NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE PINKHAM, WENONA O. [*P*] Boston, Mass. March 31, 1918. Dear Miss Osgood: I am sorry that the issue of my attitude toward what is loosely termed "pacifism" has come up in connection with my candidacy for the position of first vice-president of the State Suffrage Association. Had I known sooner that the issue would arise, I should not have allowed my name to stand. Now, however, the matter has gone so far that I do not see how I can withdraw without seeming to admit, - as I do not for one moment, - that I am less loyal or patriotic than those who have raised the question. It seems to me, also, that by withdrawing I should be virtually admitting that the Boston Association has been blameworthy in keeping me in my present position for the past year. I am not different now from what I was a year ago. I am writing this letter because I want you to be perfectly clear as to my position. You may show it to others who may inquire what my position is, if you wish to do so. I am a native American citizen and yield to none in loyalty to my country. The principle of democracy I regard as of supreme importance, and I seek to be guided by that principle in my effort to serve my country. I work for woman suffrage in order that our government may be more fully a democracy. I desire with all my heart both to make the world safe for democracy and to guard and extend such measure of democracy as exists in our country. Democracy requires judgment and intelligence in the individual citizens, with freedom of opinion and discussion. When that freedom is cut off, democracy is slain. In the present time of public excitement, I think one of the most important services any citizen can render is to insist on the maintenance of these indispensable safeguards of democracy and wise public policy. In particular the work of the suffrage association is such as to require a broad and tolerant spirit allowing wide difference of opinion as to the best way in which individuals may serve their country. We agree in desiring the franchise, in order that we may vote, not all of us always in the same way, but each of us according to her best judgment. We impose no religious tests; we disregard party lines. Unless we have reason for doubting the good citizenship of our workers, associates, and officers, we should take it for granted. As there are various ways in which men equally sincere may worship God, so there are various ways in which men equally patriotic may serve their country. That I approve of the noble war aims avowed by President Wilson should go without saying. For the attainment of those aims, I desire to work with all my intelligence and energy. The fact that my husband, a Christian minister, believes that war is incompatible with Christianity, and that the Sermon on the Mount applies ot nations as to individuals, I regard as irrelevant to the question of my fitness for the office for which I am asked to be a candidate. In these times of popular excitement, I should prefer not to be labeled a "pacifist" or "patriot", "traitor" or "loyalist", inasmuch as these terms derive their significance entirely from the state of mind of the person who employs them. There are public officials to whom facts that indicate treasonable activities or intentions should be reported. But private citizens have no right to impose tests of "loyalty", as they conceive loyalty, upon their fellow- citizens, as those anti-suffragists do who say that work for woman suffrage is [second page] 2 virtually pro-German and treasonable. I am reliably informed that prominent officers of organizations doing war work have been investigated by the government. I have heard of no objection to me from that source. Less than two weeks ago Major O'Keefe of the Boston Public Safety Committee asked me to serve as a member of a committee of fifteen to direct all the war work of women's organizations in Boston. I asked Mrs. Coe be given the position, not because I should not have been glad to serve, but because Mrs. Coe is the chairman of our War Service Committee. I have, also, been appointed to other important committees by the Boston Public Safety Committee. The work of the Boston Suffrage Association the past year should be a better answer than any words of mine to any question as to how I should act as first vice-president of the association of which I am now second vice-president. As to attacks of the anti-suffragists, I call attention to the fact that they have thus far refrained almost entirely; perhaps because they are wise enough to see that such criticism might hurt them more than us. Last spring when my husband resigned his pastorate, a letter appeared in the press, signed, I think, by Mrs. Robinson, attacking the loyalty of the whole suffrage movement, citing me as one more example to add to that of Dr. Shaw, Mrs. Catt and others. Miss Blackwell and Mrs. Page wrote effective answers, and nothing has appeared since in which my name has been mentioned. It may be that so much publicity will be given to the issue now that the suffrage cause will be hurt. If so, I think the responsibility must rest upon those who make the issue. I believe my withdrawal now, as a virtual admission of guilt of which I am not conscious, would be even more damaging, since I have been kept in an important position by the Boston Association and by the State Association for almost a whole year since