USA > Ohio > Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state, Volume II > Part 3
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In 1891 Eva Lee Matthews went with her brother Paul to help with an Associate Mission at Omaha, Nebraska. The Rev. Irving P. Johnson (later Bishop of Colorado) and other young elergymen, nearly all of whom became famous in due time, formed a working group. Miss Matthews kept house and worked among the poor. The Mission looked after a parochial school, among the pupils of which friendships were formed which were lifelong and there Miss Matthews met the woman who was to become her co-foundress of the Community and her successor.
Miss Matthews and her brother left Omaha in 1894, and in 1895 took an extended trip abroad visiting Palestine, from which journey came her book. "A Little Pilgrimage to Holy Places."
1896 found her beginning a new work in Cincinnati-Bethany Mission House, Freeman Avenue. It was here Eva Lee Matthews and BEATRICE HENDERSON started their great service. They were making plans for a religious order and began as postulants, living by rule and wearing the habit in this downtown Cincinnati Mission. On August 6, 1898, the two postulants were clothed as novices by Bishop Vincent. They were named Sister Eva Mary and Sister Beatrice Martha. The Community of the Trans- figuration had come into being.
The work among the poor and with sick children was continued in Cincinnati for a time, then moved to Glendale, where the present convent and Bethany Home are situated. The community has grown slowly but steadily. It now has branch work in Wuhu, China; in Honolulu; at Paines- ville. Ohio; at Cleveland, and a mission among the negro population of Woodlawn, near Glendale. Mother Eva Mary was the Superior of the order until her death in July, 1928.
MOTHER EVA MARY
Founder of Sisters of the Transfiguration of the Protestant Episcopal Church
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All this is but a sketch. To tell of the versatility of the Rev. Mother Eva Mary would take a volume in itself. How she loved children and how they loved her; the stories she told them; the fairy tales she wrote for them ; her fine sense of humor; her gift of joy; her profound intellect; her sound judgment in matters great and small; her sweet serenity. A something in- describable, which set her apart from ordinary humanity and yet never gave one a sense of aloofness-a spiritual charm.
She wrote many books of stories, mediations and religious articles as yet unpublished. Among her published works are: "Community Life for Women"; "Genesis and Evolution" and "The Book of Job."
A life of Mother Eva Mary has been written by her sister, Mrs. Harlan Cleveland, which gives a full account of her childhood and her spiritual growth. But there is yet to be written a biography that will do justice to her great service in founding the Community of the Transfiguration where "her works do follow her."
SARA VARLEY MCCARTHY
SARA VARLEY MCCARTHY (Mrs. Eugene McCarthy), of East Cleve- land, Ohio was one of 15 women appointed by Bishop Joseph Schrembs about 15 years ago to organize the Cleveland Diocesan Council of National Council of Catholic Women, which she has served continuously ever since.
For the past three years she has been president of the Cleveland Diocesan Council and is now also a member of the national board, as representing the Province of Cincinnati, which includes all dioceses in the States of Ohio and Indiana, and is chairman of the press and publicity committee of the National Council.
Space is lacking to list the many tasks which prepared and qualified this outstanding Ohio woman for discharge of the duties and obligations of her present leadership. But so highly was her work regarded that in 1935 Mrs. McCarthy was chosen chairman of the Women's Committee for the Seventh National Eucharistic Congress, held in Cleveland. At that time she directed a corps of 5,000 women, each with a definite job to do.
How well these jobs were done was realized when, October 31, 1936, Sara McCarthy was decorated with the gold medal "Pro Ecclesae et Pontifice" by Pope Pius XI. This honor is conferred by the Catholic Church only on laymen and women who have given truly distinguished service.
The head of the Cleveland Diocesan Council of Catholic Women was trained in other interesting fields, notably in newspaper work. She was for 10 years on the staff of the Youngstown Telegram as general reporter, working under Samuel G. McClure, who had come to know of the ability of Sara McCarthy some years previous. She had then been in the circulation depart- ment of the paper but had gone from there to the business department of the Truscan Steel Company. It is said that they had to drag her back,
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practically, to the newspaper. But she went-and saw and conquered all she covered, from page one news to letters of the lovelorn.
Sara, the daughter of John and Mary Cavanaugh Varley, knew Youngs- town. She was born there. She was one of nine children and this, too, proved pretty valuable training. Credit for her formal schooling, which has enabled her to deal competently with any academic side of her official responsibilities, goes to the Ursuline Nuns of Youngstown, in whose class-rooms Sara absorbed readily the fundamentals of a liberal education.
