Representative women of New England/Louise C. Purington
LOUISE C. PURINGTON, M.D., National Superintendent W. C. T. U.. Department Health and Heredity. — Mary Louise Chamberlain, as Dr. Purington was christened, was born near Madison, N.Y., in one of the lovely hamlets, or "hollows," of the Empire State. The youngest child of Isaac and Harriet (Putnam) Chamberlain, she traces her descent through her mother from the Putnam family of Danvers, originally known as Salem Village, Mass.
The immigrant progenitor of this family, John Putnam, died in 1662, some twenty years or more after his arrival in the colony. Three sons of John1 handed down the family name. They were: Thomas,2 grandfather of General Israel Putnam; Nathaniel2; and John, Jr.,2 who fought in King Philip's War, and was afterward a Captain of militia. Eleazer3 Putnam, born in 1665, seventh child of Captain John2 and his wife, Rebecca Prince, was a deacon of the church in Danvers. The farm on which he settled lies north of the General Israel Putnam house. Henry4 Putnam, born in 1712, son of Deacon Eleazer3 and his second wife, Elizabeth, dauglder of Benjamin and Apphia (Hale) Rolfe, of Newbury, removed in middle life from Danvers to "Charlestown, where he kept school, and thence about the year 1763, it is thought, removed to Medford. A stanch pa- triot, seizing his gun on the ahirm of April 19, 1775, he set forth to meet the foe, anil was killed at the battle of Lexington, being then in his sixty-fourth year. He was Dr. Puring- ton's great-great-grandfather. Eleazer^ Put- nam, born in Danvers in 1738, son of Henry^ and his wife Hannah, was a farmer, and resided in Medford. In April, 1775, he served five days as a private in Captain Isaac Hall's company.
Dr. Elijah" Putnam, Dr. Purington's maternal grandfather, son of Eleazer and Mary (Crosby) Putnam, was born in Medford, Mass., in 1769. He died in January, 1S51, in Madison, N.Y., where he had practised medicine many j-ears. His wife was Phebe, daughter of Captain Abner Ward. They had ten children — Frances, John, Phebe, Samuel and Sidne>y (twins), Hamilton, Harriet (Mrs. Chamberlain), Mary (Mrs. Adin Howard), Caroline, and Henry Locke. Two of the sons were physicians.
Dr. Purington was early orphaned, and owes her liberal education to her aunt Mary and uncle Adin Howard, who, with rare philan- thropy, adopted seven children. From the beautiful village home of the Howards at Madison, N.Y., Louise, a child of twelve years, was sent to the Utica Academy. At nineteen she was graduated from Mount Holyoke Semi- nary and ten years later from the Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago, supplementing the course with advanced study and clinical ex- perience in the hospitals and dispensaries of New York City. It was the same bent that led the young girl, just out of school, to offer herself as a hospital nurse in the service of the United States Christian Commission. George H. Stuart, of Philadelphia, was at the head of the department, and had given to each member of the class of 1864 at Mount Holyoke, in which she was graduated, a silver pin, appropriately inscribed, in recognition of their self-ilenying gift of money — the price of the customary class badge — to the work of the c(;mmission.
At the Hahnemann College Dr. Purington took first rank, with one other stutlent leading her large class, its only woman graduate. A powerful motive prompting her to this study, at a time when the world looked askance at the woman tloctor, was her cherished belief in the ecjuality of the .sexes and her desire to see women not only entering every open door, but pushing open those that stood ajar. One who vividly remembers the graduating exercises of her class and the applause that greeted the one woman, young, beautiful, and poised, .who rose to receive her diploma, says of that bit of his- tory, " It set forward perceptibly the woman's hour." It by no means closed Dr. Purington's student life. Her scholarly habits were formed and crystallized in life and character. A signal .service rendered to her sex, which resultetl in preventing Halmemaim College from taking the backwanl step of excluding women from its courses, brought her into close relation and finally intimate friendship with Mrs. Kate N. Doggett, a social and intellectual leader in Chicago, the founder and promoter of the Fortnightly, one of the leading literary clubs of women in America. Dr. Purington served as chairman of its classical committee, and wrote several scholarly papers.
