Woman of the Century/Delia L. Weatherby

WEATHERBY, Mrs. Delia L., temperance reformer and author, born in Copely, Ohio, 7th DELIA L. WEATHERBY. June, 1843. Her father. Col. John C. Stearns, was a stanch, old-time abolitionist and temperance worker. She received an academic education and afterward taught school in her native town. In 1868 she became the wife of Rev. S. S- Weatherby, then a member of the North Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1870 they removed to Baldwin, Kans., where for nine years he served as professor of languages in Baker University. She was at one time called to the chair of mathematics in that university, but declined. In 1880 Mr. Weatherby entered the ministry again, and for seven years she shared with her husband the toils and duties of an itinerant life, until failing health compelled him to retire from active work, and she now lives in their country home, near LeRoy, Kans. Inheriting the same disposition which made her father an abolitionist, she early became an active worker in the order of Good Templars. She could endure no compromise with intemperance, and wherever she has lived she has been distinguished as an advanced thinker and a pronounced prohibitionist. She was a candidate on the prohibition ticket in 1886 for county superintendent of public instruction in Coffey county. She was elected a lay delegate to the quadrennial meeting of the South Kansas Lay Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1888. In 1890 she was placed in nomination for the office of State superintendent of public instruction on the prohibition ticket. She has always taken a great interest in the cause of education. In 1890 she was unanimously elected clerk of the school board in her home district. She was an alternate delegate from the fourth congressional district of Kansas to the National Prohibition Convention in 1892, and also secured, the same year, for the second time by the same party, the nomination for the office of superintendent of public instruction in her own county. She belongs to the white ribbon army and has been the president of the Coffey County Woman's Christian Temperance Union for several years. She is superintendent of the press department of the Kansas Woman's Christian Temperance Union and State reporter for the "Union Signal." She is the mother of three children. Notwithstanding her household duties pressing for attention, she has for four years edited a temperance department in one of the country papers, and she frequently contributes to the press articles of prose and poetry, chiefly on the subject of temperance reformation.