AMANDA DEYO
DEYO, Rev. Amanda, Universalist minister and peace advocate, born in Clinton, N. Y., 24th October, 1838. Her maiden name was Amanda Halstead. She was reared in the Society of Quakers, and for many years she was an active participant in their meetings. At the age of fifteen she became a school-teacher. After teaching for some
time she attended the Poughkeepsie, N. Y., Collegiate Institute, from which she was graduated in 1857. In that year she became the wife of Charles B. Deyo, a farmer and a cultivated man of Huguenot descent. He has always aided his wife in her labors for the elevation of humanity. Their family consists of two daughters. Mrs. Deyo was present at one of the early anniversaries of the Universal Peace Union in New York City, where she met Lucretia Mott, Alfred H. Love and others of the friends of peace. There she made her mark as an advocate of the doctrines of that organization, and she has ever since been an earnest supporter of the cause. She has attended all the peace anniversaries throughout the country, has traveled extensively, spoken often and organized numerous peace societies In 1888 she was called to the pastorate of the Universalist Church in Oxford. N. Y., having previously served as pastor of the Universalist Church in Poughkeepsie, N Y. She is now the pastor of All Souls Universalist Church in Scranton, Pa. She has always been so closely identified with the organizations devoted to the abolition of war that she is called the "Peacemaker." She was one of the delegates of the Universal Peace Union to the International Peace Congress and the Paris Exposition of 1889, and did some effective work in the peace cause. Her address to the congress was printed and distributed at the Exposition. She was also present and presented a paper in the Woman's Rights Congress in Paris. She represented the union in the Woman's Council held in Washington, D. C. in March, 1888, and signalized the occasion by calling a grand peace meeting in the Church of Our Father, where many prominent women made addresses. In addition to her arduous work in the ministry for the last six years, preaching three times each Sabbath day and attending funerals and weddings, she has been an active worker in the temperance and prohibition cause, and at one time traveled and lectured for that interest and organized its work. That labor she still continues as opportunity will permit; but her great work is her effort to substitute peace for war and harmonize the difficulties constantly arising in families, neighborhoods and churches. By the efforts of herself and her husband, the Dutchess County Peace Society, one of the large and flourishing branches of the Universal Peace Union, was organized in 1875 and kept by them in active life until her ministerial duties made it necessary to turn over the work to others.