Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/697

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692
STOKES.
STOKES.

been religious from childhood, and was early a Bible-reader and Sabbath-school worker. She became interested in foreign missions, from reading the life of the first Mrs. Judson. She showed an early liking for teaching, and after graduating, in 1858, she taught for several years, including those of the Civil War. Her only brother, Thomas J. Stokes, was killed in the battle of Franklin. Tenn. Her mother died soon after the close of the war. Her widowed sister-in-law and little nephew were then added to the household, and she gladly devoted herself to home duties, abandoning all teaching for several years, excepting a music class and a few private pupils. MISSOURI M. STOKES. In 1874 she took charge of the department of English literature and of mental and moral science in Dalton College, which she held till 1877. In 1880 and 1881 she taught a small private school in Atlanta. Ga., and for the next four years she was in charge of the mission day school of the Marietta Street Methodist Church, working earnestly and successfully in that real missionary held. She was at the same time doing good service in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which she joined in Atlanta in 1880, a member of the first union organized in Georgia. She was made secretary in 1881, and in 1883 she was made corresponding secretary of the State union organized that year. She has held both those offices ever since. She worked enthusiastically in the good cause, writing much for temperance papers, and she was for years the special Georgia correspondent of the "Union Signal." She took an active part in the struggle for the passage of a local option law in Georgia, and in the attempts to secure from the State legislature scientific temperance instruction in the public schools, a State refuge for fallen women, and a law to close the bar-rooms throughout the State. She and her co-workers were everywhere met with the assertion that all these measures were unconstitutional. Miss Stokes was conspicuous in the temperance revolution in Atlanta. She has made several successful lecture tours in Georgia, and she never allowed a collection to be taken in one of her meetings. The last few years have been trying ones to her, as her health, always delicate, has been impaired. Since 1885 she has lived in Decatur with her half-sister, Miss Mary Gay.


STONE, Mrs. Lucinda H., educator and organizer of women's clubs in Michigan, born in Hinesburg, Vt., in 1814. Her maiden name was Lucinda Hinsdale. Her early years were passed in the ouiet life of the sleepy little town, which was situated midway between Middlebury and Burlington, and the most stirring incidents of her youthful days were the arrivals of the postman on horseback, or the stage coaches, bringing news from the outside world. As a child she read eagerly every one of the local papers that came to her home, and the traditional "obituaries," the religious revivals called "great awakenings," the "warnings to Sabbath-breakers" and the "religious anecdotes" that abounded in the press of that country in those days were her especial delight. The reading of those articles left an impression upon her mind which time has never effaced. Her interest in educational and religious matters can be traced directly to the literature of her childhood days. Her early desire for knowledge was instinctive and strong. Study was life itself to her. Lucinda's father died, when she was three years old, leaving a family of twelve children, of whom she was the youngest. After passing through the district school, when twelve years old, she went to the Hinesburg Academy. She became interested in a young men's literary society, or lyceum as it was called, in Hinesburg, to which her two brothers belonged. That modest institution furnished her the model for the many women's libraries which she has founded in Michigan, and through which she has earned the significant and appropriate title of "Mother of the Women's Clubs of the State of Michigan." Lucinda spent one year in the female seminary in Middlebury. Acting upon the advice of a clergyman, she returned to the Hinesburg Academy, where she entered the classes of the young men who were preparing for college. She kept up with them in Greek, Latin and mathematics, until they were ready to enter college. That experience gave her a strong bias of opinion in favor of coeducation. From the Hinesburg Academy she went out a teacher, although she strongly wished to go to college and finish the course with the voung men, in whose preparatory studies she had shared. She became a teacher in the Burlington Female Seminary, where the principal wished to secure a teacher who had been educated by a man As she answered that requirement, she was selected. She taught also in the Middlebury Female Seminar)', and finally a tempting offer drew her to Natchez, Miss., where she remained three years. In 1840 she became the wife of Dr. J. A. B. Stone, who was also a teacher. In 1843 he went to Kalamazoo, Mich., and took charge of a branch of the Kalamazoo University. He also filled the pulpit of a small Baptist Church in that town. Mrs. Stone could not resist her inclination to assist her husband in teaching, and she took an active part in the work of the branches, which were really preparatory schools for the university. The successor of the university is Kalamazoo College, of which Dr. Stone was president for twenty years. The college was a co-educational institution, and the female department was under Mrs. Stone's charge. Dr. Stone was always a warm advocate of the highest education for women and of coeducation in all American