Woman of the Century/Helen Louise Bullock

BULLOCK, Mrs. Helen Louise, musical educator and temperance reformer, born in Norwich, N. Y., 29th April, 1836. She is the youngest daughter of Joseph and Phebe Wood Chapel, from of New England origin. While lacking no interest in other branches, she early possessed a great desire study to music, and at eighteen years 01 age began to teach piano and vocal music. Some years later she studied the piano with S. B. Mills, and the guitar with Count Lepcowshi, both of New York City. With the exception of two years, she taught music from 1854 to 1886, and was for many years a member of the National Music Teachers' Association. In 1881 she published two books of musical studies. HELEN LOUISE BULLOCK. "Scales and Chords" and "Improved Musical Catechtsm," both of which have had a large sale. When William A. Pond, who purchased the copyrights, was arranging for their publication, he requested the author's name to be Riven as H. L. Mullock, in order that the foreign teachers might not know they were written by a woman, and therefore be prejudiced against or undervalue them. At twenty years of age Miss Chapel was married to Daniel S. Bullock, son of Rev. Seymour Bullock, of Prospect, N. Y. Two children were born to them, a daughter who died at two years of age, and a son who died at the age of twenty-seven. Soon after the death of her son, in 1884, she adopted a little motherless girl five years of age. who has proved a very great comfort. Mrs. Bullock's religious training was in the Presbyterian Church and Sunday-school, but, when converted, her ideas on baptism led her to unite with the Baptist Church, of which she is still a member. She has always been actively interested in the Sunday- school and missionary work. From 1871 to 1885 her home was in Fulton, N. Y.. but after a serious illness of pneumonia her physician recommended a milder climate, and the family moved to Elmira, N. Y. The following April, 1886, a Woman's Christian Temperance Union was re-organized in that city, and she was unanimously elected president. In September of that year Mrs. Mary T. Burt, president of the New York State Woman's Christian Temperance Union, organized Chemung county and urged Mrs. Bullock to go into the adjoining counties of Broome, Schuyler, Tioga and Yates and organize them, which she did. Taking up her public work with great timidity, she was pressed further and further into it, until she was forced to decide as to her future. It was very hard for her to give up her profession, but after much prayerful consideration she devoted the remainder of her life to the uplifting of humanity and the overthrow of the liquor traffic. In 1886 she was appointed State organizer of the New York Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in 1887 State superintendent of the department of narcotics, and in 1888 National lecturer on that subject. She was instrumental in securing the New York State law against selling cigarettes and tobacco to minors. In the interest of that department she wrote the leatlet "The Tobacco Toboggan." In 1889 she was appointed National organizer of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in that work has gone from Maine to California, traveling thirteen-thousand miles in one year. In that department she has achieved marked success. During the first five years she held over twelve-hundred meetings, organizing one-hundred-eighty new unions, and securing over ten-thousand members, active and honorary. She is deeply interested in prison and police matron work, and has been president, since its organization, of the Anchorage of Elmira, a rescue home for young girls. In 1892 she was appointed superintendent of the school of methods of the New York Slate Woman's Christian Temperance Union.