Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/386

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND
285

lanta Exposition: vice-president of the Woman's Literary Union; founder and president of the Civic Club: State member of the Executive Committee of the National, and also of the New England Woman Suffrage Association.

Mr. and Mrs. Osgood have had three children—one son, who- died in infancy, and two daughters. The elder daughter is a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, and the younger daughter is in the Portland High School. Although Mrs. Osgood has had many calls upon her time hi organizations and in her professional and business career, she has been a devoted wife and mother. She has a wide circle of friends.


ALICE MARY STEEVES, D.D.S., was born September 13, 1869, in Upper Coverdale, in the county of Albert, Province of New Brunswick, Canada. Her parents, William Whitfield and Almyra Ann (Wallace) Sleeves, are still living at the homestead. The Sleeves family of New Brunswick is of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, the original form of the name having been Stief. In May, 1763, as stated in a book of New Brunswick biographies, Hendrick' Sleeves with his wife Rachel and seven sons — Jacob, John, Christian, Frederic, Ludwig (or Lewis), Henry, and Matthias — came from Pennsylvania to New Brunswick, and was one of the pioneer settlers of Albert County.

Dr. Steeves's paternal grandparents were Abel and Leah (Sleeves) Sleeves, and her great-grandfathers on that side were Hendrick, Jr. (or Henry), and his brother, Ludwig (or Lewis) Sleeves, sons of Hendrick' Steeves.

On her mother's side Dr. Steeves is partly of Scottish blood, her grandparents being John and Sarah (Chapman) Wallace, both native residents of Albert County, New Brunswick. Her grandfather Wallace, was a large land-owner. He gave each of his three sons a farm. Her grandmother's mother, whose maiden name was Sarah Black, belonged to that branch of the Black family in America whose home for many years was on the site of the present city of Halifax, where some of their dc^scendants still live.

Robert Black and William Chapman, ancestors of Dr. Steeves, were granted large tracts of land in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for services to the British crown, and were among the pioneers of the new country, formerly Acadie.

Alice M. Steeves was the eldest daughter in a family of twelve children. She received her education in the common schools and high school; and by her two aunts, Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Vaughan, her mother's sisters, was so well trained in the domestic arts of housekeeping and needlework that at the age of fourteen she managed the affairs of the family for her mother, whose health at this time was not good.

The greatest character-forming factor in her early training was her association with her uncle, Judge Finemore Morton, who carefully drilled her in practical affairs of life, and who tried to have her study law with him. The law being considered by Mrs. Morton, her aunt, a very unwomanly profession, its study had to be given up. Early in 1889, having decided to become a nurse, she came to Boston and entered for a two years' course of study the Training School for Nurses connected with the Massachusetts General Hospital. Capable, efficient, and mature beyond her years, she gained the respect and good will of all with whom .she associated, and at the end of eighteen months was promoted to a head nurseship She was graduated in February, 1891, and in the autumn of that year she resigned her position to take a similar one in the Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., where she remained only a short time, when she resigned to do private work in that city. In October, 1892, she was appointed resident nurse at Talcott Hall, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, and while there did special work on the classics. Resigning in 1893, she went to Chicago to attend the World's Fair and to conduct special work in that city. In October, 1894, after many unsuccessful attempts to be admitted to the Northwestern University Dental School on an equal footing with men, she matriculated at the American College of Dental Surgery in Chicago, which in 1895 became amalgamated with the North-western University Dental School. From that institution, which had thrice refused her ad-