Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/717

676 A large tent that had been provided in the city as a means of conducting Gospel services she had moved to every part of the city. For a month she procured for each night able prohibition speakers. She was a delegate to every national convention after her first appearance in 1897.

Mrs. Lucie Ann Morrison Elmore, of West Virginia, was always a pronounced friend to all oppressed people, especially the colored people of the United States. She is an eloquent and convincing speaker on temperance and after coming to live in Englewood, N. J., she held several important editorial positions and she used these opportunities to present to the public her belief in freedom, quality and temperance.

Mrs. Rhoda Anna Esmond was married, and fifty-three years of age when first the influence of the woman's crusade of the West reached Syracuse, N. Y., where she was living, and she helped organize a woman's temperance society of four hundred members. Henceforth her life was devoted to the cause. She was made a delegate to the first state Woman's Christian Temperance Union Convention held in Brooklyn in February, 1875, with instruction to visit all the coffee houses and friendly inns in Brooklyn, New York, and Poughkeepsie, to gather all the information possible for the purpose of opening an inn in Syracuse. The inn was formally opened in July, 1875. As chairman of the inn committee she managed its affairs for nearly two years with remarkable success. In the first state Woman's Christian Temperance Union Mrs. Esmond has been made chairman of the committee on resolutions and appointed one of a committee on "Memorial to the State Legislature" and many other offices were tendered her in the state and national associations. In 1889 she resigned the presidency of her local union having held that office nearly six years, and she then devoted herself to her duties as state superintendent of the Department of Unfermented Wine, to which she gave her most earnest efforts for many years.

Mrs. Harriet Newell Kneeland Goff entered the temperance lecture field in 1870, and has traveled throughout the United States, Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, speaking everywhere and under various auspices. In 1872 she was made a delegate by three societies of Philadelphia, where she then resided, to attend the prohibition convention in Columbus, Ohio, and there she became the first woman ever placed upon a nominating committee to name candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States. Through her presence and influence at that time was due the incorporation of woman suffrage into the platform of the prohibition party. She then published her first book (Philadelphia, 1876), "Was it an Inheritance?" and early the next year she became traveling correspondent to the New York Witness, besides contributing to Arthur's Home Magaisne, the Independent and other journals. In 1880 she published her second book of which six editions were issued in one year. Her third volume (1887) was, "Who Cares?" Early in 1874 she had joined and lectured in several states for the Woman's Temperance Crusade. She became a leader in the organization and work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Philadelphia, and was a delegate therefrom to the first national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in Cleveland, Ohio, and again from the New York Union to the convention in