Her newspaper work helped to provide Sara with a wide and varied knowledge of social, educational, and welfare activities of the women of her State, and in 1931 she married a newspaper man, Eugene McCarthy of Cleveland.
She was called on to fill many important positions in women's organi- zations before her appointment as president of the Cleveland Diocesan Council.
She has served, besides on the following boards-Cleveland Chapter American Red Cross; Case Council Committee of the Cleveland Welfare Federation; Advisory Board of the Schools Division, representing parochial schools for the Cleveland Community Fund; Publicity chairman of the ex- ecutive committee of the Catholic Big Sisters; member of the Advisory Board of the Cleveland Diocesan Catholic Charities; member of the board of the Catherine Horstmann Training Home for Girls; chairman of the Women's committee for the Cleveland Diocesan Catholic Charities.
So Sara McCarthy's name has become known as that of a woman who can and will see through any service she can be persuaded to undertake. To see it through, moreover, in a spirit of comradeship which has won her countless friends throughout her own state and in almost every other.
MRS. E. W. McCASLIN
MRS. E. W. McCASLIN, the wife of a Presbyterian pastor, founded the Bucyrus King's Daughters.
In 1899, she organized a group of 18 young girls from the Presbyterian congregation, after they had expressed a desire to charity work within the church.
Four years later, this group, known as In-As-Much Circle of King's Daughters, opened its membership to young women outside the denomination.
Membership increased and so did activity until the circle became the leading charitable organization in the city and continued as such until other groups accepted some of the load.
Approximately 200 King's Daughters now compose the City Union.
Outside of the church and King's Daughter's Work, Mrs. McCaslin confined her activities to the home.
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ETHEL BLOCH MILLER
ETHEL BLOCH MILLER, teacher of the Isaac M. Wise Temple Re- ligious School, Cincinnati, O., is a native of Cincinnati, the daughter of Daniel and Annabelle Bloch. She was graduated from the Hebrew Union College for Teachers, attended the University of Cincinnati and began her educational work at the religious school of Plum Street Temple in 1913. She is a former president of the Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs of Cin- cinnati and of the Ohio Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. Her residence is 3504 Burnet Ave., Cincinnati.
MARY E. MOXCEY
MARY E. MOXCEY, assistant editor of the church school publications of the Methodist Book Concern of Cincinnati, was born in Atchison, Kansas. She won her Bachelor of Arts degree at Syracuse University, where she also became a member of Omicrom Beta Kappa, gained her Master's degree at Oberlin College and her Doctor of Philosophy degree at Columbia University.
Before entering the editorial field Miss Moxcey was an inspector for the New York state board of charities and for nine years a secretary of the Young Women's Christian Association. She also held a professorship in the Oxford College for Women and in Boston University. After coming to Cincinnati she was a director here of the Young Women's Christian Association for a number of years and was also a counselor of the Religious Education Asso- ciation. She later assumed the duties of her present position as assistant editor of the church school publications of the Methodist Book Concern and for some years she has served on the curriculum-making committees of the church school of the Methodist Episcopal Church and of the International Council of Religious Education.
A number of the books and articles which Miss Moxcey has written have challenged wide attention, among these being "Girlhood and Character," "Parents and Their Children" and the "Psychology of Middle Adolescence." She has been an extensive contributor to the Church School Journal and other religious educational publications.
The breadth and nature of her interests is further shown in her mem- bership connection with the American Association of University Women, (was formerly president of the Cincinnati branch for two years) and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She finds recreation in mountain climbing and relaxation in the collection of limericks.
HATTIE AND MATTIE NOYES
Among the Ashland county women who engaged in missionary work in foreign lands were HATTIE and MATTIE NOYES, former teachers in the Ashland Union schools, who were for many years in the work in China. Mattie Noyes married a wealthy physician who gave a hospital in China for the work of missionaries.
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FLORA PRINCE
FLORA PRINCE, treasurer of the board of trustees, Women's Missionary Society of the United Lutheran Church of America, was born at Springfield, Ohio, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin and Ellen Prince. She attended Wittenberg College, which conferred her A. B. and M. A. degrees. Miss Prince was formerly president of the women's missionary society of the Lutheran Church and has served on its board of education and is active in the American Association of University Women. Her home is at 644 Wittenberg Ave .. Springfield, Ohio.
