Woman of the Century/Anna Augusta Truitt

TRUITT, Mrs. Anna Augusta, philanthropist and temperance reformer, was born in Canaan. N. H., in 1837. Her father was Daniel G. Patton. Her mother, Ruth Chase Whittier, was ANNA AUGUSTA TRUITT. related to Governor Chase and the poet Whittier. At an early age her father emigrated to northern New York, where she was educated by private teachers. She subsequently spent two years in College Hills Seminary. After her first marriage she and her husband settled in the South, where they remained until the Rebellion, when they were forced to leave. Sacrificing valuable property and business interests, they returned to the forth to begin again the battle of life. Her husband soon passed away. She afterward became the wife of Joshua Truitt, an energetic business man of Muncie, Ind., where she has since lived, actively engaged in benevolent and philanthropic work. During the Civil War she labored constantly, preparing things useful and needful to the soldiers. She marched, sang and prayed with the crusaders. For the last sixteen years she has been a faithful worker in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She has been president of the Delaware county Woman's Christian Temperance Union for several years, and has often been selected by the Union to represent them in State and district meetings, as well as in the national convention in Tennessee. She was the temperance delegate to the international Sunday-school convention in Pittsburgh, Pa. Her essays, addresses and reports show her to be a writer of no mean talent. She is well fitted for convention work. She has been an unfaltering worker in the temperance cause, earnestly seeking to bring all available forces against it. She is an advocate of woman suffrage, believing that woman's vote will go far towards removing the curse of intemperance. In the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she adheres to the principle of non-partisan, non-sectarian work. In a blue-ribbon club she has been an untiring worker and has spared neither time, effort nor means in .advancing its interests. In the humbler fields of labor she has been equally active and successful. For years she has been identified with the industrial school of Muncie, not only as an officer and worker in its stated meetings, but her presence is familiar in the homes of the poor, carrying sympathy, counsel and needed food and raiment. She had no children of her own, but her mother-love has been filled, for the four children of her deceased brother were received into her family, and she has discharged a mother's duty to them. Deeply sensitive, she has suffered keenly from various hostile attacks, but has not allowed criticism and persecution to turn her from the pith of duty.