In her now position she interested her associate trustees, the State Board of Charities, and the local press in the matter. As a result the management was radically changed, and by act of Legislature, 1879-80, the young wards of the State between four and ten years of age might be placed at board in suitable families.
Mrs. Calkins declined reappointment as a trustee in July, 1880, and accepted appointment on a newly created board of auxiliary visitors to the State Board of Charities, consisting of five women. The object of the organization was to secure voluntary women visitors in different sections of the State to visit regularly the dependent and delinquent children placed in families. More than fifty women engaged in the work. Up to this time all official visitors of State children were men. Mrs. Calkins also accepted at this time the responsibility of beginning the work of placing young children at board in Western Massachusetts and visiting them quarterly. In this voluntary work she continued until the summer of 1883, when the success and growth of the work necessitated the entire time of a supervising visitor, and, a salaried officer being appointed, Mrs. Calkins retired.
In 1878 Mrs. Calkins took up the work of the Union Relief Association, then established in Springfield for the purpose of preventing pauperism by helping the poor to help themselves, and was among its first corps of visitors. Its first notable work was the investigation of the condition of the city almshouse, and as a result she was soon after included in a committee to go before the Legislature to urge a change in the law regarding children in almshouses, so that no young child could be placed in an almshouse without its mother. Out of this successful movement grew the present Hampden County Children's Aid Society.
In 1883 a committee of visitors, with Mrs. Calkins as chairman, was appointed to organize a day nursery and raise funds for its sup- port. To this nursery in 1885 were successively added a labor bureau and an industrial laundry. These several departments were soon successfully united in a building of their own under the name of the Industrial House Charities. This institution has continued its help- ful work in caring for infants, teaching laundr3nng, and providing places for days' work for destitute widows and deserted wives with young children and other j)r)or women.
In 1879 Mrs. Calkins was appointed by Mayor Powers one of the first board of trustees of the City Hospital, and more especially for its reorganization, as up to that time it had no medical staff or systematic hospital management. Mrs. Calkins is still a member of the corporation of the SpringfieUl Hospital, an outgrowth of the former institution.
In 1883 Mrs. Calkins resigned from all charity boards except that of the day nursery, and accompanied her husband and son to Europe for a period of rest, study, and recreation. She improved this opportunity to visit charitable institutions and schools in London and Vienna, observing their methods and management.
In 1886 Mrs. Calkins was elected a member of the school committee of Springfield. This position she held for twelve years, helping to inaugurate the modern and progressive methods that have made Springfield schools prominent in the State and country. Cooking, kindergartens, suitable lunches at minimum cost for high school scholars, were among the especial objects of her attention, also the proper sanitary conditions of the school-rooms for growing children, including hygienic seats and desks, proper arrangement of light, cleanliness, and school architecture.
In 1891 the organization of the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution came to the notice of Mrs. Calkins through a newspaper item. She at once sought definite information concerning the society, and in a few months became a member. On December 17 of the same year she was appointed chapter regent for Springfield, the first aj)- pointed in the State. On the 17th of June, 1892, she formally organized the first chapter in the State, the Mercy Warren, with twenty-three charter members. She retained the regency until October, 1893, when the chapter was well established with one hundred and twenty-eight members. The pressure of other duties now required her retirement. In 1901 Mrs. Calkins again accepted the regency for
