Woman of the Century/Sarah Hearst Black

BLACK, Mrs. Sarah Hearst, temperance reformer, born on a farm near Savannah. Ashland county, Ohio, 4th May. 1846. Her father's family removed from Pennsylvania to that farm when he was a boy of fourteen years, and Mrs. Black there grew to womanhood. Her ancestors were Scotch-Irish people, all of them members of the Presbyterian Church. Her mother's maiden name was Townsley. SARAH HEARST BLACK. Miss Hearst first attended school in a typical red school-house situated on a corner of her father's farm. At thirteen years of age she began to attend school in Savannah Academy, where she completed a regular course of study. She made a public profession of religion in her fifteenth year and soon after became a teacher in the Sabbath-school, and has continued in that work ever since. After completing her course of study, she entered the ranks as a teacher, and that was her employment for more than ten years. In 1878 she was married to Rev. J. P. Black, a minister of the Presbyterian Church, and went with him to his field of labor in Pennsylvania. They removed to Kansas in 1880, and since that time she has borne the labor and self-denial incident to the life of a home missionary's wife in Kansas, Nebraska and now in Idaho. She became actively engaged in Woman's Christian Temperance Union work in 1885. in Nebraska, and was elected president of the fifth district of that State for two years in succession. After her removal to Idaho she was chosen president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in that State. Her home is in Nampa.