Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/473

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468
LIVERMORE.
LIVERMORE.

to those of the commission. She organized Soldiers' Aid Societies, delivered public addresses to stimulate supplies and donations of money in the principal towns and cities of the Northwest, wrote letters by the hundreds, personally and by amanuenses, and answered all that she received, wrote the circulars, bulletins and monthly reports of the commission, made trips to the front with sanitary stores, to whose distribution she gave personal attention, brought back large numbers of invalid soldiers who were discharged that they might die at home, and whom she accompanied in person, or by proxy, to their several destinations, assisted to plan, organize and conduct colossal Sanitary Fairs, and wrote a history of them at their close, detailed women nurses for the hospitals, by order of Secretary Stanton, and accompanied them to their posts; in short, the story of women's work during the war has never been told, and can never be understood save by those connected with it. Mrs Livermore has published her reminiscences of those crucial days in a large volume, entitled " My Story of the War" (Hartford, Conn., 1888), which has reached a sale of between fifty-thousand and sixty-thousand copies. The war over, Mrs. Livermore resumed the former tenor of her life, and took up again the philanthropic and literary work which she had temporarily relinquished. The woman suffrage movement, which had been inaugurated twelve years before the war, by Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Cady Stanton, and which had been suspended during the absorbing activities of the war, was then resuscitated, and Mrs. Livermore identified herself with it. She had kept the columns of her husband's paper ablaze with demands for the opening of colleges and professional schools to woman, for the repeal of unjust laws that blocked her progress, and for an enlargement of her industrial opportunities, that she might become self-supporting, but she had believed this might be accomplished without making her a voter. Her experiences during the war taught her differently. She very soon made arrangements for a woman suffrage convention in Chicago, where never before had one been held. The leading clergymen of the city took part in it, prominent advocates of the cause from various parts of the country were present, and it proved a notable success. The Illinois Woman Suffrage Association was organized and Mrs. Livermore was elected its first president. In January, 1860, she established a woman suffrage paper, "The Agitator," at her own cost and risk, which espoused the temperance reform as well as that of woman suffrage. In January, 1870, the " Woman's Journal " was established in Boston by a joint-stock company, for the advocacy of woman suffrage, and Mrs. Livermore received an invitation to become its editor-in-chief, which she accepted, merging her own paper in the new advocate. Her husband disposed of his paper and entire establishment in Chicago, the family returned to the Last, and have since resided in Melrose, Mass. for two years Mrs. Livermore edited the "Woman's Journal," when she resigned all editorial work to give her time more entirely to the lecture field. For twenty-rive years she has been conspicuous on the lecture platform and has been heard in the lyceum courses of the country year after year in nearly even- State of the Union, as well as in England and Scotland. She chooses a wide range of topics, and her lectures are biographical, historical, political, religious, reformatory and sociological. One volume of her lectures has been published, entitled "What shall we do with our Daughters? and Other Lectures" (Boston, 1883). and another is soon to follow . She has traveled extensively in the United States, literally from ocean to ocean, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In company with her husband, she has made two visits to Europe, where she was much instructed by intercourse with liberal and progressive people Her pen has not been idle during these last twenty years, and her articles have appeared in the "North American Review," the "Arena," the "Chautauquan," the "Independent." the "Youth's Companion," the "Christian Advocate," "Woman's Journal " and other periodicals. She is much interested in politics and has twice been sent by the Republicans of her own town as delegate to the Massachusetts State Republican Convention, charged with the presentation of temperance and woman suffrage resolutions, which have been accepted and incorporated into the party platform. She is identified with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and for ten years was president of the Massachusetts Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She was president of the Woman's Congress during the first two years of its organization, has served as president of the American Woman's Suffrage Association, is president of the Beneficent Society of the New England Conservatory of Music, which assists promising and needy students in the prosecution of their musical studies, is identified with the National Women's Council, which holds triennial meetings, is connected with the Chautauqua movement, in which she is much interested, is a life member of the Boston Woman's Educational and Industrial Union, and holds memberships in the Woman's Relief Corps, the Ladies' Aid Society of the Massachusetts Soldiers' Home, the Massachusetts Woman's Indian Association, the Massachusetts Prison Association, the American Psychical Society and several literary clubs. In religion she is a Unitarian, but cares more for life ana character than for sect or creed. She is a believer in Nationalism and regards Socialism, as expounded in America, as "applied Christianity." Notwithstanding her many years of hard service, she is still in vigorous health. Happy in her home, and in the society of her husband:, children and grandchildren, she keeps steadily at work with voice and pen and influence, ready to lend a hand for the weak and struggling, to strike a blow* for the right against the wrong, to prophesy a better future in the distance, and to insist on a woman's right to help it along.


LOCKWOOD, Mrs. Belva Ann, barrister-at-law. born in Royalton, Niagara county, N. Y., 24th October, 1830. Her parents' name was Bennett. They w ere farmers in moderate circumstances. Belva was educated at first in the district school and later in the academy of her native town. At fourteen years of age she taught the district school in summer and attended school in winter, continuing that occupation until eighteen years of age, when she became the wife of a young farmer in the neighborhood, Uriah H. McNall, who died in April, 1853. leaving one daughter, now Mrs. Lura M. Onnes, Mrs. Lock wood's principal assistant in her law office. As Belva A. McNall she entered Genesee College, In Lima. N. Y., in 1853, and was graduated therefrom w ith honor, taking her degree of A. B. on 27th June, 1857. She was immediately elected preceptress of Lockport union school, incorporated as an academy, and containing six-hundred male and female students. She assisted in the preparation of a three-year course of study and introduced declamation and gymnastics for the young ladies, conducting the classes herself. She was also professor of the higher mathematics, logic, rhetoric and botany. She continued in that position for lour years, when she resigned to become