Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/942

Rh assistant in the County Clerk's office of Jasper County, Missouri. She performed these duties with such satisfaction to everyone that in 1885 she was appointed and sworn in as Deputy Clerk of the County Court, with authority to affix the clerk's signature and the county seal to all official documents, and performed other official acts. The duties of this office embraced the tax levy and extension in a county of five hundred thousand people, the custody, computation and collection of interest on public school funds of over two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, keeping of the accounts and making settlements with the State-Treasurer, State Auditor, County Treasurer, County Collector, and of the County township officers entrusted with the collection and custody of State and County revenues, the keeping of the records, and the executing of the acts and orders of the County Court. She was found equal to all of these arduous labors and demonstrated so high a standard of mental ability, that she was soon appointed and qualified as principal deputy. At the time of her marriage in 1888, she withdrew from all public work, but owing to the ill health of the County Clerk she was persuaded to again resume the duties and in 1890 was nominated for County Clerk by the Democrat County Convention and was elected in what had always been a strong Republican district. She was the first woman in the United States elected by the people and qualified under the law to fill the office of the Clerk of Court. Notwithstanding her long occupancy of public office she is a modest, refined and retiring woman, and has the respect and admiration of all those who know her.

Miss Ballou was born in Wallingford, Vermont, November 15, 1852. She was educated in the Wallingford schools and commenced life as a teacher, but finding the compensation for women in this vocation so small, she took up the study of shorthand and became so proficient that she went into the courts and wrote evidence and arguments until she became noted among attorneys, and in 1885, upon the numerous applications of the Rutland County Bar, Judge W. G. Veazey in the Supreme Court of that state appointed her Official Reporter of the Rutland County Court. She was the first woman to hold such a position in the state of Vermont, and it is believed, in the United States. She has done some work in the line of literature, but her particular claim to distinction is in the line of her profession.

Mrs. Plumb was born June 23, 1841, in Sand Lake, New York, but has been a resident of Illinois since 1870. Her husband was a prominent business man and politician of Illinois, at one time a member of the Legislature of that State. Her husband's death occurred in 1882, when Mrs. Plumb took the active management of his large estate. She was elected vice-president of the Union National Bank of Streator, Illinois, of which her husband had been president for years. In 1890 she moved to Wheaton, Illinois, to give greater advantages of education to her children. Mrs. Plumb is a woman of liberal education, sound business judgment, great tact and wide experience in practical affairs. She has always been one of