Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/490

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
McCRACKEN.
McCULLOCH.
485

Already her name is well known in the South. In January, 1892, Mrs. McCracken became contributing editor to the "Lyceum Magazine," Asheville. N. C. In May, 1892, she issued, as editor and proprietor, a handsomely illustrated monthly, the "Pine Forest Echo." In addition to its literary features, it is designed to describe the beautiful historical environs of the famous health resort, Summerville, S. C., her home She has written short stories, notably fur the "Old Homestead," of Savannah, Ga., for the "Sunny South," "Peterson's Magazine," the "St. Louis Magazine " and the "American Household."


McCULLOCH, Mrs. Catharine Waugh, lawyer, born in Ransomville, Niagara county, N. Y., 4th June, 1862. In 1867 her parents removed to Winnebago county, Ill., where she lived on a farm until she entered the Rockford Seminary. She was graduated from that institution in 1882 at the head of her class, and afterwards took a post-graduate course and received the CATHARINE WAUGH McCULLOCH. degree of M.A.. in the same school. She then devoted some time to temperance work, in the lecture field. She was graduated from the Union College of Law, Chicago, Ill., and was admitted to the bar in 1886. She practiced law in Rockford, Ill., from that time until her marriage, on 30th May, 1890, with a former classmate in the Union College of Law, Frank H. McCulloch, since which time both have been engaged in the practice of law in Chicago, under the firm name McCulloch & McCulloch. She is much interested in all moral reforms, especially in temperance and equal suffrage, and gives as much time as she can spare from her business and her home to that kind of work. In February, 1892, she addressed both senate and house of representatives in Illinois, in committees of the whole, on the suffrage question. Before a jury and on the lecture platform there is kindled in her a power entirely above what one would expect in one so gentle and womanly. She has an inexhaustible supply of courage and energy and is always at work. Her success is the result of her own exertions. Her family consists of one son.


McELROY, Mrs. Mary Arthur, sister of Chester Arthur, twenty-first President of the United States, and mistress of the White House during his term of office born in Greenwich, Washington county, N. Y., in 1842. She is the youngest child of the late Rev. William Arthur. She was educated in private schools and completed her education in Mrs Emma Willard's Female Seminary, in Troy, N. Y. Her attainments and accomplishments are far beyond the standards usually set for young women, and her strong intellectual powers enabled her to gain a thorough knowledge of every subject which she took up. She became the wife, in 1861, of John E. McElroy, of Albany, N. Y., and her home has been in that city continuously, excepting during her brother's term of office as President. When Chester A. Arthur became President of the United States, after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, he was a widower, and he invited Mrs. McElroy to serve as mistress of the White House. She did so, and her regime in Washington was distinguished by its refinement and its pleasant affableness. Both herself and her brother were fitted by nature, training and social experience to make the White House a center of all that was best in the society of the Capital. Mrs. McKlroy is a woman of commanding and attractive person, and no administration was ever more marked for social elegance than was that of President Arthur. After his term ended she returned to her home in Albany, where she is still living.


MacGAHAN, Mrs. Barbara, author and journalist, born in the government of Tula, Russia, 26th April, n. s., 1852, where the estate of her father, Nicholas Elagin, was situated. The family was one of old-time Russian landed proprietors. Having received her first education in her home, under the supervision of a French tutor, who took charge of her after she lost her mother at the age of five, and of a German nursery governess, the girl, Barbara Elagina, was placed in the girls' gymnasia in the city of Tula, where she came under the influence of the directors and teachers of that establishment, men who were collaborators of Count Tolstoi in his school work in Yassnaya Poliana, and in the editing of an education magazine of the same name. Having lost both parents and graduated from the gymnasia of Tula with a diploma held to be equivalent to a certificate of matriculation for entrance into a university, she was taken into the house of her oldest sister, the childless wife of a rich landed proprietor of the government of Tula. For several years the girl led a worldly and frivolous life, spending her summers on the family estates, migrating for the late fall to the warm resorts of the south shore of the Crimea, spending her winters either in Tula or St. Petersburg, and making trips abroad to Italy, Austna and Germany, where she happened to be at the time of the declaration of war by France against Germany, and witnessed the excitement brought about by the speedy mobilization of the Russian army. That was her first glimpse of army life in war times, of which she was destined to see so much. In the fall of 1871, after the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War, she was staying with her sister in Yalta, in the Crimea, where the Russian Court was at the time. There she made the acquaintance of Januarius A. MacGahan, an American, native of the State of Ohio, war-correspondent of the New York "Herald." He, having just made the French campaign, was sent by the "Herald" to the eastern principalities of Europe and into the