Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 03.djvu/279

 DIX

DIX

married in 1834 to Amanda M. Beers, and they had eight children. He was elected a fellow of the American society of civil engineers, Jmie 16, 1870. The last years of his life were spent in retire- ment, his summers on his farm near Elmira and his %\'inters on his estate on the St. John's riA-er, Fla. He died in Elmira, N.Y., June 11, 1896.

DIX, Dorothea Lynde, philanthropist, was born in Hampden, Maine, April 4, 1802; daughter of Joseph Dix and granddaughter of Dr. Elijah and Dorothy (Lynde) Dix. Her childhood days were spent in various New England cities and towns and when fourteen years old she opened a school for little chil- dren in "Worcester, Mass., which she con- tinued one year. She then went to live with her grandmother in Boston, Mass., and in 1821 resumed the work of teaching, es- tablishing in her grandmother's house a school which devel- oped into a large boarding and day school. In 1824 ill health compelled her to abandon the school and she rested for three years. She was a teacher in the fam- ily of Dr. W. E. Channing during the summers of 1827-31, pulmonar}^ weakness forcing her to the south during the winters. In 1831 she established a model boarding and day school in the Dix mansion in Boston, which she continued with pronovmced success until the spring of 1836, when her health entirely broke down. She had secured by her labors a modest competence which ren- dered her independent for a time, and she went to England. Just before her return to America, in the autumn of 1837, her grandmother died, leaving her a sufficient bequest to insure a com- fortable income during the rest of her life, and she resolved to devote her time and energies to the good of her fellow creatures. In March, 1841, her attention was called to the treatment to which prisoners and lunatics were subjected, and she personally investigated every jail and almshouse in Massachusetts, collecting an appal- ling mass of statistics and testimony, from which she framed a memorial to the legislature of Massachusetts, dated January, 1843. This resulted in a radical reform in the prison and asylum management of the state. She pursued her investigations in neaidy every state in the Union, presenting memorials to the legislature

demanding appropriations, and gaining success in almost every case. Asylums constructed with due regard to sanitary requirements were erected in every state, and the inmates removed from dens of filth and wretchedness to wholesome and comfortable lodgings. She also continued her work as far north as Halifax, N.S., and St. Johnsbnry, N.B. In 1848 she memorialized con- gress for a grant of 5,000,000 acres of the public domain, the proceeds of the sale of which were to be set aside as a perpetual fund for the care of the indigent insane and the sum to be divided proportionally to their populations among the thirty states in the Union. In ISoO she raised the amount of her plea to 12,225,000 acres, — nearly 20,000 square miles, — ten million acres to be used for the benefit of the insane and the rest for the blind and deaf and dumb. The bill passed the house and the senate by large majorities, but was vetoed by President Pierce as unconstitu- tional and inexpedient. This disappointment proved a great blow to Miss Dix's always preca- rious health. She sailed for Europe in Septem- ber, 1854, and visited asylums in England, Ireland and Scotland. For the last named country she succeeded in securing through parliament new and humanely administered asylums for the pauper insane, and greatly ameliorated their condition throughout Great Britam. In Septem- ber, 1856, she returned to America after several months of rest and travel on the continent, and devoted herself to obtaining larger appropriations for her cliarities. At the outbreak of the civil war she was in the south and there discovered an organized conspiracy to seize Washington with its archives and records, assassinate Presi- dent Lincoln, and declare the Confederacy to be the government de facto of the United States. She revealed this discovery to Mr. Samuel M. Felton. Detectives corroborated Miss Dix's state- ments and the danger was averted. Miss Dix then offered her services to the war department as nurse and was appointed superintendent of women nurses, a position involving the most arduous labor. She served throughout the war and at its close received from Secretary Stanton of the war department a stand of the United States national colors, in token of her services. Tliese flags she bequeathed to Harvard college. Her closing years were spent in her old work of improving the condition of the insane throughout the United States. In October, 1881, her health once more gave way and slie went for rest to the earliest founded of her hospital homes, the Tren- ton, N.J., asylum. There she was taken seriously ill and the managers of the asylum passed a vote inviting her to end her days as a gue.st under the roof of the first institution she had founded. She left her property in trust, the income to be