USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 > Part 200
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The Women's Executive Committee of the Centen- nial Exhibition contributed largely to its success. As originally constituted the committee was as follows :
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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.
Mrs. E. D. Gillespie, president ; Mrs. John Saunders, vice-president; Mrs. J. Edgar Thomson, treasurer ; Mrs. Aubrey H. Smith, secretary ; and Miss Mc- Henry, Mrs. Charles J. Stillé, Miss Elizabeth Gratz, Mrs. John W. Forney, Mrs. Emily R. Buckman, Mrs. Richard P. White, Mrs. Henry Cohen, Mrs. Matthew Simpson, and Mrs. A. H. Franciscus. Many of these ladies have recently formed themselves into the As- sociate Committee of Women of the Trustees of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, of which Mrs. Gillespie is chairman. She is descended from Revolutionary stock, and began her work for the soldiers of the late civil war in the old Christian Street Hospital. She and Mrs. William C. Patterson were the matrons of that hospital, and afterward were transferred to the hospital at Broad and Cherry Streets. Mrs. Gillespie was also chairman of the committee organized for the purpose of caring for the widows and mothers of the dead soldiers. She was at the head of the post-office department of the Sani- tary Fair, and returned a net profit of one thousand and sixty dollars to the general fund.
One incident among many illustrative of the energy of the women who took part in the hard work of the Centennial Exposition may he recalled. Mrs. Gilles- pie and Mrs. Frank M. Etting were in Washington in February, 1874, and were summoned back to Phila- delphia, to be told by members of the Board of Finance that the project might fail unless they could show Con- gress an appropriation of a million dollars from the City Councils of Philadelphia. By telegraph Mrs. Gil- lespie at once assembled the chairmen of the women's wards, to whom were distributed the petitions for the appropriation, and in forty-eight hours the papers were returned with the signatures of so many citi- zens that Councils granted the money. Senator Al- lison, of Iowa, met MIrs. Gillespie a few days after this occurrence, and told her that the Exposition would scarcely get an appropriation from Congress unless they could prove an interest in it by all the people of the United States. She went to Washing- ton with representative women from fourteen States, and took them before the Senate Committee on Ap- propriations to prove that the whole country had an interest in the Exposition. As the committee was about to adjourn, Senator Morrill said, " Ladies, it is due to you to tell you that after the proofs which you have brought us the international feature of the exhibition will not be taken away by the committee."
Outside the ladies found awaiting them the agent from the Board of Finance, who came to ask what success they had met with. " All success," replied Mrs. Gillespie: "the international feature of our exhibition will be allowed to remain." His answer was, " I have been here for weeks, trying to get that assurance, and a parcel of women get it in ten min- ules." That was a proud moment for the women of l'hi adelphia.
Mrs. Mary Rose Smith, wife of Aubrey II. Smith,
and daughter of Justice Robert C. Grier, of the Su- preme Court of the United States, was chairman of the industrial committee of the Sanitary Associa- tion, and organized three societies of colored people for the relief of the soldiers. She was a member of the executive and amusement committees of the San- itary Fair, and superintended many of the dramatic representations that were given in the Amateur Draw- ing-Room, on Seventeenth Street. From 1866 to 1873 she was chairman of the Women's Branch of the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Commission, and she has also heen concerned with the Newsboys' Home, the Bridgwater Home for Colored Soldiers' Orphans, the Centennial Executive Committee, and the committee on charities, of which last named she is chairman at the present time. It was through her that the Em- press of Germany sent the album containing views of the charitable institutions of Berlin to the committee. She is also vice-regent of the Valley Forge Centen- nial Association, a member of the board of directors of the New Century Club, vice-president of the women's visiting committee of the University Hospital, chair- man of a sub-committee for the organization of a training-school for nurses in connection with the hospital, and is interested in the Indian Commission, the object of which is the education of Indian children.
Mrs. Matthew Simpson, the wife of Bishop Simp- son, is one of the most esteemed women in Philadel- phia. She has been for many years president of the Ladies' and Pastors' Christian Union, a Methodist association which has a membership numbering ser- eral thousand, and she is also on the board of mana- gers of the Reformatory Home. Through the efforts of Mrs. Simpson has been established the Philadel- phia Home for the Aged and Infirm, under the anspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a char- itable organization that is steadily increasing in in- fluence. The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and the Christian Temperance Union also engross much of Mrs. Simpson's time and attention. She was one of the Women's Centennial Executive Com- mittee, and has recently organized au orphanage, under the patronage of the Methodist Episcopal Church. She is actively engaged in furthering the interests of the " Silk Culture Association," and, notwithstanding these many outside industries, Mrs. Simpson is essentially a "home woman."
