Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/727

686 made countless friends to temperance. After the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she was identified with the state work of Ohio as lecturer, organizer and evangelist. She was the first superintendent of the Department of Narcotics and in 1886 she was made one of the national organizers and sent to the North Pacific Coast, where her work was very successful. She afterwards made her home a few miles from Seattle, which city became her headquarters as state and national organizer.

Mrs. Anna Rankin Riggs has won many honors in the white ribbon army, her principal field being Portland, Oregon. On her coming to the Northwest, Portland had no home for destitute women and girls and in 1887 the Portland Temperance Union, under the auspices of Mrs. Riggs and a few noble women, opened an industrial home. The institution was kept afloat by great exertion and personal sacrifice until it was merged into a refuge home and incorporated under the laws of the state. Mrs. Riggs was almost continuously in office as president of the Oregon Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In 1891 she started the Oregon White Ribbon which proved a successful publication. A prominent feature of her work in Oregon was a school of methods which proved an inspiration to the local unions in their department work. Mrs. Riggs has also represented Oregon at conventions and was president of the International Chautauqua Association for the Northwest Coast.

Mrs. Ellen Sergent who has held the highest office open to a woman in the order of Good Templars, was a member of the board of managers of the first state Woman's Christian Temperance Union, established in Syracuse, N. Y., and was one of a committee sent from that convention to appeal to the Albany legislature for temperance laws. But for all these honors she is best remembered in the white ribbon ranks for her children's stories on temperance. These were published in the Sunday School Advocate and Well Spring, and are delightful and poetic as well as instructive.

Mrs. Jennie E. Sibley of Georgia showed such courage in temperance work that she gained a reputation throughout the land. It has been said of her that "She worked with her hand, her purse, her pen, her eloquent tongue, with all the force and ferver of a crusader, and the most purifying and regenerating results followed her efforts in every field."

Mrs. Henneriette Skelton's name was associated in the minds of thousands of German citizens of the United States of her time as one of the most indefatigable workers in the cause of temperance. Born in Giessen, Germany, she with her brothers emigrated parentless to America. The energy and zeal with which she devoted her life as a young woman to temperance work were recognized by the national executive board of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and she was appointed one of its national organizers. In that capacity she traveled all over the United States, lecturing both in English and her native tongue and leaving behind her local unions of women well organized and permeated with earnestness. For a time she edited the temperance paper known as Der Bahnbrecher, besides writing three books published in the English language, "The Man Trap." a temperance story, "Clara Burton," and "The Christmas Tree," a picture of domestic life in Germany. Her platform efforts were marked by breadth of thought, dignity of style and the very essence of profound conviction.