Woman of the Century/Sarah Stoddard Eddy

EDDY, Mrs. Sarah Stoddard, reformer, born in Hudson, N. Y., 24th February, 1831. Her grandfather, Ashbel Stoddard, was among the first settlers of Hudson, who went from Nantucket and Providence, R. I., and were mostly of Quaker descent. He came of a severely orthodox family. Congregational ministers were numerous on both his lather's and on his mother's side, but he had become more liberal. He established a printing office, book-store and bindery in the central part of the new city and. on 7th April. 1785. issued the first number of the Hudson " Weekly Gazette. " That was the pioneer newspaper of the Hudson valley and the oldest in the State In 1824 he sold that political newspaper and published the "Rural Repository," a literary weekly which had a wide circulation. To the editing of that paper and to the printing establishment the father of Mrs. Eddy, William Bowles Stoddard, an only son, succeeded. Familiarity bred a reverence for books with a great love for them and a desire for their constant companionship The mother of Mrs. Eddy was of a Holland Dutch family. She had literary taste and skill Mrs. Eddy was educated in private schools SARAH STODDARD EDDY. in Hudson and in Clinton, N. Y. Her preference was for literary studies, the languages and composition. In March, 1852, she became the wife of Rev. Richard Eddy, a Universalist clergyman of Rome, N. Y. After living in Rome two years, she removed to Buffalo, N. Y., then to Philadelphia, Pa., and then to Canton, N. Y., where she lived until the beginning of the Civil War. Mr. Eddy was appointed chaplain of the 60th New York State Volunteers and, having gone to the front with his regiment, Mrs. Eddy with her children went to live in Baltimore, Md., early in January, 1862, that her husband might more frequently see his family, and that she might find some way to be of service. She assisted in forming the aid associations in Baltimore and spent her days in the camps and the hospitals near the city. At the close of the war her husband became pastor of the First Universalist Church in Philadelphia, and. after living in that city for five years, she lived in Eranklin, Gloucester, College Hill, Brookline and Melrose, Mass., and is now a resident of Boston. Mrs. Eddy is a member of the New England Women's Club, of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, of the Woman Suffrage Association and of several purely literary clubs. She has organized several clubs in towns where she has lived, and presided over them for a time, and encourages women everywhere to band themselves together for study and mutual help, in literary matters she has done only fugitive work. She has three sons and two daughters, who have been educated to occupy honorable positions in life.