But literary and professional interests could not long suffice a spirit touched to finer issues. The temperance crusade reached Chicago. Frances E. Willard came in from Evanston to arldress a mass meeting. The young doctor heard her ringing words, respondetl to the bugle-eall of spirit to spirit, sought her leader- ship, and became her co-worker and lifelong friend. The association of that year with the great leader of temperance reform was invalu- able to Dr. Purington, opening new perspec- tives for an as])iring nature. She regards Miss Willard's influence as among the dominant forces in her life, and especially owes to it her ultimate devotion to the temperance cause. An immediate result was the formation of the first "Y," or Young Woman's Christian Temperance LTnion, at her home in Chicago.
In the mission field, also, Dr. Purington specialized in young women's work. As an active member for twelve years of the Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior, she originated and carried forward the young ladies' work. She was playfully called " Bi.'ihop of the Girls of the Interior" and popularly known as "En- gineer of the Bridge," an ingenious device in mission work by which she aroused enthusiasm and secured unity of action in the societies she formed. Her interest in foreign missions can be traced to a favorite teacher at Mount Holyoke. To that teacher, Ann Eliza Fritcher, afterward a missionary under the American Board, founder and long-time principal of the Girls' School at Marsovaii, Turkey, Dr. Purington feels the deepest spiritual obligation.
Life, almost all life, has its tragic side. This one was not exempt. A nervous breakdown came, the consequence of anxiety and overwork; and for two years or more there was a physical, mental, and spiritual "walk in the dark with God." The disability had its compensations in a long residence at Clifton Springs Sanitarium and the help and blessing of Dr. Henry Foster. Out of pathos unspeakable, disaster, and defeat, came a knowledge of things unseen and eternal, and a buoyant faith in God that has been the mightiest factor in Dr. Purington's spiritual life. A gradual restoration was followed by change of scene and surroundings and a new home in the serener atmosphere of Boston. With Miss Ella Gilbert Ives, the friend who is one with her in motive, interest, and aim. Dr. Purington has been associated since 1885 in a school for girls, at the same time giving herself without stint to philanthropic work. For ten years she has held an influential position in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, running the gamut of local and county president, local. State, and national superintendent, and of late editor of the State paper. She served several years as national superintendent of franchise, and compiled for Miss Willard the facts used by her in her annual addresses to exhibit the progress of women. In 1895 Dr. Purington was transferred to the department of health and heredity, which, as national superintendent, she has thoroughly organized and developed, rallying to her assistance State superintendents and a host of earnest workers in her great constituency.
The aim of her department is the development of the highest life, physical, mental, and spiritual, and not only this, but also the cleanest, healthiest civic life. It includes co-operation with boards of health in the enforcement of health ordinances; school hygiene and sanitation, instruction in the laws of health in relation to dress, food, air, exercise, cleanliness, mental and moral hygiene. The department is active in trying to secure the passage of pure food bills, legislative enactments relating to public health, milk and poultry inspection, etc., all of which work covers a wide field of endeavor, and is attended year by year with increasingly good results.
In 1903, at the World's Convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. Purington was appointed World's Superintendcnt of the department co-operation with missionary societies; thus being enabled to unify her life-long work in two great fields of Christian activity.
In both missionary and temperance lines Dr. Purington's contributions to leading periodicals, her manuals and leaflets, have won recognition and hearty praise. Especially valuable are her life studies in the field of health and heredity. Her character and literary style are forceful, original, and clear-cut. She says on herself, "’The open secret of my life is the same as Charles Kingsley's: I have a friend, not only the One above all others, but in the sweetest human sense, as interpreted by Jeremy Taylor: 'By friendship I suppose you mean the greatest love, and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest sufferings, and the most exemplary faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsels, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable.'" Her intellectual awakening she tlates from the early beginning of this friendship, which has been to her a chief source of happiness as well as of stimulus to growth. She believes with Evelyn, "There is in friendship something of all relations and something above them all."