Woman of the Century/Harriet Earhart Monroe

MONROE. Mrs. Harriet Earhart, lecturer and educator, born in Indiana, Pa., 21st August, 1842. She is the daughter of Rev. David Earhart and Mary W. Earhart, of Atchison, Kans. Her father, a Lutheran minister, went to Kansas as a missionary in 1860. Harriet was a teacher in Kansas when the Civil War broke out, and during that conflict she went to Clinton, Iowa, where she taught until peace was restored. She returned to Kansas and in 1865 was married. Her only daughter died in infancy, and her only son is now living in Colorado. In 1870, thrown upon her own resources, she opened a private school in Atchison, Kans., which grew rapidly into a collegiate institute with over two-hundred students in regular attendance. During her thirteen years in that school she had two-thousand-six-hundred-twenty-one students under her charge. In 1885 her health failed and she was compelled to give up the school. She then went to Washington, D. C, and until 1887 served as correspondent for a number of western journals. Not liking the personal element in journalism, she decided to enter the lecture field. In that line of effort she has succeeded in a remarkable degree. From May, 1888, to May, 1891, she lectured sixty nights in Philadelphia, sixty-nine nights in Pittsburgh, sixteen nights in Washington, HARRIET EARHART MONROE. and twenty-five nights in New York and Brooklyn. Her lectures are on religious, artistic, war, temperance, personal, economic and historical topics. They showed a remarkable range of reading and research. Her first book, "Past Thirty," was published in 1878. Her "Art of Conversation" (New York, 1889) found an extraordinary sale. In New Jersey. Delaware and Pennsylvania she has lectured before teachers' institutes. She has visited Europe twice in the preparation of her lectures. Her observations of European school methods have been published in valuable articles. Her permanent home is in Philadelphia, Pa.