Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/440

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KEPLEY.
KIDD.
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were Episcopalians, Catholics and Methodists in religion, from which combination she is, by a natural process, a Unitarian in belief, and 24th July, 1892, she was ordained a minister of that denomination in Shelbyville. Ill.


JENNIE ELLIS KEYSOR. KEYSOR, Mrs. Jennie Ellis, educator, born in Austin, Minn., 2nd March, 1860. She was a high-school graduate of 1878 and began to teach in a district school, riding nearly four miles on horseback daily and utilizing the long ride in the study of English literature She was graduated from the Winona Normal School in 1879, and was appointed to a position in the Austin school in the same year. She soon accepted the charge of the preparatory department of United States history, or civil government, of the normal school. After two years in the normal she completed in Wellesley College her course in English literature, history and Anglo-Saxon. She again occupied a position in the Winona normal, having charge of the depart- ment of English literature and rhetoric. She resigned to become the wife of William W. Keysor, an attorney of Omaha and at present one of the district judges. Born to the love of teaching, she was not content to lay it aside, and was for some years one of Omaha's most efficient educators and institute workers. She has been for years a writer for the "Popular Educator" and a frequent contributor to other periodicals. In 1888 she went abroad, visiting England and Scotland. Mrs. Keysor is a woman of progressive ideas and energy.


KIDD, Mrs. Lucy Ann, educator, horn in Nelson county, Ky., 11th June, 1839. Her maiden LUCY ANN KIDD. name was Lucy Ann Thornton, Her father. Willis Strather Thornton, was a descendant of an old English family, resident in Virginia since the time of the Pretender. The old ancestral home, "Hunter's Rest," is still owned by some member of the family. Lucy received a collegiate education in Georgetown, Ky. In her seventeenth year she became the wife of a southern physician of considerable means. Dr. Kidd who, after losing largely by the war, died, leaving his estate heavily encumbered. Up to that time Mrs. Kidd had had no acquaintance with poverty or business, but she had the energy which made up for want of experience. She accepted a position in a college in Brookhaven, Miss., and two years after bought an interest in the school. Nine years later she was elected president of the North Texas Eemale College, in Sherman, Tex., a position she still holds. Mrs. Kidd is the first woman south of Mason and Dixon's line who has held such a position. At the time when Mrs. Kidd assumed the presidency of the school, it was virtually dead, having been closed for more than a year, but her energy and conservative management have brought to it a great popularity. Within three years it had as large a number of boarding pupils enrolled as any other school in the South. Her administrative ability is marked.


KIMBALL, Miss Corinne, actor, born in Boston, Mass., 25th December, 1873. She is widely known by her stage-name, "Corinne." She is the daughter of Mrs. Jennie Kimball, actor and theatrical manager. CORINNE KIMBALL. Corinne is a genuine child of the stage, as she has been before the footlights ever since her earliest years. Her father was an Italian naval officer, to whom her mother had been married but a few short months, when he died of malarial fever. Corinne's life has been eventful and romantic, but under a mother's watchful care and guidance it has been bright and happy. Being an only child, she has had the advantage of the lavish attention which usually falls to the lot of those who are so fortunate as to be the sole heir Originally her mother had not the slightest intention of placing her on the stage. It was led up to by a combination of circumstances. In 1S76 a grand baby show was held in Horticultural Hall, in Boston, and Corinne was one of the infants placed on exhibition. She created a marked sensation, caused not only by her great personal beauty, but also by her ability to sing and dance prettily at the age of three. She received the prize medals and diploma. The attention she attracted caused her mother to accept an engagement for her to appear in Sunday-evening concerts in conjunction with Brown's Brigade Baud. She was billed as the infant wonder and created a furore, and her great success in these concerts determined her mother to keep her on the stage. She next appeared in the Boston Museum as Little Buttercup, in a juvenile production of "Pinafore." The opera was very successful, running for one-hundred nights, and Corinne was the hit of the presentation. At the conclusion of that engagement she was starred in the production through the New England States and Canada. Her next success was as Cinderella in the opera of that name. Then her mother became her manager anil has so continued ever since. Judging her from her past successes, Mrs. Kimball placed her in comic opera. She sang in "The Mascotte," "Olivette." " Princess of Trebizonde," "Chimes of Normandy" and "Mikado." She played the principal parts in all of these, and memorized not only her own role but the entire operas, so as to be able to prompt every part from beginning to end. Then Mrs. Kimball, thinking to save Corinne's voice, from her twelfth to sixteenth year put her in burlesque. Her success in that line of work was much greater than expected, and consequently she has remained in burlesque. In "Arcaia" she first established herself; in "Monte Cristo, Jr.," she attracted attention and won the title of "Queen of the Stage," in the great