Woman of the Century/Harriet Calista Clark McCabe

McCABE, Mrs. Harriet Calista Clark, philanthropist, born in Sidney Plains, Delaware county, N. Y. Her parents were devout members of the Methodist Church. Calista was reared on a farm. Until the age of twelve she was educated either in the district school or by private governess. She became a fluent French scholar before she was ten years of age, and delighted in the scientific study ot plants. When she was twelve years of age, her parents removed to Elmira, N.Y., where she passed several years in school. She taught seven years in Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport, Pa., at the end of which time she became the wife of L. D. McCabe, professor of mathematics and afterwards of philosophy in the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, O. Her conversion occurred at the age of twenty. She has been engaged in the various women's societies in the church since that time. In April, 1874, she wrote the constitution of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Ohio, which was the first union organized. That constitution was accepted by the organizing committee, which represented the State and which proposed the name, "Woman's Christian Temperance Union." The State convention met in June in Springfield, Ohio, and ratified the convention and accepted the name. The convention was held in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Springfield, but the William Street HARRIET CALISTA CLARK McCABE. Methodist Episcopal Church, Delaware, Ohio, claims the honor of having the organizing work done and the name of the great organization given within its walls. The National Union, organized in the fall following in Cleveland, Ohio, accepted the constitution of the Ohio union, with the requisite modifications. It also accepted the name which it now bears. After serving the Ohio union for five years, she withdrew to enjoy her home and respite from public assemblies, to which she is not inclined. After some time she yielded to earnest persuasion to aid in the National Woman's Indian Association, and then in the Woman's Home Missionary Society of her own church. She now edits "Woman's Home Missions," the official organ of that society, is one of its vice-presidents, and also secretary of its Indian bureau.