Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/327

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GILLETTE.
GLEASON.

father removed to Michigan, where she was married, and where she has lived many years. Mrs. Gillette's literary work has continued since her sixteenth year under the pen-names "Lyra" and "Carrie Russell," and her own name. Her poems and prose articles have appeared in various papers and magazines. Her published works are her poems, entitled "Pebbles From the Shore" (1879), "Editorials and Other Waifs" (New York, 1889), and a memoir of her father (Boston, 1855), who was a popular minister in the Universalist Church. There is a faint suggestion of the dramatic in Mrs. Gillette's style of speaking that gives it charm; the elegance of her language, the richness of her imagery, the striking and original character of her illustrations are as refreshing as they are entertaining. Her missionary and pastoral work has been of several years duration. Her lectures have received high praise.


GLEASON. Mrs. Rachel Brooks, physician, born in the village of Win hall, Vt., 27th November, RACHEL BROOKS GLEASON. 1820. She was a teacher from choice, not from necessity, much of the time up to her marriage on 3rd July 1844. No colleges were open for women during her girlhood, but she gave herself a fair collegiate education from college text-books studied at home. Her husband, Dr. Silas O. Gleason, when he became professor of hygiene in the Central Medical College in Rochester, succeeded in persuading the faculty and trustees to open the college doors to women. Mrs. Gleason studied with her husband and was graduated in medicine in 1851. She then practiced three years in a sanitarium in Glen Haven, N. Y., and one year in Ithaca, N. Y. She has been at the head of the Gleason Sanitarium in Elmira, N. Y., for forty years, and still is at its head. She has had a large consulting practice, extending to most of the towns in the State. Her book on home treatment for invalids, "Talks to my Patients" (New York. 1870) has run into its eighth edition. After her graduation in medicine she gave lectures on physiology and hygiene to women, assisted by the best models and charts to be had at the time She continues to give these lectures in schools for women and as parlor talks. She held Kible and prayer classes every Saturday for twenty-five years. She was an advocate of dress reform and women's freedom from early girlhood. She has assisted eighteen women students through medical colleges, all of whom were dependent upon her for financial support, and most of them rescued from invalidism. Many of these students have become prominent, and all are competent physicians. Mrs. Gleason was a strong anti-slavery worker before the Civil War, and has rendered constant assistance to Freedmen's schools ever since.


GOFF, Mrs. Harriet Newell Kneeland, temperance reformer and author, born in Watertown, N. Y., 10th October, 1828, of New England parentage. Her father, Mr. Kneeland, was a mechanic, but possessed strong literary inclinations and was a frequent contributor to the press of his day. He died while still young. His daughter was a quiet, thoughtful, old-fashioned child, with quaint speech, odd and original ideas, delicate health and extreme sensibility to criticism. When eleven years of age, she was received into the Presbyterian Church, and has retained that connection. A year previously her mother had removed to Pennsylvania and again married. In the step-father's house she often met itinerant lecturers upon temperance and anti-slavery, and she read with avidity the publications upon those subjects, and Sunday-school and other religious books. At sixteen she began to teach a public school in a country district, boarding among her pupils. During several years, teaching alternated with study, mainly in Grand River Institute, Ohio. At twenty-two she relinquished her cherished purpose of becoming a missionary, and became the wife of Azro Goff, a young merchant and post-master in the town of her residence, but continued her studies. A few years later they were passengers upon the steamer Northern Indiana when it was burned upon Lake Erie, with the loss of over thirty lives; and while clinging to a floating plank new views of human relations and enforced isolations opened before her, and she there resolved henceforth to follow the leadings of her own conscience. She has devoted much time and effort to the unfortunate.preferring those least heeded by others. For many years she was a contributor to the public press, her first article being published in the "Knickerbocker." She entered the temperance lecture field in 1870, and has traveled throughout the United States, in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, speaking more or less extensively in all. and under various auspices. In 1872 she was delegated by three societies of Philadelphia, where she then resided, to attend the prohibition convention in Columbus, Ohio, and there she became the first woman ever placed upon a nominating committee to name candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States. To her presence and inHuence was due the incorporation of woman's suffrage into the platform of that party at that time. She published her first book, "Was it an Inheritance?" (Philadelphia, 1876) and early the next year she became traveling correspondent of the New York "Witness," besides contributing to "Arthur's Home Magazine." the "Sunday-school Times," the "Independent " and other journals. In 1880 she published her second book, issuing the sixth edition that year. Her third volume was, "Who Cares" (Philadelphia,