Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/455

420 An educational movement coincident with the wonderful awakening of women to a sense of their responsibilities characterized the last decade of the last and the first decade of the present century. A conspicuous leader in this movement, Miss M. Eleanor Brackenridge, of San Antonio, Texas, was a graduate of Anderson's Female Seminary, New Albany, Indiana, Class of 1855. Her girlhood was spent in Jackson County, Texas, where she devoted her energies to ministering to family and friends, even studying medicine and applying remedies for the diseases incident to a new country with much sickness and few physicians. With a burning desire to be helpful to humanity, it was not until 1898 when a club progressive in education and altruistic in scope was planned in San Antonio, that she found her opportunity as president, organizer and leader along her chosen line of work. Her enthusiasm and earnest zeal won the loyal support of her co-workers, to whom she insists the honor of the success of the first department club of Texas belongs. She served as regent for the first seven years of the State College of Industrial Arts for Women, and has served on state and national educational committees of women's clubs, Daughters of the American Revolution and Mothers' Congress. She has educated from three to seven girls yearly in the all-round education, the higher education, or in the profession of medicine. Her interest in humanity naturally makes her an ardent advocate of woman suffrage. With a keen realization of the possibilities of organized womanhood, in a quiet way she has started movements that are far-reaching in their results. A modest, home-loving, conservative, but progressive in thought, she has used her wealth, social position and even accepted offices to encourage the organization of women for the betterment of humanity.

One of the most distinguished clubwomen of the country is Mrs. Sarah Piatt Decker, of Denver, Colorado. Mrs. Decker has been very active in the work of the societies to which she belongs, giving her time and strength to the work these clubs have undertaken. She was for some time president of the Woman's Club of Denver, and is considered an authority on the best methods for civic improvement. She has been vice-president and president of the National Federation of Clubs. Her exceptional talent and wonderful executive ability contribute largely to the success of the various clubs of which she is a member.

Miss Helen Varick Boswell is a Baltimorean, and although, for some years, has been an active worker in the political and later in the industrial and social work taken up by the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs, she is probably to-day best known as the woman selected by President Taft and sent by the United States Government to Panama to look into the social conditions there, and as having founded eight women's clubs on the zone, which are federated and are known as the "Canal Zone Federation of Women's Clubs." This creating