Woman of the Century/Adeline Trafton Knox

ADELINE TRAFTON KNOX. KNOX, Mrs. Adeline Trafton, author, born in Saccarappa, Me., 8th February, 1845. She is the daughter of Rev. Mark Trafton. a talented and well-known Methodist clergyman of New England. Much of her life was passed in the towns and cities of New England. She lived two years in Albany, N. Y., where her father held a pastorate at the be- ginning of the Civil War, and two years in Washington, D. C., while he was serving his term as a member of the House of Representatives. During this latter period Miss Trafton was for a while a pupil in the Wesleyan Female College, in Wilmington, Del. In 1868 she began her literary career by publishing a few stories and sketches, under a fictitious name, in the Springfield. Mass., "Republican." These were so well received that, in 1872, after spending; six months in Europe, she gathered a series of foreign letters, which had appeared in the same paper, into a book under the title of "An American Girl Abroad" (Boston, 1872). This was a success. She next tried a novelette, "Katherine Earle" (Boston, 1874), having run as a serial through "Scribner's Monthly." She had already contributed a number of striking short stories to the col- umns of that magazine. A year or two later followed a more ambitious novel. "His Inheritance" (Boston, 1878), which also ran as a serial through "Scribner's Monthly." Subsequently ill health compelled her to lay aside her pen, which she has never resumed, except to bring out, through the columns of the "Christian Union," in 1889, a novelette treating of social questions, which was afterwards republished in book-form under the title of "Dorothy's Experience." In 1889 Miss Trafton became the wife of Samuel Knox, jr., a lawyer, of St. Louis, Mo., son of Hon. Samuel Knox, a distinguished advocate of that city. Her residence is divided between New England and the West.