Woman of the Century/Martha M. Frazier

FRAZIER, Mrs. Martha M., educator and temperance worker, born near Springfield, Mass., 12th December, 1826. Her father's name was Albert Charlee, and her mother's maiden name was MARTHA M. FRAZIER. Chloe Melinda Hyde. Her only memory of her mother was of l>eing held to look at her as she lay in her cortin. Her father, being poor, took his young family west. They stopped in Washtenaw county. Mich., and he was taken ill, as were the children also, of whom one died. Being discouraged, he gave his children to kind-hearted neighbors and disappeared. Martha was adopted into the family of John and Lois Thompson, and was always known by that name. When in her eighth year, the family moved to Illinois, twenty-five miles west of Chicago, a country then nearly a wilderness. She had the same privileges as the re>t of the family, but a few terms in a select school in Warren ville rounded out her educational career, and that was gained on promising the good man of the house that she would wear her home manufactured woolen dress, which promise she kept. Afterward, in teaching district school, she received in compensation one dollar per week and hoarded around, then one dollar and fifty cents, and later two dollars and board herself, for which extravagance the board were censured. When nineteen years of age, while visiting a sister residing in Waukesha county, Wis., she became acquainted with a young farmer. W. M. Frazier, whose wife she afterward became. She is an ardent lover of the church of her choice, and is an active sympathizer and helper in all modern reforms. She is an uncompromising advocate of prohibition, total abstinence and equal priv ilege and equal purity for men and women. She is a member of the school board and superintendent of scientific temperance instruction, and is president of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and also president of the home library association in Mukwonago, Wis.