Woman of the Century/Laura Jacinta Rittenhouse

RITTENHOUSE, Mrs. Laura Jacinta, temperance worker, author and poet, Born in a pleasant home on the forest- crowned hills in Pulaski county, Ill., near the Ohio river, 30th April, LAURA JACINTA RITTENHOUSE. 1841. She is a daughter of Dr. Daniel Arter. From her parents she inherited her tastes and talent for literature. Her education was received in the schools of the sparsely settled country, but she supplemented her deficient schooling by earnest self-culture and wide reading. She became the wife, on 31st December, 1863, of Wood Rittenhouse, a prominent business man and honored citizen of Cairo, Ill. Their family numbers one daughter and four sons. The daughter is a promising writer, who recently won £1,000 for an original story, and who is also president of the Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Cairo. Of the sons, the oldest is an electrician, the second a physician, the third a business man, the fourth a high-school boy, and all are energetic and industrious, total abstainers and free from the use of tobacco or narcotics of any kind. After her marriage, for many years, Mrs. Rittenhouse was able to spare but little time for literary work, but during the past three or four years she has been a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers. Her best work is done in her short stories. She is a skillful maker of plots, and all her stories are carefully wrought out to their logical ending. Her warmest interest has for years been given to the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and for that body and its great cause she has toiled and written unceasingly. She was the first president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Cairo, serving in that office for many years. She was elected district president of that organization for four consecutive years, and for the past five years she has served as district treasurer. She was secretary of the Social Science Association in Cairo so long as it was in existence. She served as secretary of the Centennial Association in Cairo, and also as secretary of the Cairo Protestant Orphan Asylum, besides acting as manager of the asylum for many years. She served a year as secretary of the Cairo Women's Library Club. For three years she was president of the Presbyterian Woman's Aid Society in Cairo. She was one of the vice-presidents of the Red Cross Society in Cairo. Her life is a busy one, and her latest work in literary fields gives promise of valuable results.