Women of the Week

Charity Rusk Craig, National President of the Woman's Relief Corps, Clara Doty Bates, an author, and Alice S. Foxworthy, an educator, are this week's Women of the Week   

• To learn about them by viewing their items, please click on their images.  

• To read their biographical sketches in A Woman of the Century, please click on the highlighted page numbers to the left of their images or symbols.

Charity Rusk Craig was born in Portersville, Ohio, on December 20, 1849, the eldest of three children of Jeremiah M. Rusk and Mary Elizabeth Martin.  Her parents moved to Wisconsin with their family when Charity was three years old, and she lost her mother when she was five years old.  Her father remarried soon after, and Charity eventually had four additional siblings.  After attending a Catholic school for one year, the teenage Charity attended private school before graduating from The University of Wisconsin.

She was passionate about gaining knowledge and was a lifelong learner.  As Charity's 1893  A Woman of the Century profile noted, "she has had systematic studies every year since she left school." When her father was elected as a Republican Congressman in 1870, Charity and her family moved to Washington, D.C., and she continued her studies there.

Charity married Elmer Horace Craig, who shared her love of the Classics, in 1875.  Between 1876 and 1890, they became the parents of six children.   

While living in Viroqua, Wisconsin, Charity participated in philanthropic and women's activities. She became a leader of the regional, then state, and finally national chapters of the Woman's Relief Corps. Charity was part of the Executive Board National Council by 1887, was elected President the next September, and served in that capacity for a year. Two of her many colleagues were Kate Brownlee Sherwood and Annie Turner Wittenmyer. 

During the mid-1890s, Charity was instrumental in fundraising for the National Relief Corps Home in Madison, Wisconsin.  As The National Tribune noted on May 10, 1894, in an article that detailed her efforts,"Past National President Charity Rusk Craig, a woman of practical sense and ready resources, has inaugurated a movement to put the National Relief Corps Home on solid footing, and give it an assured and steady income." 

In addition to her work for the National Relief Corps Home, Charity served on the Woman's Auxiliary Board for the Wisconsin semi-centennial in April of 1896.

Later that year, due to Elmer's health issues, the family left Wisconsin and moved to the exquisite Queen Anne home they had built in Asheville, North Carolina.  After she was widowed in 1898,  Charity continued to be active with the Woman's Relief Corps. Charity sold her home in 1913 and moved to nearby Skyland, North Carolina, where she passed away on November 11 of that year. She was buried in Viroqua Cemetery in Viroqua, Wisconsin near her husband and two of her children.

Clara Doty Bates was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on December 22, 1838.  A writer from an early age, Clara attended private schools.  She married Morgan Bates, a newspaperman, in 1876 and the couple moved to Chicago, Illinois.

A well-known writer of juvenile literature, Clara published several books under the imprint of Boston's D. Lothrop & Company.  From its beginnings in 1875, she was a frequent contributor to Wide Awake, a children's periodical that was published by that firm. Her sister, Charlotte Doty Finley, was the illustrator for Clara's poem "Silver Locks and the Bears" in the December 1875 volume. Clara's poems also appeared in Babyland,Harper's Young People, St. Nicholas, and Youth's Companion, and Farm, Field, and Fireside.

In addition to publishing her own work and contributing to periodicals, Clara contributed "LIT-TLE TO-TOTE" to an edited volume, Baby World: Stories, Rhymes, and Pictures for Little Folks (Century, 1884).

While living in Chicago, Clara was vice-president of the Fortnightly women's literary club.  She also was very involved with the Woman's Branch of the World's Congress Auxiliary. During the early 1890s, Clara was a contributor to A Woman of the Century.  She was very involved with the Columbian Exposition and arranged the children's library with Alice L. Williams.  In July of 1893, she spoke at the Educational Congress in Chicago. 

She passed away in Chicago on October 14, 1895, at age fifty-six, and was buried in Ann Arbor's Forest Hills Cemetery. Clara's friend Elia W. Peattie wrote a lengthy obituary  that was published in The Omaha Nebraska-Herald and reprinted in The Hartford Herald (Hartford, KY) on February 12, 1896.  Elia certainly captured Clara's essence in this beautiful tribute.

Educator and missionary Alice S. Foxworthy was born in Mount Carmel, Kentucky, on December 22, 1852.

Alice attended Stanford Academy in Stanford, Kentucky, and later taught there.  She also taught at Catlettsburg High School (Kentucky), East Kentucky Normal School, and Tennessee Female College, where she was presiding teacher.   

In 1884, Alice became principal of the Nashville College of Young Ladies, a Methodist institution led by Rev. George W. G. Price, and served in this capacity for many years.  During this time, she also pursued graduate work at the Peabody Normal School of Nashville, graduating in 1890.  

She became President of Martin College in Pulaski, Tennessee, in early 1894.  The next year, Alice married J.B. Glascock in Mount Carmel, Kentucky.  He passed away just two months later, leaving the new bride a widow.  Within two years, she became Principal of Boscobel College for Young Ladies, a Baptist women's college in Nashville.  By 1909, Alice was living in Flemingsburg, Kentucky, and was involved with activities at Chevy Chase College.  Later that year, Alice resided in Washington, D.C.

Alice was very involved with religious activities, serving as a sabbath school teacher and a missionary worker.

She passed away in Mount Carmel, Kentucky, on April 29, 1923.