To Mrs. Emmeline Claridge, daughter of William Fisher and wife of Dr. William Claridge, must be given the credit of organizing the Old Ladies' Home of Philadelphia. She had previously been president of the Pennsylvania Widows' Asylum, for which she secured from the State an appropriation of five thousand dollars and an annual gift of two thousand dollars. She represented the Eighteenth Ward in the Sanitary and Centennial Commissions, and has been for nine years president of the Old Ladies' Home. One of her colleagues is Mrs. Seth B. Stitt, who is,
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PROMINENT WOMEN IN PHILADELPHIA HISTORY.
however, better known in connection with the Phila- delphia Home for Incurables, of which Mrs. C. K. Inglis and Mrs. Israel Maule are vice-presidents ; Mrs. Henry C. Townsend, treasurer ; and Mrs. Charles H. Caldwell, secretary. Another noble institution recently established is the Nivison Home, at Ham- monton, N. J., a sanitarium for children, organized by the benevolence of Miss S. S. Nivison, a graduate of the Philadelphia Women's Medical College.
In the roll of Philadelphia artists who have raised themselves to distinction are Miss Emily Sartain, Miss Ida Waugh, Martha Dunbar Ramsey, Edith Loring Pierce, Mrs. E. C. Hoyt, and Sarah Dodson. Miss Waugh is the only female member of the Phila- delphia Society of Artists. The city possesses many ladies whose work on the newspapers and magazines has been and is of the most praiseworthy kind. Mrs. Lucy M. Hooper, wife of the American vice-consul at Paris, and Miss Anna H. Brewster, sister of the At- torney-General of the United States, are two of the brightest writers that Philadelphia has sent abroad. Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, author of "The Woman's Record," was another Philadelphia woman of lit- erary fame.
Noted for her business, as well as her social quali- ties, is Mrs. Sarah Catharine Hallowell, daughter of | Hon. Frederick Fraley, and wife of Joshua L. Hal- lowell. By her marriage she was closely identified Mrs. Robert K. Wright was descended on the pa- ternal (Price) side and the maternal (Fisher) side from the colonists who came over with William Penn. acres of land on the west of the Schuylkill, the title of which is to this day in the family. On Feb. 19, 1846, she married Robert K. Wright, a grandson of Peter Wright, and in the civil war she was chairman of the Field Hospital Association of Germantown. The organization was supported by contributions from the ladies of the city, and from this fund were paid living prices to the women who manufactured clothing for the troops. In the centennial, Mrs. Wright was chairman of the committee on machinery, and in that capacity formed the department of silk, carpet, shawl, and stuff-looms. It was in accordance with her views that the engine which ran that depart- ment had a woman engineer. with the anti-slavery propaganda, and became a man- ager of the Woman's Hospital, and chairman of the Training-School for Nurses. Before the Constitu- ' The Prices settled, in 1682, upon some thousands of tional Convention, in 1872-73, Mrs. Hallowell joined with the ladies of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in ask- ing full representation for women in the common- wealth,-that they might have equal property rights before the law, equal voice in the management of schools, and choose their own representatives when- ever they were taxpayers. She is a member of the Women's Congress, and a corporator of the Woman's Medical College, organized in 1850, and the okdlest and foremost medical school for women in the world. In the centennial work Mrs. Hallowell was unceasing in her efforts. She was a member of the Centennial Ward Committees, and accepted the invitation of the "Woman's Executive" to take charge of the news- paper printed in their building, and which was one of their most striking exhibits. The whole staff of the paper, which was called The New C'entury, cdi- tors, reporters, compositors, and correspondents, were women.
It was during the centennial year that Mrs. Hal- lowell combined with other prominent women in forming the New Century Club, an organization of ladies that has its rooms on Girard Street. Out- growths of the club are the cooking-school and the evening classes for teaching working-girls practical branches of industry. The committee of legal pro- tection for working-women is one of its important features, and it has a large staff of volunteer counsel
in the junior bar. Mrs. Hallowell has written and published many works of fiction, and is now a mem- ber of the staff of the Philadelphia Ledger.
