Woman of the Century/Frances Julia Barnes

BARNES, Mrs. Frances Julia, temperance reformer. Born in Skaneateles, Onondaga county, N. Y., 14th April, 1846. Her maiden name was Allis. Her parents and ancestry were members of the orthodox society of Friends, of which she is a member. She received her early education in the schools of her native village and was finally graduated at the Packer Institute in Brooklyn. N. Y. After her graduation her family resided in Brooklyn, during which time she became interested in church and Sunday-school and mission work. On 21st September, 1871, she was married to Willis A. Barnes, a lawyer of New York, and made her home for a time in that city. In the fall of 1875 professional business called Mr. Barnes to Chicago, Ill. Mrs. Barnes accompanied him, and they remained there five years. I taring that time she became associated with Miss Francis F. Willard in conducting gospel temperance meetings in lower Harwell Hall and meetings in church parlors in the Newsboy's Home, and in visiting jails, hospitals, printing offices and other places. It was while the temperance movement was confined to the object of "rescuing the perishing" the attention of Mrs. Barnes and her co-workers was drawn to the necessity of not merely seeking to reform the fallen, but also of directing efforts to implant principles of total abstinence among young men and women, and enlisting their cooperation while they were yet on life's threshold. In 1878, in the national convention held in Baltimore, Mrs. Barnes was made a member of the committee on young women's work, and in the next convention, held in Indianapolis, in 1879, she made a verbal report, and was at that time made chairman of the committee for the following year, and at its expiration made the first report on young women's work, which appeared in the National Minutes. In 1879 and 1880 twenty Young Women's Christian Temperance Unions were organised in the State of New York, and of the twenty-five unions in Illinois, with a membership of seven-hundred, two-thirds had been formed during the year. In 1880 young women's work was made a department of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and Mrs. Barnes was appointed superintendent. In 1890 she was appointed fraternal delegate to the annual meeting of the British Women's Temperance Association, held in London, 21st and 22nd May, at which time she so acceptably presented the subject that the department of young FRANCES JULIA BARNES. women's work was immediately organized, and Lady Henry Somerset accepted the superintendency. As an outgrowth of that interest sixteen branches were organised in Great Britian the first year. In 1891 Mrs. Barnes was made the superintendent for the World's Young Women's Christian Temperance Union work. Under her care it has so grown that there is a membership of 30,000 in the United Suites alone. The members distribute literature, form hygenic and physical culture clubs, have courses of reading, flower missions, loan-libraries, jail visiting, Sunday-school work, in all covering forty different departments of philanthropic and religious labor. During the year she travels extensively through the country, delivers addresses at public and parlor meetings and organizes new local unions. Not only is her voice heard in the cause of temperance, but practical sentiments How from her ready pen. Mrs. Barnes has edited a manual on young women's temperance work and is a regular contributor both of prose and poetry to the "Oak and Ivy Leaf," the organ of the National Young Women's Christian Temperance Union. She has been president of die Loyal Legion Temperance Society of New York City for ten years, under whose care a free reading-room for working boys has been maintained during that length of time, the attendance aggregating over two-hundred-thousand boys.