war was declared and since my husband's position became well known. I appreciate greatly the confidence you and others have shown in me. I shall not disappoint you. Sincerely yours. Wenona O. Pinkham Mrs. Pinkham's explanation Mrs. Pinkham (second page) Brookline, Mass. Dec 30, 1920. Dear Miss Blackwell, Louisa and I want to thank you for the Christmas cards, and Mr. Pinkham, too, for his "Red" one. You were very good to remember us when you have so many. We miss seeing you at the office as much as we used to. It is always like a benediction to have you come. With loving wishes for the New Year, Wenona Pinkham BOSTON LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS FOUNDED 1901 BY PAULINE AGASSIZ SHAW THE FIRST ESSENTIAL OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP IS INTEREST: THE SECOND, KNOWLEDGE: THE THIRD, CONSECRATION. 552-554 LITTLE BUILDING BOSTON 11, MASS. TELEPHONE, BEACH 6310-6311 COUNSELOR MISS ALICE STONE BLACKWELL HONORARY PRESIDENT MRS. ROBERT GOULD SHAW PRESIDENT MRS. J. MALCOLM FORBES CLERK MISS FLORENCE H. LUSCOMB TREASURER MRS. GRACE E. BURNHAM EXECUTIVE SECRETARY MRS. WENONA OSBORNE PINKHAM Aug. 29, 1921. My dear Miss Blackwell. Your note with Mrs. Boyer's letter enclosed came this morning. She sent a good one to us all here at the office, too, but we were glad to read yours as well. The gift from Mr. White is wonderful and we can't appreciate enough your willingness to ask him again. We must do some hard work this fall in the way of raising money. Thank you, too, for telling me. It made my last days at Islesboro quite a little more joyous. We reached home Saturday morning and I came into the office yesterday morning. Edna and Florence are both away until after Labor Day, so Mrs. Gorham and I are doing things. I am spending a little time going thro files and getting my material in order for the year. After Labor Day there will be a great deal to do all sorts of committee meetings, registration, the municipal election, etc I am so glad Mrs. Boyer is having this splendid trip. She knows how to get the most out of it. It seems lonely without her though and you will miss her when you come back. I hope you are going to stay in Chilmark as long as possible and come back quite strong and rested. It is so wonderful to have your wisdom [to] guide us in the things we do now. We sometimes forget to tell you how much we value your opinion but never doubt that we do, will you? Affectionately and sincerely yours, Wenona Osborne Pinkham W.O. Pinkham [*Pinkham*] MASSACHUSETTS CIVIC LEAGUE 3 JOY STREET, BOSTON TELEPHONE, HAYMARKET 2102 JOSEPH LEE, PRESIDENT HERBERT C. PARSONS, VICE-PRESIDENT NATHAN D. BILL, VICE-PRESIDENT DR. KENDALL EMERSON, VICE-PRESIDENT FRANK L. BOYDEN, VICE-PRESIDENT ROBERT W. KNOWLES, TREASURER JEFFREY R. BRACKETT CHAIRMAN OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MRS. WENONA OSBORNE PINKHAM SECRETARY FLORENCE H. LUSCOMB ASSOCIATE SECRETARY July 28, 1927. THE CHEVROLET SIGN A VICTORY FOR LOVERS OF BEAUTY AND "THE ETERNAL FITNESS OF THINGS" You have doubtless read in the newspapers that the Department of Public Works has refused to renew the permit for the Chevrolet Sign on the roof of the building at 6 Beacon Street. You, along with 5000 other signers of our petition, had a part in bringing about this result. The law allows the company 90 days in which to remove the sign. It should, therefore, come down by October 31st. Because of the interest you have shown in this matter, we venture to send you a circular concerning the work of the Massachusetts Civic League which took a leading park in this campaign. We mean to continue our efforts to get unsightly billboards which mar scenic beauty or endanger public safety removed from all over the state. None of these erected, however, prior to July 1926 can be touched until the cases now pending before the Supreme Judicial Court have been decided. You will note from the circular other civic activities in which the League is engaged. Our effectiveness in all these undertakings is in direct proportion to the size of our membership. Will you not help the League by giving to it the added strength of your membership and at the same time give to yourself the satisfaction of sharing in its effects for the public good? The membership blank on the circular is made detachable for your convenience. Sincerely yours, Wenona Osborne Pinkham Secretary. WOP:EH encls. Massachusetts Civic League Incorporated Organized 1898 Motto: Don't tie on the flowers; water the plant. 3 Joy Street Boston, Massachusetts OFFICERS President...........................................................................JOSEPH LEE Vice-President.................................................................HERBERT C. PARSONS Vice-President................................................................. NATHAN D. BILL Vice-President.................................................................DR. KENDALL EMERSON Vice-President................................................................ FRANK L. BOYDEN Treasurer............................................................................ROBERT W. KNOWLES Secretary............................................................................MRS. WENONA OSBORNE PINKHAM Librarian............................................................................ MRS. JOHN KOREN EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Jeffrey R. Brackett, Chairman Joseph Lee Robert W. Knowles Francis Bardwell Cornelius A. Parker Mrs. Leslie B. Cutler Herbert C. Parsons Rev. Elmer S. Forbes Leonard Wheeler, Jr. Mrs. George Whiting COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN Bill Board.....................................................................................Judge ROBERT WALCOTT Civil Service. .................................................................................JAMES PHINNEY MUNROE Education........................................................................................MISS SUSAN LEE Kindergarten...................................................................................Mrs. GEORGE WHITING Housing.............................................................................................PHILIP NICHOLS Legislation.........................................................................................JOSEPH LEE Membership.......................................................................................LEONARD WHEELER, JR. Prison Problems............................................................................... GEORGE H. ELLIS Town Protective................................................................................MRS. ELIZABETH H. TILTON Town Room.........................................................................................MRS. WILLIAM D. MILLER July, 1927. THE TOWN ROOM The Town Room is the library of the League. It contains the most significant books needed as tools by social and civic workers. One table is devoted to information on current legislation. Frequent conferences are held and suggestions for programs and speakers are given. The room is intended to serve as a home centre for persons all over the state who believe in a deeper and more effective citizenship. The library is open to the public from nine to five every day, except Sundays, holidays and Saturday afternoons from June to September. Those living at a distance may have books sent by mail. Special summer privileges are granted. I have been asked to say why I joined with others in organizing the Civic League. HEre is a partial answer. Public opinion unmarshalled is ineffective in action. Ten organized and armed men can hold up one thousand citizens bent on their own business. In thus organizing and concentrating public opinion for a better Commonwealth, the Civic League has more than justified itself. - BISHOP LAWRENCE. What the Massachusetts Civic League does is to focus on particular legislative measures the moral purpose which exists throughout the whole community. The League serves as a burning glass to bring this moral purpose to a focus. It concentrates all the little pieces of time that the different public-spirited citizens can give and makes them effective. -JOSEPH LEE. The Civic League is unique among organizations concerning themselves with legislation in that it is bound to no interest. It does not even exist for any one good cause. It undertakes to be the watchman, keeping outlook upon the field of public welfare, to represent the civic interest of its state-wide membership, to promote legislation that will keep Massachusetts in leadership, to discover and oppose what is hurtful. -HERBERT C. PARSONS. HOW TO JOIN THE LEAGUE Any person may become a member on payment of an annual fee of one dollar, which includes subscription to The Lens, to all other publications of the League and the privilege of taking books from the Town Room. The League, however, cannot be maintained unless many members pay more than the minimum fee. Your support expressed by your membership will give the League the necessary momentum to carry out its program. Checks should be made payable to the Massachusetts Civic League, and sent to 3 Joy St., Boston. LEGISLATIVE RECORD Alone or in cooperation with others the league has successfully promoted the following legislation: Schools Physical training (a five-year fight), nurses, dental clinics, medical inspection and tests of sight and hearing in the public schools. Health certification of children going to work. Extended use of school buildings. Licensing of newsboys of school age by school committees. Forbidding employment of illiterates under 16. Continuation schools. Vocational education. Playgrounds Ten-year demonstration, 1897-1907, of the value of playgrounds in Boston resulting in legislative provision for an annual appropriation by the Boston School Committee to carry on play and physical education. State playground law. Sunday baseball and Sunday play laws. Defeat of bill to commercialize Sunday sports. Health Suppression of the sale of cocaine and fake medical advertising. Labeling of narcotics in patent medicines. Placing factory inspection under the State Board of Health. Care of undernourished school children in Health Camps. The League looks over all the bills that come before the Legislature, refers the more important ones dealing with social matters to appropriate agencies, itself supports or opposes those that seem most to merit such treatment and usually introduces a few important ones. Administration of laws already obtained is carefully watched. It maintains the Town Room, a social library. PRESENT PROGRAM Billboards To co-operate with the Massachusetts Billboard Law Defense Committee and the National Committee for the Restriction of Outdoor Advertising. Civil Service To extend and improve the Civil Service. Education To extend school