Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/98

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BLACKWELL.
BLACKWELL.
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and working in the Hospital of the Maternité. After Paris, she went to London, England, where she "walked" the wards of St. Bartholomew and other hospitals. In 1856 she returned to the United States, bringing the highest testimonials of training, study and acquirement. On her return she discovered that the popular sentiment seemed to have turned against women physicians more strongly than ever before. After the graduation of the Doctors Blackwell, several other schools and graduated women, but the faculties were determined that no more women should be admitted. Then separate schools sprung up. One of the immediate results of this revulsion of sentiment was the establishment of the hospital in New York by the Doctors Blackwell, in connection with a cultured Polish woman, Dr. M. E. Zakrzewska. In 1865 the legislature conferred college powers upon that institution. The new college extended the course of study to three years and was the first college to establish a chair of hygiene. Dr. Emily Blackwell has been from the first, and still is, one of the professors of that college, and the medical head of the infirmary for women and children established by the joint efforts of herself and her sister. The success of the college is a matter of history. The graduates number hundreds, and many of them have won distinction. It has been a "woman's college" throughout, owned, maintained, officered and managed by women. Dr. Emily Blackwell has also a large and lucrative practice and an honorable standing in her profession. She is interested in all the reform questions of the day and has written and published much in connection with her profession. She is one of the vice-presidents of the Society for the Promotion of Social Purity and the better protection of the young, and has written some of the leaflets published by that society, among them "The State and Girlhood," the "Need of Combination among Women for Self Protection," and "Regulation Fallacies—Vice not a Necessity." She is deeply loved and revered by her numerous friends and pupils. Her character is one of rare wisdom, disinterestedness and undeviating principle.


BLACKWELL, Miss Sarah Ellen, artist and author, the youngest daughter of Samuel and Hannah Lane Blackwell, born in Bristol, England, in 1828. She came to America with her parents at four years of age. Her father dying shortly afterwards, she was educated by her older sisters in Cincinnati, Ohio. She began to teach music at a very early age, while pursuing her studies. When nineteen years old, she went to Philadelphia to pursue the study of art in the newly opened School of Design, and while there received her first literary encouragement. "Sartain's Magazine" having advertised for ten prize stories, to be sent in under fictitious names, Miss Blackwell sent in a story of her own under the name "Brandon," and another by one of her sisters that happened to be in her possession. She received an award of two out of the ten prizes. That led to further literary work. Concluding to continue the study of art in Europe, she secured an engagement for weekly letters for two leading Philadelphia papers. She spent four years in Europe. She entered the government school of design for girls in Paris, then under the care of Rosa Bonheur and her sister, Mme. Julie Peyrol, and afterwards entered the studio of Mr. Leigh in London, and painted in the National Gallery, spending the summer on sketching from nature in Wales, Switzerland and the Isle of Wight. Returning to New York, she opened a studio and established classes in drawing and painting, but finally gave up her studio to assist her sisters, the Doctors Blackwell, then greatly burdened with work connected with the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, and the medical college established by them. For several years she was occupied with domestic duties and the care of children in whom she was interested. As these duties lightened, she resumed artistic and literary work, writing occasional articles for magazines and newspapers and republishing the writings of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, then in England. A SARAH ELLEN BLACKWELL. series of letters written by her for the "Woman's Journal," of Boston, concerning Miss Anna Ella Carroll, author of the plan cf the Tennessee campaign, having excited much interest, it was followed by an open letter on the same subject published in the "Century" for August, 1890. That increased the interest, and in the Woman's Council and suffrage meetings in the early spring of 1891, in Washington, D. C., a large number of subscribers were obtained, and Miss Blackwell was deputed to write a biography of Miss Carroll and an account of her remarkable work. After careful research, she printed, 21st April, 1891, the biography and sketch entitled "A Military Genius: Life of Anna Ella Carroll, the Great Unrecognized Member of Lincoln's Cabinet." Miss Blackwell spends her summers in an old farm-house at Martha's Vineyard, and her winters in New York or Washington, engaged in literary work. Her especial subjects of interest are land and labor reform, woman's suffrage and anti-vivisection, sympathizing as she does with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell in her opposition to all cruel and demoralizing practices


BLAIR, Mrs. Ellen A. Dayton, temperance organizer, born near Vernon Center, Oneida county, N. Y., 27th December, 1827. She was graduated in the classical course from Fort Edward Institute, N. Y., in 1837, and in the same year accepted the position of preceptress in Upper