Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/615

576 Kentucky, August 6, 1817, the daughter of John H. Sanders and Mrs. Polly C. Gray Sanders. Her father was of South Carolina descent and her mother was of the Singleton family. She was the oldest of five daughters and received as good an education as could be had in the Blue Grass region schools of those early days. At a sale of public lands in Indianapolis, then the frontier, her father purchased his homestead and after leaving Kentucky his daughters had only limited opportunities for education. Mrs. Wallace, however, assisted her father in his practice and became interested in medicine. She educated herself by reading works on hygiene, mental philosophy and other subjects, and was acquainted with many prominent men. In 1837 she became the wife of Honorable David Wallace, soldier and jurist and then lieutenant-governor of Indiana. In 1837 he was elected governor of the state and in 1840 he went to Congress as a Whig. During his term Mrs. Wallace spent some time in Washington with him, ever urging him to vote against the Fugitive Slave Law, and she shared all his reading in law, politics and literature. At the time she married, Mr. Wallace was a widower with a family of three sons, and six children were born to them. This large family Mrs. Wallace reared, carefully cultivating their particular talents and developing all their powers in every way. All her living children have succeeded in life. Her husband's children by the first wife included General Lewis Wallace, the soldier, scholar, statesman and author of the immortal "Ben Hur," and General Wallace never referred to her as "stepmother," but always as mother. She was one of the first of the women crusaders, and joined the Women's Christian Temperance Union, in which she did much valuable service. She spoke before the Indiana legislature in advocacy of temperance, and was soon after lecturing before them in favor of women's suffrage. As delegate to temperance conventions she addressed large audiences in Boston, Saratoga Springs, St.Louis, Detroit, Washington, Philadelphia and other cities. She lived to a splendid old age, her physical and intellectual powers unimpaired, and recently died in Indianapolis surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

The ridicule of the press has often dimmed a worthy name and such seems to have been the case with Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, who was born May 27, 1818. An insignificant myth of American history lies in the supposition that Mrs. Bloomer originated the garment to which her name was attached in ridicule, but which has become one of the commonest words in the English language. Mrs. Bloomer was not the originator of the style, but adopted it after seeing it worn by others and introduced it to the public through her paper. But, be that as it may, Mrs. Bloomer's life and work is no subject for the cartoonist; she should be ranked among the foremost workers for the betterment of her sex in America. The facts of her life substantiate this. It was in 1840 that she first appeared in public life as an advocate for temperance reform. The study of that question soon led her to understand the political, legal, and financial necessities and disabilities of women, and having seen the depth of the reform needed she was not slow to espouse the cause of freedom in its highest, broadest, most just sense. At that