Woman of the Century/Aurilla Furber

FURBER, Miss Aurilla, poet, born in Cottage Grove, Minn., 19th October, 1847. She is a daughter of Warren Furber, who was well-known AURELIA FURBER. among the pioneers and founders of that State. He served as a member of the legislature of Minnesota Territory, also of several off the early State legislatures. On her mother's side Miss Furber is descended from the Minklers and Showennans of eastern New York, who were of unmixed Holland Dutch blood, although the families had lived in the United States for several generations. The Furber Mrain in her blood is English. Her great-grandfather. General Richard Furber. of New Hampshire, served in the Revolutionary War, and her grand-father, Major Pierce P. Furber, in the war of 1812. Nearly all her life has been passed in a farming community. She received her education in a log school-house, and after leaving school she engaged in teaching. Severe illness incapacitated her for school-room work, and she has been forced to play the part of a looker-on in the world's battles. Her seclusion developed the strongly poetical bent of her mind, and for years she has written much in verse. Her poems reflect her life. Although forced from the common highway, she has found a way of her own, and her verse shows that she has not lost spirit, or courage, or thought in her enforced inactivity, tier work is finished in a technical sense, and telling in a poetical sense. None of her school-day poems are in print. It is even doubtful that she wrote much in her youth, so that her present work comes to her readers in a finished dress, as the result of matured thought. Miss Furber is not, in a broad sense of the term, a scholar. Her limited opportunities for schooling in youth and her continued ill-health in late years made it impossible for her to become a liberally educated woman, but she is a thinker, and her life has not been without its rich compensation. Since 1885 she has made her home in St. Paul. Minn. Selections from her poems have been made for the "Magazine of Poetry" and "Women in Sacred Song." Her poem "Together" has been set to music by Richard Statu. She has also written prose articles for the "Pioneer Press," "Church Work" and other papers, and was one of the contributing editors of the "Woman's Record." at one time the organ of the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union of St. Paul. She has been identified with Woman's Christian Temperance Work for years as an officer in local, county and district organizations.