Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/383

378 one of the faculty with Col. Francis W. Parker in Martha's Vineyard in 1883. At the present time Mrs. Hicks is director of the Prang Normal Art Classes in Boston, Mass., and associate author and editor of the Prang art educational publications.

HIGGINSON, Mrs. Ella Rhoads, poet and author, was born in a log cabin near Council Grove,

Kans., in 1862. Her maiden name was Ella Rhoads. In 1864 her family moved westward over the plains to Oregon, where she has spent most of her life. Her educational advantages were limited to a grammar-school course and a short season in the Oregon City Seminary. In 1886 she became the wife of Russell C. Higginson, a druggist, and their home is in Sehome, on Bellingham Bay, Puget Sound, Washington. Mrs. Higginson edited a woman's department in the "West Shore" for several years, and she also contributes to a number of eastern periodicals and journals. In her girlhood she wrote several love stories, but she did not seriously attempt literature until 1888. In that year she sent a poem to the Boston "Courier," which attracted general attention and was widely copied. She had published a number of poems in the "West Shore," but the Boston incident was her first important incentive to higher effort. Since that date she has written and published many remarkable poems, and she now ranks with the foremost of the younger singers of the United States.

HILES, Mrs. Osia Joslyn, philanthropist and poet, born near Batavia, N. Y., 13th February, 1832. Her father's name was Joslyn, and his family were originally Bostonians and related to the Breckenridges of Kentucky. Her mother was a Sprague, a first cousin of President Fillmore.

During the childhood of Osia Joslyn her father removed to Erie county, N. Y. At the age of nineteen she went to Illinois, where, two years later, she became the wife of John Hiles, a man of English birth and highly cultured family. Since 1884 she has lived in Milwaukee, Wis., and has been conspicuously associated with all its larger philanthropies. One of the first was the Home for the Friendless, of which she was an incorporator and whose constitution she helped to frame. She was one of the prime movers and the heaviest worker in the establishing of the Wisconsin Humane Society. The flourishing Woman's Club of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, has had more original matter in the form of essays from the pen of Mrs. Hiles than from any other member. She has for some time been its first vice-president and the president of the ladies' art and science class. One of the first stock companies of women for revenue owes its existence to Mrs. Hiles. It was she who originated and propounded to the club the idea of a stock company of women for the building of a permanent woman's club home, which building idea was afterwards extended by the stock company to facilities for revenue other than that derived from the club. Although all members of the club, the company is entirely distinct from it. She was one of the active incorporators of the Wisconsin Training School for nurses, and has several times been a delegate to the National Conference of Charities and Reforms. In the mind of the public generally she is most clearly recognized as an agitator of the wrongs of the Indians. At first she gave her time to the Mission Indian work in California, personally visiting nearly every reservation and Mexican land grant in southern California. Twice she went to the Interior Department and to the President in the interest of the Indians. She plead their cause in the East and assisted in sending legal help for their protection. Mrs. Hiles, being a woman of wealth, has been able to put money as well as zeal into her philanthropic work. When the Wisconsin Indian Association was formed, she was made secretary. Its labors were largely legislative, and Mrs. Hiles used her influence In helping to defeat some