Woman of the Century/Hannah R. Cope Plimpton

PLIMPTON, Mrs. Hannah R. Cope, Woman's Relief Corps worker, born in Hanover, Ohio, HANNAH R. COPE PLIMPTON. 30th June, 1841. She is in a direct line of descendants from Oliver Cope, a Quaker, who came to America with William Penn in 1662. Her father, Nathan Cope, and mother, Elizabeth Taylor, were reared in West Chester, Pa. After their marriage, in 1833, they emigrated to the "Far West," to eastern Ohio, Columbiana county, where their daughter Hannah was born, in the town of Hanover. In 1856 Mr. Cope moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to give his children better educational advantages. In a few years Miss Cope became one of the teachers in the public schools of that city, teaching for four years in Mt. Auburn. It was during that time, in the spring of 1862, after the battle of Shiloh, when the wounded soldiers were sent up the Ohio river to Cincinnati, and a call was made for volunteers to help take care of them, that she, with her mother, responded and did what they could in ministering to the needs of the sick and afflicted ones, providing many delicacies and such things as were needed in a hastily-improvised hospital? Finally the old orphan asylum was secured and fitted up as comfortably as possible, and called the Washington Park Military Hospital. Many of the convalescent soldiers were entertained in the home of Miss Cope. After the close of the war she became the wife of Mr. Silas W. Plimpton, jr., of Providence, R. I., and moved to Caldwell county. Mo., residing there nine years, and moving from there to her present home in Denison, Iowa. She has always taken an active part in church and temperance work, having served as treasurer and secretary in various societies, and as secretary of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union for fifteen years. At the institution of John A. Logan Corps, No. 56, in March, 1885, in Denison, with Mrs. McHenry as its president, Mrs. Plimpton was her secretary. The following year Mrs McHenry was elected department president, and Mrs. Plimpton served as department secretary. The next year she was department instituting and installing officer, and in 1889. during Mrs. Stocking's administration as department president of Iowa, she was department secretary, working again with Mrs. McHenry, who was department treasurer. In December, 1889, Mrs. McHenry was elected conductor of John A. Logan Corps No. 56, and Mrs. Plimpton was her assistant. They both served in that capacity until the National convention, held in Boston, 5th August, 1890. when she was appointed national secretary of the Woman's Relief Corps. In the fall of 1891 she was elected matron of the National Woman's Relief Corps Home, in Madison, Lake county, Ohio.