Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/306

301 became roused upon the question of woman suffrage, through attendance upon a convention held in Rochester and presided over by Abigail Bush, with Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Stanton and others of the earlier agitators as speakers.

That marked an epoch in her life. She had learned of woman's inferiority through the religious instruction which she had received, but henceforth she felt that something in it was wrong. She was advised by her Sunday-school teacher carefully to study and compare passages in the Old and New Testaments. That she did thoroughly, and became satisfied that Christ nowhere made any difference between the sexes. Henceforth her work lay in the direction thus given, and she has labored faithfully to promote political equality for woman and to advance her rights in the industrial fields. In 1853 she became the wife of F. M. Fray, and made her home in Toledo. Ohio, where she now lives. It was a happy union, lasting for twenty years, until the death of Mr. Fray. Her two children died in child- hood, leaving her alone and free to devote herself to those things which she felt were of a character to help humanity. She has formed suffrage dubs in several different States and in Canada, and has been repeatedly a delegate to National councils, giving her time and money without stint. She has Men foremost in testing woman's eligibility for various positions. In 1886 Mrs. Fray entered into a political canvass in Rochester to put a woman upon the board of managers of the State Industrial School. With Miss Mary Anthony, the sister of Susan, she worked for three weeks and gained the victory. Mrs. Fray is still full of vigor and energy in the cause to which she has given the best of herself for so many years. At present she is one of the district presidents of the Ohio Woman's Suffrage Association and a prominent member of several of the leading dubs, literary, social and economic, in Toledo.

FRAZIER, Mrs. Martha M., educator and temperance worker, born near Springfield, Mass., 12th December, 1826. Her father's name was Albert Charlee, and her mother's maiden name was

Chloe Melinda Hyde. Her only memory of her mother was of l>eing held to look at her as she lay in her cortin. Her father, being poor, took his young family west. They stopped in Washtenaw county. Mich., and he was taken ill, as were the children also, of whom one died. Being discouraged, he gave his children to kind-hearted neighbors and disappeared. Martha was adopted into the family of John and Lois Thompson, and was always known by that name. When in her eighth year, the family moved to Illinois, twenty-five miles west of Chicago, a country then nearly a wilderness. She had the same privileges as the re>t of the family, but a few terms in a select school in Warren ville rounded out her educational career, and that was gained on promising the good man of the house that she would wear her home manufactured woolen dress, which promise she kept. Afterward, in teaching district school, she received in compensation one dollar per week and hoarded around, then one dollar and fifty cents, and later two dollars and board herself, for which extravagance the board were censured. When nineteen years of age, while visiting a sister residing in Waukesha county, Wis., she became acquainted with a young farmer. W. M. Frazier, whose wife she afterward became. She is an ardent lover of the church of her choice, and is an active sympathizer and helper in all modern reforms. She is an uncompromising advocate of prohibition, total abstinence and equal priv ilege and equal purity for men and women. She is a member of the school board and superintendent of scientific temperance instruction, and is president of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and also president of the home library association in Mukwonago, Wis.