Women of the Week

Author Clara Doty Bates, educator Alice S. Foxworthy, nurse and philanthropist Clara Barton, author Susan Arnold Elston Wallace, and poet Florence Byrne Cartwright 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.

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, 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.

Clara Barton, a native of North Oxford, Massachusetts, is best known as the founder of the American Red Cross.  She was born on December 25, 1821, the youngest child of Stephen and Sara Stone Barton.  Clara grew up in North Oxford and lived near her cousin, Martha Elvira Stone.  When she was young, Clara taught in North Oxford and worked part-time in a cotton mill.

After teaching in North Oxford for many years, she moved to Clinton, New York, to enroll in the Clinton Liberal Institute.  She opened a school in Bordentown, New Jersey, and later relocated to Washington, D.C. to work at the United States Patent Office. During the Civil War, Clara tended to wounded soldiers after numerous battles. She became known as "The Angel of the Battlefield." When the war was over, she became very involved with The Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army in Washington, D.C.  In 1867, after meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Clara became involved in working for suffrage.

Later, while in Europe, Clara learned about the International Red Cross and served as part of the relief corps during the Franco-Prussian War.  Clara fought to establish the American Red Cross, and in March of 1881, she became the new organization's leader.  After many years of work with the American Red Cross, Clara resigned in 1904 and formed the National First Aid Association of America.

In addition to the activities noted above, over the course of her career, Clara was an author, a reformer, a public speaker, a philanthropist, and the Superintendent of a Repository Prison for Women.

Clara passed away on April 12, 1912, at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland, and was buried in North Cemetery in Oxford, Massachusetts.

Susan Arnold Elston Wallace was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, on December 25, 1830.  After going to school in Quaker Hill, New York, Susan returned to Crawfordsville.  She later married Lew Wallace and became a mother. 

Since her husband's career took the family to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Constantinople, Turkey, Susan had a great deal of material to write about.  She wrote several books, including The Land of the Pueblos, and contributed to The Atlantic Monthly, The Independent, Literature, The New York Tribune, and other periodicals.   In addition to his political work, Lew Wallace was an author who penned Ben-Hur.  Zerelda Gray Wallace, his stepmother, was a temperance reformer, woman suffragist, and author.  She is also in A Woman of the Century.

The Wallaces retired to Crawfordsville, Indiana.  Both wrote, and their home was "a literary and social center" (A Woman of the Century, 742).  Susan passed away on October 1, 1907.

Florence Byrne Cartwright was born in Galena, Illinois, on December 27, 1863. She resided in Grass Valley, California, where she became postmistress in December of 1887, following the death of postmaster father. 

After meeting her husband, Richard Cartwright, in June of 1890, she moved to Salem, Oregon.  Florence devoted her life to her literary work and made an earnest living traveling throughout the world. She wrote various works, including a sestina featured in the May 1884 volume of Harper's Magazine.  Florence's preferred and favorite style of poetry was sonnets.

Florence passed away on September 22, 1944, and is buried in Mount Crest Abbey Mausoleum in Salem, Oregon.