opportunities and requirements in harmony with the Massachusetts School Superintendents' recommendations. To aid in the establishment of more public kindergartens. To promote the Visiting Teacher Movement. To follow up the Health Certification of Working Children under the new form adopted in 1926. To check up on the administration of the Physical Examination of School Children and the Physical Training Law. To remove certain ambiguities in the Playground Law. Housing and Town Planning To assist the Massachusetts Federation of Planning Boards in protecting and extending building and zoning regulations. Prison Problems To assist the Department of Correction in its program for the prevention of crime and in all forward-looking measures for the treatment of crime. To work for more specialized and uniform treatment of juvenile delinquents throughout the state. Roadhouses and Night Clubs To continue the campaign of education for the enforcement of the Night Club and Roadhouse Law and to build up Town Protective Committees for this purpose and other allied needs. MEMBERSHIP BLANK Date...................................................................... I wish to become a member of the MASSACHUSETTS CIVIC LEAGUE and enclose $.................................... Name ....................................................................... Street ....................................................................... Town or City ............................................................ PLEASE DETACH ALONG THESE LINES LEGISLATIVE RECORD Housing In 1907 important provision in the tenement laws for Boston, since protected against injurious amendments and improved. Bill Boards Constitutional amendment permitting regulation of bill boards. Law permitting local communities to make regulations. Reformation Treating young law-breakers as delinquents and not as criminals. Juvenile court in Boston. State probation commission. More probation officers for children. Curative treatment for drunkenness. More effective treatment of the tramp evil. Psychiatric examination of prisoners in county jails and houses of correction. Prevention of extreme measures crippling operation of probation, parole and indeterminate sentence. Establishment of a state prison colony. Regulation of night clubs and roadhouses. The Mentally Defective Creating state board of insanity and removing insane from almshouses to hospitals. Increased state care for the feeble-minded. Civil Service Repeal of law which gave to veterans in the Civil Service a special right of appeal to a political body in case of removal, suspension or other change in their status. Wenona Osborne Pinkham Wenona O. Pinkham In Memory of Wenona Osborne Pinkham 1882-1930 Jan 8th A. T. BLISS & CO., Printers 60 Pearl St., Boston Contents Page INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY MR. PINKHAM..................... 5 REMARKS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CIVIC LEAGUE, BY MR. LEE AND OTHERS..................... 10 PRAISES BY COMRADES, MISS BLACKWELL AND OTHERS.......... 17 MRS. PINKHAM'S STORY OF HER CHILDHOOD.......................22 Wenona Osborne Pinkham It is especially for Wenona's friends in the West that this memorial is printed. Eighteen years have now passed since she left Denver, a bride of a few months. She was then twenty-nine years old. As a high school pupil in that city, as a teacher in the lower grades at first and later in the East Denver high school, as a student in the University of Denver, and as a social worker—founder and president of the Northside Neighborhood House—she had won the admiration and affection of many. All who knew her recognized her intellectual ability, her extraordinary energy, and her wide and generous sympathies. Her principal, Dr. William H. Smiley, now the honored superintendent emeritus of the Denver public schools, said to me soon after our marriage: "She is one of the noblest women I ever knew." I want Wenona's Denver friends to know that she was appreciated in the East where the fulness of her splendid gifts was revealed. This pamphlet contains some of the evidence therefor. Besides the memorial addresses at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Civic League, it has tributes by Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, Mrs. Glendower Evans, Miss Florence H. Luscomb and Mrs. Elizabeth H. Tilton, for years Wenona's devoted friends as well as her associates in work for woman suffrage and other good causes. Many others have written to me of their esteem and of their sense of loss both to themselves and to the commonwealth. The following characteristic note from Bishop Lawrence deserves place here: My dear Mr. Pinkham: Will you allow me to send you this message of deep sympathy and of appreciation of your dear wife? I met her infrequently; but each time I was impressed with her mental poise, her devotion and high character. She won confidence, and for those who knew her well must have won strong affection. On the first page of my engagement book each year I write this verse from Ezekiel: "At even my wife died; and in the morning I did as I was commanded." I remain yours sincerely. January 10, 1930 WILLIAM LAWRENCE. [5] It was as an advocate of woman suffrage that Wenona became widely known in Massachusetts. A native of Colorado where women had voted for years, she could be presented to an audience as Exhibit A, a sample woman voter. This