ADKINSON. Mrs. Mary Osburn, temperance reformer, born in Rush county, Ind., 28th July, 1843. Her husband, the Rev. L. G. Adkinson, D. D., is President of New Orleans University. She has illustrated what an earnest worker can accomplish in the fields lying within reach of one busied with the cares of domestic life. She is the daughter of Harmon Osburn, who was a prominent farmer in Rush county. Ind. Her mother was a woman of great force of character and often entertained ministers, teachers and other guests of refinement in her home. Miss Osburn was educated in Whitewater College, Centerville. Ind. She began her married life as a pastor's wife in Laurel, Ind. There, by teaching a part of the time, she supplemented the small salary received by her husband and added many valuable books to their library. Removing to Madison, she was persuaded to take a leading part in organizing the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in that city. For ten or twelve years she did much successful work; she was four times unanimously elected president of the Madison district association, she was the association's delegate in 1883 to the State convention, and in 1884 to to the branch meeting in Kalamazoo, Mich. In 1873 she united with the temperance women of the city in the woman's crusade and has since been actively engaged in temperance work. She is now superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union among the colored people in the State of Louisiana and is working with much success. Many societies have been organized and hundreds of young people have taken the triple pledge of abstinence from intoxicating drink, tobacco and profanity. Mrs. Adkinson is also matron in New Orleans University and teacher of sewing and dressmaking. While thus active in philanthropic work, she has been eminently a "keeper at home."
Of her family of five children, the oldest daughter,
a graduate of Moore's Hill College, Indiana, is the
wife of Dr. E. G. Conklin, of the chair of biology
MARY OSBURN ADKINSON.
in the Ohio Wesleyan University. The second daughter and son are teachers in New Orleans University, and a younger daughter and son are students in the same institution.