Woman of the Century/Lillie Resler Keister

LILLIE RESLER KEISTER. KEISTER, Mrs. Lillie Resler, church worker and organizer, born in Mt. Pleasant, Pa., 15th May, 1851. She was the first of seven children born to Rev. and Mrs. J. B. Resler. Her father died in March, 1891. The father, with only a small salary, moved to Westerville, Ohio, to give his children the benefit of Otterbein University, as soon as Lillie was ready to enter, which was in 1866. She was graduated with the class of 1872. Being the oldest of the children, she early became a worker and planner in the home, and the useful home-girl became the school-girl, the school-teacher and the professor's wife, and broader fields for helpful planning opened before her in home, school and church. The early death, in j8So. of her husband, Rev. George Keister, professor of Hebrew in Union Biblical Seminary, Dayton, Ohio, opened the way to broader usefulness in church work. The church of her choice, the United Brethren in Christ, organized the Woman's Missionary Association in 1875, of which she was corresponding secretary for the first year. The work of the society grew and, in 1881, it called for the full time of one woman as its corresponding secretary and to establish and edit its organ, the "Woman's Evangel." Mrs. Keister was the available woman well qualified for the responsible position. She was unanimously-elected, and up to the present she has filled the place with success. She is a woman of marked executive ability. Besides the work on the paper, much of her time is given to public addresses. She is an excellent traveler. One year she traveled in association work over 12.000 miles in the United States. Twice she has been on short trips abroad, first in 1884, when the illness of her sister studying in Germany called her thither, and again in 1888, when she was one of two delegates sent by the Woman's Missionary Association to the World's Missionary Conference in London, England.