ANNIE BIGELOW SEARS
ANNIE BIGELOW SEARS, born in Bucyrus in 1852, was a member of the first class to graduate from Bucyrus High School, in 1870. After graduat- ing from Mt. Union college in Alliance, 1874, she taught at Kent, Ohio for several years and then went to Peking, China, as a missionary and teacher for the Methodist Church. She remained there for 15 years, when she returned to Ohio. She died in Cleveland in 1895.
KATHERINE PHILLIPS SMICKLER
KATHERINE PHILLIPS SMICKLER (Mrs. Samuel Smickler), of Cincin- nati. Ohio, has an unusually full record of organization activities centered chiefly on the educational and religious affairs of the city in which she lives.
President for several years of the Cincinnati section of the Council of Jewish Women, she has served also as a board member of the Rockdale Temple Sisterhood; as treasurer and historian of the Ruth Lodge. In 1936-37, she was program chairman of the Council of Jewish women, acting, in addition, as head of the personnel committee. A trustee of the Rockdale Avenue Temple, she is a leader in the affairs of that progressive and important congregation.
In the educational field, her influence is especially active. As president of the Windsor and of the Rockdale Temple Parent Teachers Association; as secretary of the Federation of Mothers Clubs; as chairman of the Girls Hobby Fair; as a member of the Citizens School Committee; as publicity Chairman of the Council of Club presidents, she has served the youth of her city and her state wisely and well.
ETHEL LYLE SMITHER
ETHEL LYLE SMITHER, one of America's leaders in religious educa- tion, lives in Cincinnati, and is connected with the Methodist Book Concern, a publishing house in that city.
Educated at the University of Richmond, she is now internationally known as a writer and lecturer. Practically every Protestant denomination in the
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United States, Canada and Mexico, uses her books for teachers of Sunday School, and her syndicated magazine material for children.
As editor she publishes the "Elementary Magazine", for teachers; "First Steps in Christian Nurture", for parents ; and "Junior Weekly", for children.
In addition to these activities, she is a member of the International Coun- cil of Religious Education; serves on a number of international committees ; is a constant contributor of articles and fiction to national magazines. She has lectured, moreover, in every state of the Union.
ANNA SHELDON SWETLAND
REV. ANNA SHELDON SWETLAND, (1850-1928) was an ordained minister of the Christian Church, and resided at Sparta, Morrow County during her entire life.
For a number of years she was also a state lecturer for the Ohio Women's Christian Temperance Union. In June 1910, she was one of the Ohio delegates to the World's W. C. T. U. convention in Glasgow, Scotland ; and' later in the same month represented the Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Board of the Christian Church of the United States and Canada at the World's Mis- sionary Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland.
Mrs. Swetland's death occurred in 1928 at her home in Sparta.
ELLA MAE TALMAGE
A little more than thirty-six years ago, ELLA MAE TALMAGE, great- niece of the late Dr. T. De Witt Talmadge of Brooklyn, N. Y., one of the great preachers of his time, founded the Hope Gospel Mission in Cincinnati in a house known in the neighborhood at the time as the "Haunted House", at the corner of Hill and Gladstone Avenue. The Mission was inaugurated with meager, borrowed funds, but with courage and faith. Its purpose was to bring the consolations of religion and practical help to those in need.
Experience gained the first three months proved conclusively to Miss Talmage that the Mission was needed, and, on August first of the same year, the enterprise was moved to Third and Sycamore Streets in a building that had been a saloon. Miss Talmage had as her assistant, Miss Knell. They borrowed buckets from people in the tenements above and with plenty of soap. scrub-brushes and rags they scrubbed the dirty floors and walls, printed a sign on wrapping paper, and announced that a Mission would be opened. When the meeting began, one hundred and fifty people of the tenements were present.
Without money for the continuance of her work or for her personal use, Miss Talmage and her assistant decided that they must earn it. They found work from 10:30 in the morning to 2:00 in the afternoon for five days in the week at a restaurant. Their pay was $16.00 a month each, their dinners, and
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rolls to carry home for their breakfast. With their combined pay of $32.00 a month they paid the rent of the Mission Hall and the gas bill. They lived in one room, 21/2 miles away from the Mission and walked to work. They climbed stairs in the old tenement houses, visited the poor, neglected and dis- couraged. Each night a song service was conducted outside the Mission fol- lowed by an Evangelistic service inside.
