Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/321

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND

in that and other States, as the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Maine Pomological Society, the Vermont Dairymen's Association, and the Western New York Horticultural Society. At the present time the only regular school work that Miss Barrows continues is an annual course of fifteen weekly lessons at Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N.H.

In 1894 she became one of the editors and proprietors of the (then New England) American Kitchen Magazine, a monthly devoted to home science, in which much of her writing was published until March, 1904, when she severed her connection with the Home Science Publishing Company.

For other periodicals she has written many articles on her specialty and allied topics. She has published a small book on Eggs, and with Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln, the "Home Science Cook Book," and has other books in preparation.

The constant aim of all her teaching and writing is the simplification of the processes of housekeeping. She devotes herself not to a multiplication of recipes and the preparation of fancy dishes, but the teaching of fundamental principles, from which each housekeeper may adapt herself to her individual limitations and needs. The agricultural and horticultural bearings of the subject are particularly interesting to her.

For several years a summer school of cookery at the Fryeburg Chautauqua Assembly was in her charge. From this she was called to be instructor in cookery at the School of Domestic Science of the original Chautauqua in New York State. She has been superintendent of the department of hygienic cooking in the Massachusetts W. C. T. U., president of the Cooking School Teachers' League, director of the National Household Economic Association, and secretary of the Association of the Alumni and Friends of Fryeburg Academy, a Massachusetts corporation.

In 1900 Miss Barrows was chosen a member of the Boston School Committee, being nominated on a reform ticket and endorsed by the Independent Women Voters and the Republicans. Although she made no personal canvass, she was elected by the largest number of votes cast for any city officer at that election. Her work on the committee was done quietly, with careful regard for the interests of the schools.


REV. SARAH A. DIXON, S.T.B., pastor of the Congregational church in Tyngsborough, Mass., was born in the town of Barnstable, on Cape Cod, where her parents, William and Joice (Cascoyne) Dixon, natives f)f Warwickshire, England (the father a soldier in the Fortieth Massachusetts Regiment in 1862), are now living. She is the youngest of a family of eight children, four sons and four daughters. When asked not long ago concerning her "call to preach," she replied, "I had always had a great desire to help people, and when about twenty years of age this desire developed into a definite decision to be a minister."

Miss Dixon's early life was her best preparation. Her girlhood was sjjcnt mostly in school and out of doors, her home being near the shore; and her young soul was filled with the incense from the fields, the marshes, and the sea.

Two early incidents proved to be determining factors in her life. One was the "redemption" which came to her through the influence of her grammar school teacher. His interest and keen insight into her nature inspired her with an ambition to excel, and changed her from a "trouble" in the school into a student. From this time until she was sixteen lessons were mastered and high rank held without any definite hope of opportunities for a higher education.

The other determining incident came when Miss Dixon was sixteen years old. Two young women of Barnstable, hearing of her progress in her studies, became interested in her welfare. They offered to help send her to Bridgewater Normal School. Her parents were very glad to accept the kindness, as they were not possessed of an abundance of this world's goods, and they had a large family. By giving entertainments and soliciting among their friends these two ladies w(>re enabled to raise the money to pay her expenses for the first year. Accordingly she entered Bridgewater