Woman of the Century/Lucy Sargent Sawyer

SAWYER, Mrs. Lucy Sargent, missionary worker, born in Belfast, Me., 3rd April, 1840. Her maiden name was Sargent. Her remote ancestors were among the earliest settlers of Gloucester, Mass. Her grandfather, John Sargent, went from Beverly, Mass., to what was then called the District of Maine, before 1778, and took up a large tract of land, on a part of which members of the family still reside. He was a charter member of the Congregational Church in Belfast, Me. LUCY SARGENT SAWYER. Lucy was thoroughly educated in the best academic institutions in the State. In March, 1862, she became the wife of James E. C. Sawyer, a young clergyman, and in the following July accompanied him to his first charge in Machias, Me. Mr. Sawyer's pastorates have since been some of the most prominent in the Methodist Episcopal denomination. In the large city churches to which he has been called for twenty-five years past, the varied gifts, intellectual brilliancy and spiritual devotion of his wife have made her admired and revered. Their home has ever been the happy resort of great numbers of young people. By the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which met in Omaha in May, 1892, Dr. Sawyer was elected editor of the "Northern Christian Advocate," published in Syracuse, N. Y. Their home is now in that city. Mrs. Sawyer has been especially active in missionary work. While in Providence, R I., she organized the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal churches of that city, directly after the beginning of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society in Boston. The Providence organization was for several years known as the Providence Branch. When the women of the denomination entered upon the organization of a home missionary society, Mrs. Sawyer, then residing in Albany, N. Y., was elected first president of the Troy Conference Home Missionary Society, and to the wisdom and energy with which she laid the foundations the remarkable growth and prosperity of the society in that conference are largely due. In all reformatory and philanthropic movements she is greatly interested, and she is a generous and zealous patron of many of those organizations by which the christian womanhood of our day is elevating the lowly, enlightening the ignorant, comforting the poor and afflicted, and saving the lost.