Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/639

598 Mrs. Benham was born near Ledyard, Connecticut, on the 8th of January, 1849, and was the daughter of Timothy and Lucy Ann Geer Whipple. The 14th of April, 1869, she married Elijah B. Benham, of Groton, Connecticut. She inherited from her Quaker father and mother a desire for peace, and lectured on this and the subject of temperance. Is a director in the American Peace Society, and a member of the Universal Peace Union, and has always taken a conspicuous part in all peace conventions. Has contributed poems to the New York Independent, Youths' Companion, St. Nicholas, and other prominent periodicals.

Miss Clarissa Caldwell Lathrop was born in Rochester, New York, and died September, 1892 in Saratoga, New York. She was the daughter of the late General William E. Lee Lathrop. Her prominence came from her remarkable experience. She was confined and unlawfully imprisoned in the Utica State Asylum for twenty-six months through a plot of a secret enemy to put her out of existence. She managed at last to communicate with James B. Silkman, of New York, a lawyer who, like herself, was confined in the same asylum under similar circumstances. He succeeded in obtaining a writ of habeas corpus in December, 1882. Judge Barnard of the Supreme Court pronounced her sane and unlawfully incarcerated. Miss Lathrop felt she owed it to her own sex to take her case before the legislature of New York State, and demand reform in this direction, but she was unsuccessful in two efforts and found herself penniless and facing the necessity of her own support. After several efforts in most humble capacity, she became a court stenographer and ten years after her release wrote her book, the story of her own prison experiences, entitled "A Secret Institution." This book led to the formation of the Lunacy Law Reform League, in 1889, a national organization with headquarters in New York City, of which Miss Lathrop became the secretary and was the national organizer.

Mrs. Archibald Hopkins, president of the District of Columbia Association of the Civic Federation, was Charlotte Everett Wise, born June 7, 1857 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Captain Henry A. Wise, United States Navy, and Charlotte Brooks Wise, the granddaughter of Edward Everett and Charlotte G. Everett, of Boston, Massachusetts. Mrs. Hopkins has always been active in the charitable and philanthropic work of Washington. She is one of the original members of the Civic Federation and as president of the local organization of the city of Washington has done some splendid work in the effort to ameliorate the condition of the employees of the government. Many surprisingly unsanitary and unwholesome conditions have existed and the local organization has gained the attention of the chiefs of the various departments and Congress for the betterment of surroundings and the rectifying of injustices.