Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/628



Miss Alexander, temperance reformer, was born in Winchester, New Hampshire, the 26th of October, 1848, and was the daughter of Edward and Lucy Catron Alexander, whose parents were among the early Puritan settlers. Miss Alexander taught school after graduating, and then accepted a position in the Winchester National Bank; finally became the cashier, and in 1881 when the incorporation of the Security Savings Bank took place, Miss Alexander was the first woman to be given the position of treasurer of a banking corporation. She is an earnest worker in Sunday schools, temperance societies and other religious organizations.

Mrs. Ames was born at Canandaigua the 14th of June, 1840, and is a noted industrial reformer. She was a student in Antioch College when Horace Mann was its president. Her first work was in the military hospitals during the war. She was married in 1863 to Reverend Charles G. Ames, a minister of Philadelphia, and here she took up the work of organized charity, becoming one of the state visitors to the public institutions of Pennsylvania. She was president of the New Century College, of Philadelphia, one of the most influential women's colleges of this country. Her lectures and writings have been full of force and most salutary in their effect. In 1891 she read a paper entitled "Care of Defective Children" before the National Council of Women and was appointed by Governor Russell factory inspector in Massachusetts.

Mrs. Avery was born in Madison, Ohio, the 21st of May, 1830. In September, 1853, she married Cyrus Avery, of Oberlin, Ohio. While living in Ashtabula, Ohio, she organized the first anti-slavery society of that time in that section of the country, and though only two years before the war there was not a clergyman in the place who would give notice of this meeting. During the war she wrote constantly for the various papers and journals of that day on the union and emancipation, being obliged to use a male signature in order to gain attention. Her pen-name signed to her later writings was "Sue Smith." These were on social questions and things helpful to young people. After removing to Chicago she took up the work of social purity and equal suffrage and has written many able articles for the Chicago Press on these subjects,