Woman of the Century/Sallie F. Chapin

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
2256923Woman of the Century — Sallie F. Chapin

CHAPIN, Mrs. Sallie F., author and temperance worker, born in Charleston, S. C. Her maternal ancestors were Huguenots, who came to the Colonies in 1685. Her two great-grandfathers, Vigneron and Tousager, were killed in the Revolutionary War. Her maiden name was Moore, and on her father's side the strain is English. Her father was a Methodist minister. His home in Charleston was burned, and he moved to the northern part of the State. Miss Moore was reared and educated in Cokesburg, Abbeville county. From early childhood she showed a fondness and talent for authorship. Miss Moore became Mrs. Chapin while she was still a girl, and her married life has been singularly happy. Her husband was one of the founders of the Young Men's Christian Association of Charleston, and one of its chief officers for years. Mrs. Chapin's father died in the pulpit at a union camp meeting, during the Civil War, after receiving a dispatch announcing the death of his son in a battle. Mrs. Chapin has written much, but she has published only one book, "Fitzhugh St. Clair, the Rebel Boy of South Carolina." During the war she was president of the Soldiers' Relief Society and worked day and night in the hospitals. The war broke their fortune, and her husband died after the conflict was ended. In the Woman's Christian Temperance Union she has been conspicuous for years, serving as State president, and she has done much to extend that order in the South, where conservatism hindered the work for a long time. In 1881 she attended the convention in Washington, D. C., where she made a brilliant reply to the address of welcome on behalf of the South, ending with a telling poem setting forth the intentions of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She believes in prohibition as the remedy for intemperance. She is a forcible and brilliant writer and conversationalist. In the Chicago Woman's Christian Temperance Union convention, in 1882, when the Prohibition Home Protection Party was formed, she was made a member of the executive committee, and by pen and voice she popularized that movement in the South. She was at one time president of the Woman's Press Association of the South.