Woman of the Century/Kate Brownlee Sherwood

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2291913Woman of the Century — Kate Brownlee Sherwood

SHERWOOD, Mrs. Kate Brownlee, poet and journalist, was born in Mahoning county, Ohio, 24th September, 1841. Her descent is Scottish, and her ancestors number many men and women of literary bent. Her maiden name was Brownlee. She was educated in Poland Union Seminary. KATE BROWNLEE SHERWOOD. Before graduating she became the wife of Isaac R. Sherwood, afterwards General, Secretary of State and Congressman from Ohio. Her husband is the editor of the Canton "Daily News- Democrat," and Mrs. Sherwood, attracted to journalism, learned everything in the line of newspaper work from typesetting to leader-writing. While her husband was in Congress, she served as Washington correspondent for Ohio journals. She was for six years in editorial charge of the Toledo, O., 'Journal.' and for ten years has edited the woman's department of the soldier organ, the Washington " National Tribune." Her career as a journalist and society woman has been varied and busy. She was one of the first members of the Washington Literary Club, and the Sorosis of New York, to whose early annual receptions she contributed characteristic poems, and the vice-president for Ohio in the first call for a national congress of women. She was the organizer of the first auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic outside of New England, and is a founder of the national association known as the Woman's Relief Corps, Auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic. She served that order as national president, organized the department of relief and instituted the National Home for Army Nurses, in Geneva, Ohio. Despite her versatile excellence, public instinct gives popular homage to her one gift song. She has been the chosen singer of many national occasions, including army reunions, and is the only northern poet ever invited by the ex-Confederates to celebrate the heroism of a southern soldier. The broad, liberal and delicate manner in which she responded to that significant honor, in her poem at the unveiling of the equestrian statue of Albert Sidney Johnston, in New Orleans, La., elicited praise from the gray and the blue. A student of French and German, her translations of Heine, Goethe and Frederich Bodenstedd have been widely copied. Her "Camp-fire and Memorial Poems" (Chicago, 1885) has passed through several editions. Her home is now in Canton, Ohio.