Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/8

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ABBOTT.
ABBOTT.
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Emma Abbott Professor Errani. In 1870 she began to study with him, and was engaged to sing in Dr. Chapin's church at a salary of $1,500 a year. In 1872 Mr. Lake, with the aid of Dr. Chapin's congregation, raised $10,000 to send her to Europe for musical training. She went to Milan and studied with San Giovanni, and afterwards to Paris, where she studied under Wartel for several years. She studied with Delle Sadie also. While in Paris, she suffered an illness that threatened the destruction of her voice. She made a successful début, however, and she had there a warm friend in the Baroness Rothschild. Numerous enticing offers were made to her by European managers. She made an engagement with Manager Gye in London, but refused, on moral grounds, to appear in the opera, "La Traviata." In this she was supported by Eugene Wetherell, her husband. He was a member of Dr. Chapin's church and had followed her to Europe, where they were secretly married. Her refusal to sing that rôle ended in the cancellation of her engagement with Mr. Gye. In 1876 she returned to the United States, and with C. D. Hess organized an opera company. She appeared in the Park Theater, Brooklyn, N. Y, in her famous rôle of Marguerite. Soon after she became her own manager, and her husband and Charles Pratt attended to her business until Mr. Wetherell's sudden death in Denver, Col., in 1888. Miss Abbott, for she always retained her maiden name, was successful from the start. In spite of abuse, ridicule and misrepresentation, she drew large audiences wherever she appeared. The critics at first derided her in every possible way, but the public did not heed the critics and crowded to hear the courageous little woman who could maintain her good temper under a shower of ridicule, the like of which never before fell upon the head of a public personage. She grew artistically every year, and her stainless character, her generosity to her company, her gifts to charity, and her industry and perseverance at length won over the critics, who had simply made manifest their inability to write down a really meritorious artist. Miss Abbott sang throughout the United States, and in an incredibly short time she had amassed a fortune of several millions of dollars. Her voice was a pure, clear, long-range soprano of great flexibility. Her rôles included Norma, Semiramide, Elvira, Martha, Lucia, and Marguerite, and in her last years she appeared in costumes more magnificent than any other singer had ever worn. She died in Ogden, Utah, 4th January, 1891, after an illness of less than a week. Her funeral was held in Chicago on 9th January, her body was cremated, in accordance with a provision of her will, and its ashes were deposited in the magnificent mausoleum she had built in Gloucester, Mass. Her large fortune was divided by her will among her relatives and friends, and various churches and charitable societies.


Sarah C. Acheson. ACHESON, Mrs. Sarah C., temperance worker, born in Washington. Pa., 20th February, 1844. She is descended on the paternal side from English and Dutch families that settled in Virginia in 1600, and on the maternal side from Col. George Morgan, who had charge of Indian affairs under Washington, with headquarters at Fort Pitt, and of whom Jefferson, in a letter which Mrs. Acheson has in her possession, says, "He first gave me notice of the mad project of that day," meaning the Aaron Burr treason. Among her ancestors were Col. William-Duane, of Philadelphia, editor of the Philadelphia "Aurora" during the Revolution. Her girlhood was spent in the town of her birth, where she was married, in 1863, to Capt. Acheson, of the same place, then on Gen. Miles's staff, the marriage taking place while the Captain was on furlough with a gunshot wound in the face. He left for the front ten days after, encouraged by