Woman of the Century/Alice A. W. Cadwallader

CADWALLADER, Mrs. Alice A. W., philanthropist, born in St. Clairsville, Ohio, in 1832. Her father. George W. Moorehouse, was of English descent, and her mother. Elizabeth Linder, was of German descent Alice was one of a family ALICE A. W. CADWALLADER. of twelve children. She was reared as a daughter of temperance. At an early age she became the wife of Mr. Cochran, a Virginian, who died, leaving her with a family of three small children. Six years after his death she was united in marriage to N. J. White, of a Quaker family in Belmont county, Ohio. He enlisted as one of the sixty-days soldiers at the beginning of the Civil War, and was killed in the battle of Antietam. Mrs. White went with her children to the house of her father, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where she gave her time to patriotic work. She first took charge of the sanitary supplies of Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. After one year's service there the Sanitary Commission placed her in charge of the supplies of the hospital steamer "R. C. Woods," and a year later she was removed to the control of the large Light-diet Kitchen in Jeffersonville, Ind. Putting that in complete running order, she next repaired to Nashville, Tenn., and under General Thomas took charge of the work and supplies of the White Women Refugee's Hospital. In 1866 she returned to her father's home. Subsequently she spent a year and a half in temperance work in western New York. Her next movement was to turn pioneer. In company with one of her brothers she settled in Nebraska, preëmpting a homestead, on which she lived two years. During that period and for two years afterward she filled the office of Grand Vice-Templar in the order of Good Templars, and for the three years following she was the general superintendent of the juvenile work in the same organization. Then the crusade spirit fired the great West, and, laying down her Good Templar work, with other sisters, she joined in the crusade against the saloons in Lincoln, Neb. Since that period her heart and service have been with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In 1880, in Lincoln, Neb., she became the wife of Rev. Joseph Cadwallader, of the Congregational Church. On account of his failing health they removed to Jacksonville, Fla., where in 1886 she was made president of the State Woman's Christian Temperance Union. In that office she brought the work in that State from a condition of apathy and indifference to a healthy and steadily increasing growth in the principles of temperance and prohibition, and to a juster appreciation of the power of woman in the world's progress and philanthropies. In all her work she has been assisted by her husband, until Mr. Cadwallader is almost as well known in Woman's Christian Temperance Union circles as his wife. In addition to her temperance labors, Mrs. Cadwallader has entered into church service. She has been an active member of St. Luke's Hospital board of managers, composed entirely of women, and she has been on the board of the Orphanage and Home for the Friendless. These institutions are in Jacksonville. Mission and jail work have shared her labors. During 1890, when she was traveling with her husband, she everywhere found something to do, besides keeping a constant oversight of the work in her own State. Later she was in Asheville, N. C., attending the Woman's Christian Temperance Union Assembly and reporting the meetings to her State paper, the "Telephone." She resigned her position as State president and is now engaged in the crowning work of her life, the establishment of the Woman's Industrial Home, in Augusta, Ga. That institution has received from Mr. and Mrs. Cadwallader considerable sums of money, and it is now in successful operation. It is an institution designed for the reclamation of fallen women.