Woman of the Century/Martha Eleanor Loftin Wilson

WILSON, Mrs. Martha Eleanor Loftin, missionary worker, born in Clarke county, Ala., 18th January, 1834. She was educated in the Dayton Masonic Institute, in that State. She became MARTHA ELEANOR LOFTIN WILSON. the wife, 14th November, 1850. of John Stainback Wilson, M.D. During the Civil War she had a varied experience in the hospitals of Richmond, Va., with her husband, who was a surgeon. At that time she wrote a little book, " Hospital Scenes and Incidents of the War," which was in the hands of the publishers, with the provision that the proceeds should go to the sick and wounded. The manuscript was burned in the fall of Columbia, S. C. A part of the original manuscript was deposited in the corner-stone of the Confederate Home, in Atlanta, Ga. She is the mother of five sons and one daughter. She has be< n a member of the Baptist denomination from early childhood, having been baptized in 1845. She has always been connected with the benevolent institutions of the vicinity in which she lived. She accepted as her life-work the duties of corresponding secretary of the central committee of the Woman's Baptist Missionary Union of Georgia. The central committee was organized by the home and foreign boards of the Southern Baptist Convention, 19th November. 1878, in Atlanta, with Mrs. Stainback Wilson as president. Besides filling the position of corresponding secretary, she is the Georgia editor of the "Baptist Basket," a missionary journal published in Louisville, Ky. She was for some time president of the Southside Woman's Christian Temperance Union and of the Woman's Christian Association of Atlanta, both of which she aided in organizing, At the same time she taught an infant class of sixty to seventy-five in her church Sabbath-school. Her entire time is given to works of benevolence. Her husband died on 2nd August, 1892. Her two-fold work goes on without interruption.