CHANDLER, Mrs. Lucinda Banister, social reformer and author, born in Potsdam, N. Y., 1st April, 1828. Her parents were Silas Banister and Eliza Smith, both of New England birth and ancestry. Mrs. Chandler suffered a spinal injury in early infancy from a fall, and that intensified the susceptibility of a highly nervous organization, and was the cause of a life of invalidism and extreme suffering. As a child she was fond of books and study, and when she entered St. Lawrence Academy, at nine years of age. her teacher registered her as two years older, because of her advancement in studies and seeming maturity of years. At the age of thirteen years her first great
LUCINDA BANISTER CHANDLER.
disappointment came, when her school course was suspended, never to be resumed, by the severe development of her spinal malady. For several years even reading was denied to her. In her twentieth year she became the wife of John H. Chandler, who was born and raised in Potsdam. The one child born to them was drowned in his third year. Mrs. Chandler's marriage was a happy one, and the tender, devoted care and provision for her relief and benefit by her husband were no doubt the providence that made it possible for her to enjoy a period of usefulness in later life. In the winter of 1870-71 she wrote "Motherhood, Its Power Over Human Destiny," while recuperating from a long illness, and it was so warmly received by a society of ladies in Vineland, N. J., that it was afterwards published in booklet form. That introduced her to many thinking women of Boston, where in 1871-72 she held parlor meetings and achieved the purpose of her heart, the organization of a body of women who were pledged to work for the promotion of enlightened parenthood and an equal and high standard of purity for both sexes. The Moral Education Society of Boston has continued a vigorous existence to the present time. Societies were formed in New York. Philadelphia and Washington, D. C, by the efforts of Mrs. Chandler and with the cooperation of prominent women. That was the first work in this country in the line of educational standards for the elevation and purity of the relations of men and women, inside as well as outside of marriage. The publication of essays, "A Mother's Aid, "Children's Rights" and the "Divineness of Marriage," written by her, followed and furnished a literature for the agitation of questions that since that time have come to be widely discussed. During one of the long periods of prostration and confinement to her room, to which Mrs. Chandler was subject, she commenced study on the lines of political economy as a mental tonic and helpful agency to restoration. After her recovery she wrote extensively for reform publications upon finance reform, the land question and industrial problems. In Chicago, in 1880, the Margaret Fuller Society was founded, especially to interest women in those subjects and the principles of Americanism. A life-long advocate of the total abstinence principle, Mrs. Chandler served as vice-president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Alliance of Illinois. She was the first president of the Chicago Moral Educational Society, formed in 1882. She is an advocate of Christian socialism, and a firm believer in the final triumph of the Christian idea of the brotherhood of man as a practical and controlling principle in commercial and industrial systems.