Woman of the Century/Marion Howard Dunham

MARION HOWARD DUNHAM. DUNHAM, Mrs. Marion Howard, born in Geauga county. Ohio, 6th December, 1842, passed the first part of her life upon a farm. She early decided to be a teacher, beginning her first district school at the age of fifteen, and taught in the public schools of Chicago. III., from 1866 to 1873. In July. 1873. she became the wife of C. A. Dunham, an architect, of Burlington. Iowa, where they now live. In 1877 she entered upon temperance work with the inauguration of the red-ribbon movement, but. believing in more permanent methods, she was the prime mover in the organization of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and has ever since been an active worker in that society. In 1883 she was elected State superintendent of the department of scientific temperance, and held the office four years, lecturing to institutes and general audiences on that subject much of the time. She procured the Iowa State law on that subject in February, 1886. When the Iowa State Temperance Union began to display its opposition to the National Union, she was rather slow to declare her position, which was always fully with the National, but she was soon forced to declare herself, and came to be considered rather a leader on the side of the minority. When the majority in the State Union seceded from the National Union, 16th October, 1890, she was elected resident of those who remained auxiliary to that body. At the State convention in 1891 she was re-elected. She has spent a large part of her time in the field. She has always been a radical equal suffragist, and has spoken and written much on that subject. She is a Christian socialist, deeply interested in all reforms that promise to better the social system and the conditions of life for the multitudes,