMA POW SMITH. duly authorized and began her work in the field under the auspices of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. When she is not in the field, where she is nearly constantly employed, she spends her time in her own "Sea Side Rest," Pacific drove, Cal. Among her literary and poetical productions none have received greater commendation than her new book, "Chrysolyte." She is a fine conversationalist upon ennobling subjects. One of her eccentricities is that she will not spend her time in talk to amuse people.