Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/115

110 a successful engagement in the Arch Street Theater, in Philadelphia, where she remained until the death of her husband, in June, 1857. In December, 1857, the leased the Walnut Street Theater, which she

managed successfully until 1859. She then leased the Philadelphia Academy of Music for a season. In 1860 she was married to Dr. Brown, of Baltimore, Md., who died in 1867. Mrs. Bowers retained the name under which she had won her reputation. In 1861 she went to London, England, where she played Julia in "The Hunchback," in Sadler's Wells Theater. She was successful with the London public and played an engagement in the Lyceum Theater, appearing as Geraldine d'Arcy in "Woman." In 1863 she returned to the United States and played an engagement in the Winter Garden, in New York. She soon afterwards retired from the stage and lived quietly in a suburb of Philadelphia, until October, 1886, when she organized a strong company and made a successful tour of the United States. Her roles cover the field of high comedy and tragedy.

BOWLES, Mrs. Ada Chastina, Universalist minister, born in Gloucester, Mass., 2nd August, 1836. On her father's side her ancestry runs through the Choates and on her mother's side through the Haskells, back into staunch old English families. Her youth was spent by the sea, and her outdoor sports laid the foundation for the vigor and health that have always characterized her. She was born with a sound mind in a sound body. Her early opportunities for acquiring education were limited. After easily and rapidly learning all that was taught in the public schools of Gloucester, she was wholly unsatisfied with her attainments and pushed forward with different studies by herself. At the age of fifteen she began to teach in the public schools. She continued in that vocation until she was twenty-two, employing, meanwhile, such leisure as she could command in writing for the press. She was then married to a popular clergyman. Rev. B. F. Bowles, pastor of the Universalist Church in Melrose, Mass. Although by that marriage she became the stepmother of three children, and later the mother of three more, she still found time for a variety of church work, including teaching an adult Bible class. Her success with that class led her to deeper theological study, under the direction of her husband. Mr. Bowles desired that his wife should be in all things his companion, and, after giving her a thorough course in theology, he encouraged her to preach the gospel, which she had long felt called to declare. She began in 1869 by supplying vacant pulpits in New England. In 1872 she was licensed in Boston to preach and became the non-resident pastor of a church in Marlborough, Mass. Mr. Bowles, at that time settled in Cambridge, soon after accepted a call to the pastorate of the Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia, and Mrs. Bowles was called as non-resident pastor of the Universalist Church in Easton, Pa., a position she held for three very successful years, although the church had been for many years dormant. She closed her connection with that parish that she might lay the foundation of a new church in Trenton, N. J., which she accomplished in six weeks of energetic work. She was regularly ordained in 1874 and has preached and lectured since that time in most of the large cities of the United States. When without a church of her own, she has shared the parish work of her husband and has been constantly engaged in charitable and philanthropic work. In addition to all her ministerial work, she lectured in various parts of the country under the auspices of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in which organization she has been

state superintendent of various departments. She has been national lecturer of the American Suffrage Association and president of State, county and city suffrage organizations, as well as an active