Woman of the Century/Lucy Ann Kidd

KIDD, Mrs. Lucy Ann, educator, horn in Nelson county, Ky., 11th June, 1839. Her maiden LUCY ANN KIDD. name was Lucy Ann Thornton, Her father. Willis Strather Thornton, was a descendant of an old English family, resident in Virginia since the time of the Pretender. The old ancestral home, "Hunter's Rest," is still owned by some member of the family. Lucy received a collegiate education in Georgetown, Ky. In her seventeenth year she became the wife of a southern physician of considerable means. Dr. Kidd who, after losing largely by the war, died, leaving his estate heavily encumbered. Up to that time Mrs. Kidd had had no acquaintance with poverty or business, but she had the energy which made up for want of experience. She accepted a position in a college in Brookhaven, Miss., and two years after bought an interest in the school. Nine years later she was elected president of the North Texas Eemale College, in Sherman, Tex., a position she still holds. Mrs. Kidd is the first woman south of Mason and Dixon's line who has held such a position. At the time when Mrs. Kidd assumed the presidency of the school, it was virtually dead, having been closed for more than a year, but her energy and conservative management have brought to it a great popularity. Within three years it had as large a number of boarding pupils enrolled as any other school in the South. Her administrative ability is marked.