Woman of the Century/Minerva Brace Norton

NORTON, Mrs. Minerva Brace, educator and author, born in Rochester, N. Y., 7th January, 1837. Her father, Harvey Brace, moved to Michigan and, when she was nine years old, to Janesville, Wis., where her youth was spent. Her education was received in the schools of Janesville, and under Miss Mary Mortimer, in Milwaukee College, and in Baraboo Seminary, where she was graduated in 1861. She spent the years of her early womanhood as a teacher in the schools where she had studied, her favorite lines of study and work being metaphysics, mathematics and history. She was assistant editor of the "Little Corporal" in Chicago, in 1866, and has since done considerable editorial work. She became the wife of Rev. Smith Norton, 18th April, 1867, and she has devoted most of the years of her married life to domestic and parish duties, varied by teaching, from 1871 to 1874, in the College for Women, Evanston, Ill., and as principal of the ladies' department of Ripon College, from 1874 to 1876. She traveled from 1886 to 1888 over England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In 1890 she was again abroad, traveling with her husband in England, France, Belgium and Holland. She has always done much missionary work in her own country. She was a secretary of the Woman's Board of Missions, Boston, Mass., in 1876 and 1877, and has since spent three years with her husband in home missionary work in Dakota. She has used her pen much in benevolent work and has published many articles on various topics during the last quarter century in periodicals, including the "Independent," "Christian Union," New York "Observer," New York "Evangelist," "Congregationalist," "Advance," "Sunday-School Times," "Journal of Education," "Education" and "Wide Awake." Her home is now in Beloit, Wis. She comes of Revolutionary and New England stock, the Braces, of Connecticut, and the Thompsons, of New Hampshire and Vermont. She is the author of "In and Around Berlin" (Chicago, 1889), and, jointly with her husband, of "Service in the King's Guards" (Boston, 1891). She now has a "Memoir of Miss Mary Mortimer" ready for the press.