Woman of the Century/Lois E. Trott

TROTT, Mrs. Lois E., educator and philanthropist, was born near Oswego, N. Y. Her maiden name was Andrews. Her father was a pioneer farmer living remote from schools. At the age of three years Lois was sent to a school two miles distant. At fifteen years of age she became a teacher and earned a reputation for introducing new plans and methods of teaching. She was a pupil in the State Normal School of Albany in 1851, and left to engage again in teaching in Oswego. In 1857 Rev. L. M. Pease, of the Five Points House of Industry, visited Oswego and lectured on the condition of the poor in New York City. His recitals LOIS E. TROTT. of the ignorance and sufferings of the poor children so affected Miss Andrews that she immediately volunteered to leave her work in Oswego and give her services to the instruction of the little children. Her offer was accepted, and she became principal of the school in the Five Points House of Industry. Again she became a student and was graduated with the New York City teachers. After some years of usefulness in her sphere of home missionary work, she became the wife of Eli Trott, who was employed in the same field. The darkness had become less dense, when Mr. and Mrs. Trott were called to labor in the interests of the Children's Aid Society. A lodging-house was to be opened for homeless girls, the first of the kind in America, and Mrs. Trott, without remuneration, took charge of the work From one-thousand to one-thousand-two-hundred passed through the Home annually, and many of those girls are now filling places of trust and usefulness. Mrs. Trott left that work in 1872, that she might devote more time to her home and the education of her son and daughter. She retired to private life in Mt. Vernon, near New York City. Her husband still remains locating agent of the Children's Aid Society, finding homes for many thousands of poor children with the farmers of the West. In her early childhood the Washingtonian temperance movement originated, and her mother impressed its lessons on her heart. When the order of Daughters of Temperance was formed, she united with the organization and filled all of its honorary offices. As a child she was anxious to be a missionary in foreign lands. She became a church member when very young and has always been a Christian. When the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized, she at once entered the work. Having^ her summer home in Chautauqua, of which university she is now an alumnus, she became acquainted with many of the leaders in that movement. She has attended nearly all of its national conventions. She is deeply interested in all Chautauqua movements, and her last venture is a reading class for the domestics of her village. This is the largest and most important field which she has ever entered. It is exclusively for the kitchen-girl. In her home in Mt. Vernon she has been for many years president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and has been largely instrumental in erecting a building as headquarters of the Union, named Willard Hall in honor of the national president.