Years passed, the work grew. Need of specialized care of adolescent girls from underprivileged homes was early recognized by Ella Mae Talmage. She interested leading citizens, money was contributed, then a fine old home on the outskirts of the city. This became "Hope Haven" for the past 15 years one of the outstanding social services of Cincinnati.
But Hope Gospel Mission continued to head up the vital enterprise.
During its thirty-six years of service, the Mission has cared for and housed more than 5,000 girls and women, has administered to thousands of unfortunate people including the prisoners at the Hamilton County Jail. In the latter institution Miss Talmage served as Chaplain from 1904 to 1935.
Now new changes are in prospect. A new program adapted to the needs and methods of the present, is being worked out by Ella Mae Talmage and her board of trustees. Ella Mae is the only living incorporator of the original Hope Gospel Mission. But she is still efficient, still enthusiastic, still eager to carry onward her great spiritual adventure.
ISABELLA THOBURN
ISABELLA THOBURN, one of the founders and first superintendent of Christ Hospital, lead a fine and colorful life. Born in 1840, in Belmont County, Ohio, she began life as a young country school teacher, then served as a nurse during the Civil War.
In 1869 she was appointed by the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as its first missionary to India, where her brother James had for some time been located, also in the service.
Her particular assignment was to organize a high school for girls. She was eminently successful at this task, but her health broke down shortly, forc- ing her to return to the United States. Miss Thoburn became Deaconess and later Superintendent of the Deaconess Home in Chicago, Ill. In 1888 she came to Cincinnati, where she was instrumental in founding the Elizabeth Gamble Deaconess Home Association and Christ Hospital, of which she became the first Superintendent, serving from 1888 to 1890. Later she returned to India, where she died in 1901.
MARY MOORE DABNEY THOMSON
MARY MOORE DABNEY THOMSON (Mrs. Alexander Thomson) came to Cincinnati in 1904 when her father, Dr. Charles William Dabney, resigned as the president of the University of Tennessee to become president of the
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University of Cincinnati. Her mother, Mary Brent Dabney, a Kentuckian of rare charm and personality, provided, with her distinguished husband, a back- ground of unusual dignity and cultivation for the two young daughters of the family, one of whom, Mrs. John W. Ingle, Jr., is now dean of women at the University of Cincinnati. The other, shortly after coming to Cincinnati, married Alexander Thomson, now chairman of the board of the Champion Paper and Fiber Company. They have four sons, Alexander, Jr., Charles Dabney, Lewis Clark and Chilton.
Mary Moore Thomson has identified herself especially with the work of the Young Women's Christian Association. A member of the national board of directors, she has served locally as vice president, treasurer, chairman of the promotion committee and president. She has also been a leader in the annual Community Chest Campaigns, both as a member of the executive com- mittee and as chairman of organization of the Women's Crusade. She more- over performed an outstanding piece of work in 1937-38 as chairman of the Women's Symphony Committee in a successful effort to obtain greater attend- ance for the orchestra.
Mary Moore Thomson is in every sense a leading citizen, upholding the finest traditions of understanding service to the city in which she and her family live.
HANNAH TRIMBLE AND HANNAH KIMBERLY
HANNAH TRIMBLE and HANNAH KIMBERLY of Mt. Pleasant were the first women to travel as Friends ministers in pioneer Ohio and the North- west territory. They were brilliant women enthusiastic in spreading the doctrine of George Fox. They were also colportiurs and visited Quaker settle- ments in Ohio, traveling on horseback.
They lived in the heyday of Quakerism when Mt. Pleasant was the Western Capitol of this faith. They saw a church built there with walls thick enough for a fort. They preached to meetings where the men sat on one side of the room and the women on the other.
"Thee" and "Thou" was then in common use in conversation and the quaint Quaker gray was worn by women. Bonnets were decorous headgear. The men wore wide brimmed hats and "jeans". Colerain, Flushing, Smithfield, Richmond, Emerson, Salem, Westwood and Damascus were Quaker centers in eastern Ohio to which these women ministered.
They saw the "underground railroad" for escaping slaves. They spread anti-slavery doctrines wherever they went. Many eastern Ohio Quakers had come from Pennsylvania but quite a number of them from North Carolina. leaving the latter state because of slavery.