Miss Lily Macalester, daughter of Charles Mac- alester, was appointed vice-regent for Pennsylvania of the Mount Vernon Association, when it was or- ganized by Miss Cunningham, for the purchase of the home of Washington. Miss Macalester was very young at the time, but she raised ten thousand dollars for the association. She became Madame Bergmanns by marriage, and in 1873, Miss Cunningham having resigned, was elected regent of the association by its Grand Council. She made a suggestion to some of her friends in the Senate and Honse of Represen- tatives, which has borne fruit in the passage by Con- gress of the resolution making Washington's birth- day a national holiday. She conducted the visit of the emperor and empress of Brazil to Mount Vernon, in the summer of 1876, when Dom Pedro planted a tree at the tomb. Madame Bergmanns, after being a widow for several years, was married to Mr. J. Scott Laughton, and was soon after widowed a second time. She spends her summers at the beautiful Macalester estate at Torresdale, near Philadelphia, and her win- ters in Washington, where, by reason of her culture, intelligence, and personal attractions, she is a great social favorite.
Mrs. John Lucas is the president of the Woman's Silk Culture Association, which was incorporated May 31, 1880. She was first attracted to the work by the fact that it appeared, and has since been demon- strated, that in silk culture there was profitable em- ployment for the women of the rural districts. Mrs. Lucas is assisted in this work by a committee of ladies, composed of Mrs. Bishop Simpson, Mrs. C. D. Thum, Mrs. W. B. Eltonhead, Mrs. Phoebe Horne, Mrs. W. T. Reynolds, and Mrs. S. G. Flagg, vice- presidents; Miss E. T. Van Rensselaer, recording secretary ; Miss S. Gibbons and Mrs. V. C. Haven, corresponding secretaries ; and Mrs. H. P. Taylor, treasurer.
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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.
In 1882, Mrs. Lueas organized the first class of Chinese for instruction in the Episcopal Church, and several other classes have since been started under the impetus of her influence. She has also been en- gaged in the Infants' Home, the Newsboys' Home, the reformation of inebriate women, and the estah- lishment of a general Homeopathic Hospital, which is to be connected with the management of the Chil- dren's Homeopathie Hospital of West Philadelphia. Mrs. Lucas is chairman of the building committee, and preparatory to the opening of the permanent edifice two private houses have been rented, at a merely nominal rent, by Miss Jeanes, of Philadelphia.
It was known during the lifetime of Mrs. Frank Drexel, the wife of the banker, that her charitable works were numerous, but it was not until her death that the extent of her labors could be even guessed at. Mrs. Drexel died less than a year ago, and it was then found that she had been paying the rent of more than a hundred houses for poor people, and at a rough estimate it is thought that she expended more than forty thousand dollars annually in charity.
Although married to an Englishman, and living abroad for the past few years, Mrs. Hughes-Hallett, better known in Philadelphia as Miss Emilie Schaun- burg, is not to be omitted. To know Miss Schaum- burg was to cease to marvel at her social success, attained both in this country and in Europe. Her beauty is of a rare order, added to which her natural talents are numerous, and they have been subjected to the highest degree of cultivation. Mrs. Hughes- Hallett is a remarkable linguist, a brilliant conversa- tionalist, and an accomplished musician and actress.
The little Amateurs' Drawing-Room, on Seventeenth Street (now no more), was the scene of many of Miss Schaumburg's triumphs. Here she would give ama- teur representations,-French and English comedies and bright operettas of the highest order,-and dis- tribute cards of invitation to them among her friends.
In other parts of this work will be found in greater detail mention of many of the more prominent women who have taken part in the leading public charities of the city. Among them we may instance Mrs. Eliza- beth E. IIntter, who by her ministrations to the Union soldiers during the civil war, her untiring labors in the hospitals, and her connection with local benevolent in- stitutions, has become so widely known and honored.
It is of course not to be inferred that the writer has hevn able to bring within the limits of this chapter even the names, much less the achievements, of all the distinguished women of Philadelphia. The sub- ject has so grown upon the writer that she has been restricted to the selection of a comparatively few of the most eminent representatives of the highly hon- ored classes as illustrations of all. The women who dignified the earlier history of the eity, and were con- spicuous in all the good works of their days, have in- numerable and worthy successors in their daughters of our own times. In this concluding quarter of the nineteenth century, we may view with gratification and pride the pre-eminence of the mothers and daugh- ters, wives, and sisters of Philadelphia in a cultured and admirable society, in art and literature, and in those missions of ministry to the poor, the sick, and the distressed, where women's gentleness and piety meets the most exacting demands.
END OF VOLUME II.
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