Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/418

Rh In the agricultural field women rarely distinguish themselves. Mrs. Virginia Anne King, however, of Greenville, Texas, has one of the largest stock farms in the world, extending into two or three of the counties of large area of that state, and comprises many ranges and farms, some of them under a high state of cultivation. She has to have many men in her employ. Her name seldom appears in the newspapers, but she is recognized as an important factor in the development of her state and of the Southwest.

Through the "Daughters of the Confederacy" and other orders of this class the women of the South have been doing much for the upbuilding of their localities. In the many national organizations like the "Daughters of the American Revolution" and its twin, the "Colonial Dames," "Daughters of Signers of the Declaration" and many religious and temperance societies of the Southern members have associated themselves with those of the whole country, and have contributed toward making the South better appreciated in the North, and thus minimized sectional passions and tragedies. A strong venture in the same direction is the "Mount Vernon Association," which was founded in 1856, and which, necessarily, includes Southern and Northern women. Among the Southern women who have been conspicuous in these orders are: Miss Amelia Cunningham, of South Carolina; Mrs. Lizzie Henderson, of Greenwood, Miss.; Mrs. Annie Booth McKinney, of Knoxville, Tenn.; Mrs. Roger Pryor, already mentioned, Mrs. Lawson Peel, of Atlanta; Mrs. Rebecca Calhoun Pickens Bacon, of Charleston; Mrs. Cornelia Branch Stone, of Galveston; Mrs. Andrew W. Dowdell, of Opelika, Alabama; Mrs. George H. Wilson, of Louisville, and Mrs. R. C. Cooley, of Jacksonville, Fla. In the work of reunion Mrs. Virginia Frazer Boyle, of Memphis, novelist, poet and club-woman, has written "Odes of Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln."