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576 Ala. While quite young, Idora Elizabeth McClellan, became the wife of a brilliant young lawyer, Albert W. Plowman, of Talladega. Mr. Plowman died suddenly a few years after marriage. Recently Mrs. Plowman became the wife, in Atlanta, Ga., of Capt. M. V. Moore, of the editorial staff of the Atlanta "Constitution." Their home is in Auburn, Ala. "Betsy Hamilton" is the author of innumerable dialect sketches depicting the humorous side of life, life as seen by hersell on the old time plantations, and in the backwoods among the class denominated as Southern "Crackers." Her first sketch, "Betsy's Trip to Town," written in 1872, was printed in a Talladega paper. The article revealed at once the fine and wonderful genius of its author. She was afterwards regularly engaged for a number of years on the great southern weekly, "Sunny South." and on the "Constitution," papers published in Atlanta, Ga. Her articles were entitled "The Backwoods," "Familiar Letters," and "Betsy Hamilton to Her Cousin Saleny." At the personal request of Mr. Conant, the editor of "Harper's Weekly," several of her sketches went to that paper, and were illustrated as they appeared in its columns. The late Henry W. Grady was her warm personal friend and aided much in bringing her talent before the world. Her articles have been copied in some of the European papers. While the "Betsy Hamilton Sketches" have given their author a wide fame and deserved popularity, doubtless her highest and most popular achievements have been reached in her public recitations and impersonations upon the stage of the characters she has so vividly portrayed. Her acting is to the very life; it has been pronounced of the very highest and most superb order, one writer calling her the "Joe Jefferson" among women.

PLUMB, Mrs. L. H., financier, born in Sand Lake. N. Y., 23rd June, 1841. She has lived in Illinois since 1870. Her husband died in 1882, and after his death she took charge of his estate. She was elected vice-president of the Union National Bank of Streator, Ill., of which her husband had been president for years. She is a woman of liberal education, sound business judgment, great tact and wide experience in practical affairs. She is interested in temperance work. Her work in that reform began in 1877. She was one of the charter members of the Woman's Temperance Publishing Association. She was one of the charter members and originators of the temperance hospital in Chicago, Ill. Since 1890, while retaining her business interests in Streator, she has made her home in Wheaton, Ill., in order to superintend the education of her four children, who are attending school there. Mrs. Plumb is as successful a home-maker as she is a business woman and financier.

PLUNKETT, Mrs. Harriette M., sanitary reformer, born in Hadley. Mass., 6th February, 1826. Her maiden name was Harriette Merrick Hodge. The town, though a community of farmers, had the unusual and perpetual advantage of an endowed school, Hopkins Academy, which early in the century was a famous fitting school, and even after its prestige as such was eclipsed by Andover and Exeter, it still afforded exceptional opportunities to the daughters of the town, who could better be spared from bread-winning toil than the sous.

There Miss Hodge obtained her early education, alternating her attendance in school with terms of teaching in the district schools in her own and adjoining towns, till, in 1845, desiring to improve herself still farther, she became a pupil of the Young Ladies' Institute of Pittsfield, Mass.. at that time one of the leading schools in the country. There, in 1846, she was graduated, being one of the first class who received diplomas. She taught m the school a year, and then became the wife of Hon Thomas F. Plunkett. Theirs proved a remarkably happy