Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/714

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TERHUNE.
THAXTER.
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Western Chautauquan Association. She has refused to go regularly into council work, as it would keep her too much away from home. She has lectured before the councils on "The Kitchen as a Moral Agency." "Ourselves and Our Daughters," "Living by the Day," and "How to Grow Old Gracefully." She was the first woman to call attention to the ruinous condition of the unfinished monument over Mary Washington's grave, and the movement to complete that monument was started by her. In behalf of the movement she wrote "The Story of Mary Washington" (1892). She was selected to write "The Story of Virginia" in the series of stories of States recently brought out in Boston, Mass. Her children have inherited her literary talents. Her oldest daughter, Mrs. Christine Terhune Herrick. has published several books on home topics and contributed to various periodicals. The second daughter has earned reputation as a poet and story-writer under the pen-name "Virginia Franklyn." The son is a well-known contributor of verses to magazines and periodicals. Mrs. Terhune has lieen a contributor to " Lippincott's Magazine," "Arena," "North American Review," "Harper's Bazar" and "Harper's Weekly," "Once a Week," "Youth's Companion" and other publications without number. Recently she has served editorially on the "Housekeeper's Weekly," of Philadelphia, Pa. She works actively in church and Sunday-school. There are no idle moments in her life. She systematizes her work and is never hurried. The family home is in Brooklyn, and they have a summer home, "Sunny* bank." in the New Jersey hills near Pompton. She is a thoroughly practical woman.


THAXTER, Mrs. Celia Laighton, poet, born in Portsmouth. N. H., 29th June. 1835. When she was four years old, her father, Thomas B. Laighton, went to live, with his family, on the Isles of Shoals. The childhood of herself and her two brothers, Oscar and Cedrick, was passed at White Island, where her father kept the lighthouse, which is described by her in her book, "Among the Isles of Shoals." CELIA LAIGHTON THAXTER. All her summers are spent among those islands. In 1851 she became the wife of Levi Lincoln Thaxter, of Watertown, Mass., who died in 1884 She never sought admittance to the field of literature, but the poet, James Russell Lowell, who was at one time editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," happened to see some verses which she had written for her own pleasure, and without saying anything to her about it, christened them "Land-locked " and published them in the "Atlantic." After that she had many calls for her work, and at last, persuaded by the urgent wishes of her friends, John G. Whittier, James T. Fields and others, wrote and published her first volume of poems in 1871, and later the prose work, "Among the Isles of Shoals," which was printed first as a series of papers in the "Atlantic Monthly." Other books have followed. "Driftweed" (1878), "Poems for Children" (1884) and "Cruise of the Mystery, and Other Poems" (1886). Among her best poems are "Courage," "A Tryst," "The Spaniards' Graves at the Isles of Shoals," "The Watch of Boon Island. "The Sandpiper" and "The Song Sparrow."


THAYER, Mrs. Emma Homan, author and artist, born in New York, 13th February, 1842. She was educated in Rutgers. Her father, George W. Homan, was a prominent business man of that city for over forty years, and was the first to own and operate a line of omnibuses on Broadway. He moved to Omaha, Neb., when his daughter Emma was fifteen years of age. EMMA HOMAN THAYER. Two years later she became the wife of George A. Graves, a native of Western New York, who subsequently held a prominent position in the war department in Washington, D. C., and died while in office, five years after their marriage. Mrs. Graves then turned