Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/837

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Part Taken by Women in American History


impaired his wife undertook the task alone and conducted the newspaper in that manner for two years, after which she aided her husband in the work, remaining there for eight years. She was a very successful editor. Her management proved efficient while her cultivated taste made the Standard pleasing to many who were not attracted by the plainer fare of the Liberator. During all this period she was a member of the family of the well-known Quaker philanthropist, Isaac T. Hopper, whose biographer she afterwards became. This must have been the most important and satisfactory time in Mrs. Child's whole life. She was placed where her sympathetic nature found abundant outlet and earnest co-operation. Here she also found an opportunity for her best eloquence in writing letters to the Distant Courier. This was the source of "Letters from New York," that afterwards became famous. They were the precursors of that modern school of newspaper correspondence in which women now have so large a share, and which has something of the charm of women's private letters.

Her last publication, and perhaps her favorite among the whole series, appeared in 1867—"A Romance of the Republic." It was received with great cordiality and is in some respects her best fictitious work. In later life Mrs. Child left New York and took up her abode in Wayland, Massachusetts. She outlived her husband six years and died October 20, 1880.

ALMIRA LINCOLN PHELPS.

There were but two among all the early distinguished literary women of America who had the honor of being members of the American Association for the advancement of science, and these two women were Maria Mitchell and Almira Lincoln Phelps,—one from the North and one from the South. Mrs. Phelp's father, Samuel Harte, was a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the first minister of Hartford and founder of Connecticut. She was the youngest child and was born in Berlin, Connecticut, in 1793, educated at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and later married to Simeon Lincoln, editor of the Connecticut Mirror, in Hartford. She was early left a widow with two children. Finding the estates of both her husband and father insolvent, she took up the study of Latin and Greek, the natural sciences, art of drawing and painting, in order to perfect herself for the work which she had in comtemplation, namely, the education of the young. She was a student under Miss Willard for seven years. In 1831, she married Honorable John Phelps, a distinguished lawyer and statesman of Vermont. In 1839 she accepted a position at the head of the female seminary at West Chester, Pennsylvania. In 1841 she and her husband established the Patapsco Female Institute of Maryland. Pupils came to them from all parts of the West and South. In 1849 she was again left a widow. In 1855 her daughter's death so saddened her that she resigned her position and removed to the city of Baltimore. Her best known works are: "Lectures on Botany," "Botany for Beginners," "Lectures on Chemistry." "Chemistry for Beginners," "Lectures on Natural Philosophy," "Philosophy for Beginners," "Female Students," "A Fireside Friend," "A Juvenile Story," "Geology for Beginners," "Translation of the Works of Benedicte de Saussure," "Progressive Education," with a mothers' journal by