These women saw the first silk mill in the United States started by Quakers and the first "labor" store in the country. In these stores no product of slave labor was sold.
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They saw Benjamin Lundy's original antislavery paper "The Genius of Universal Emancipation" started and issued at Mt. Pleasant. Over in a valley near Bloomfield they witnessed the planting of the first manumitted (free) colony of slaves called "Hayti", also "McIntyre".
Spectacular events were part of their daily lives and their ministerial careers were full of significant happenings.
Then came the "Hicksite" split in their church, the "Gurney-Wilbur" division.
And finally time took its toll and their church was modernized, but their quiet courage will never be forgotten.
ALICE MOON WILLIAMS
ALICE MOON WILLIAMS, now a resident of Oberlin, Ohio, is a native of Ashland who engaged in missionary work in China for many years. During the Boxer uprising in 1900, while she and her three small daughters were in Ashland on furlough, her husband, the Rev. George Williams, was slain in China. One of her daughters, GLADYS WILLIAMS, is now a missionary in the province of Shansai, China. Mrs. Williams was born in Ashland May 22, 1860, was educated in Ashland schools and became a teacher in the old Central building in the middle 80's. Later she taught at the East Fourth street build- ing and was a teacher in the Trinity Lutheran Sunday School.
It was while she was in China that she served as a great influence on the life of Dr. H. H. Kung, who, after graduating from Oberlin, returned to China and later became its premier.
OLYMPHIA BROWN WILLIS
OLYMPHIA BROWN WILLIS, first officially ordained woman minister of the United States, was born in Prairie Ronde, Michigan, January 5, 1835, the daughter of Asa B. and Lephia O. Brown. Her first education was under the tutelage of her mother who read Horace Greeley's New York Weekly Tri- bune in which were accounts and discussions of the liberal ideas of the age, including such subjects as Woman's Rights, Dress Reform, Anti-Slavery, Water-Cure and many others now adopted or long since forgotten. Thus at an early age, the leaders in the Woman's Rights movements, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and especially, Susan B. Anthony with whom she worked in later years became familiar and inspiring names. Her ambition seems to have been especially stirred by reading of the Rev. Antoinette Brown's preaching. Years later in 1863, Olymphia Brown's aspiration was crowned by being the first woman of her race in America to be ordained by a regular organized ecclesiastical body.
After a year at Mt. Holyoke where she felt the lack of freedom in reli- gion and other too strict regulations, her family moved to Yellow Springs,
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Ohio, where Antioch College, then recently founded by the Christian Denom- ination, Offered equal educational rights to men and women under the leader- ship of the internationally known educator, Horace Mann. In Antioch Olymphia Brown found the freedom she sought and graduated in 1860 with five other women in a class numbering twenty-eight.
With the ministry still in mind she entered the Theological School of St. Lawrence University at Canton, N. Y., the only theological school that would admit a woman, from which she graduated in 1863, and the same year was ordained to the ministry of the Universalist Church. She held pastorates at Weymouth, Mass., Bridgeport, Conn., Racine, Wis., and at a number of other places in the west.
She was married in 1873 to John Henry Willis, but retained her maiden name of Brown. In 1878 with her husband and her children, she removed from Bridgeport, Conn., to Racine, Wis., where she became pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd. On her husband's death in 1893, she became secretary and treasurer of the Time Publishing Company, managing the daily and weekly newspaper and large job printing office at Racine. She served as president of the Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Association 1887-1917 ; president of Federal Suffrage Association ; life member of National American Suffrage Association. For many years she was directly associated with Susan B. Anthony and the author of numerous tracts. In 1911 she published "Acquaintances Old and New Among Reformers." She died October 23, 1926.
MRS. EUGENE MCCARTHY
Director for Ohio of National Council of Catholic Women, Cleveland
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CATHOLIC WOMEN OF OHIO
By SARA VARLEY MCCARTHY (Mrs. Eugene McCarthy) Director for Ohio of National Council of Catholic Women
Ohio had not come of legal age as a State when, in 1821, Pope Pius VII, head of the Catholic Church and stationed in Rome, the Eternal City, sent word to America of the establishment of a new diocese. This diocese would include the entire area of Ohio and Mich !- igan and would have as its first bishop Father Edward Fenwick. The new Bishop was a native born sixth generation American, a member of the Dominican Order, and the founder and the first superior of the American foundation of the Religious Order of Saint Dominic.
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