was effective, for she was easy to look at. One of the portraits herein will bring her to remembrance as she was in those early years in Massachusetts. Her acquaintance throughout the state was of great value in her subsequent work as executive secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League. In this capacity she became one of the most potent unofficial persons in the state. Her death in the midst of manifold activities was felt as an irreparable loss by various groups of workers for the common good. Though her province was relatively narrow, yet Edwin Markham's lines on the death of Lincoln were applicable when she died: As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, And leaves a lonely place against the sky. It was on December 27th, 1929, that Wenona suffered a paralytic shock after an address at the Woman's Club in Newton Centre. It was not severe enough to cause her to lose consciousness. In the Newton hospital she showed encouraging improvement for several days. But on the evening of January 7th, a second shock made her unconscious till her death on the following morning. I was so confident she would live that I did not make as good use as I wish I had of those precious hours I spent with her in the hospital. For a time she could hardly get her mind off the Civic League and its annual meeting which was to occur on January the 11th. For this meeting she had made the arrangements with her wonted efficiency, not dreaming that it would be chiefly occupied with eulogies of herself. In her last conversation with me, Tuesday afternoon, the 7th, she asked me to go to this meeting so as to give her a report of it. Clearly she did not expect to die as soon as she did. Whether or not she expected to recover, or even to live, I shall never know. But I know that she who had always been so capable would have chosen to die rather than to live in weakness. She had done much more work at forty-seven than the ordinary person does in a long life. One incident of those last days I shall never forget. In it Wenona expressed her ruling passion. When Louisa, our daughter, and I went into her room together, on our daily visit, she stretched both arms out wide and said: "Here's my own dear family!" Louisa [6] had come directly from school and happened to have a good-sized smooch on one cheek on which I presently commented in terms not complimentary. "Well," said Wenona, " she looks good to me any way. When I am here alone I cheer myself by bringing her to mind." Wenona had mother-love enough for a dozen children and it was a pity that she had only one. Her boundless devotion to that one did not narrow her sympathies but broadened them. She liked and used to quote in her speeches for woman suffrage Mrs. Gilman's poem, "Mother to Child": How best can I serve thee, My child! My child! Flesh of my flesh and dear heart of my heart! Once thou wast within me—I held thee—I fed thee— By the force of my loving and longing I led thee— Now we are apart! ***** For the sake of my child I must hasten to save All the children on earth from the jail and the grave. For so, and so only, I lighten the share Of the pain of the world that my darling must bear— Even so, and so only! Louisa came to us in 1915. It had begun to look as if we were not going to have any children. I did not know till afterwards how much Wenona longed for a child. She was ambitious and frankly rejoiced in the success of her civic undertakings. But I think she regarded Louisa as her finest achievement. When various friends decided to express their appreciation of her by creating a fund for Louisa's education—I being an impecunious minister without a parish—they did exactly what would gladden her most, could she know it. Such will be glad to see herein Louisa's last portrait. Wenona's early years had the happiness of healthy young life not aware of deficiency in its environment. The story of a pioneer's child which concludes this booklet is a faithful transcript of her memories. She wrote it for the criticism of the late Professor Dallas Lore Sharp, of Boston University, under whom she took a course in composition not long after we came East. She intended to revise it some time and offer it for magazine publication of which Professor Sharp deemed it worthy. From her teens she did the hard work of her home, her mother being worn by childbirth and toil. That mother was a remarkable woman to whom circumstances [7] were unkind, in Wenona's opinion having natural ability superior to her daughter's. Poverty bore harshly on the Osborne family in the hard times of 1893 and after. Wenona never forgot the sight of her father in tears saying: " The baby is dead and I have no money to buy a coffin with." The iron entered her soul and she hated and dreaded poverty and believed, as I do, that it can and ought to be banished from the confines of civilization. After her marriage she joined the Socialist party in Denver of which I was a member. It was a painful experience for her to be unable to go to college with her high school classmates, but her father died and she became the chief support of the family. By attending evening and Saturday classes in the University of Denver while teaching school she earned her A.B. in six years. Despite her hard work she was the incarnation of cheerfulness, and her jolly laugh made her a joy in any company. Wenona was twenty-three when I first saw her. Not till five years later, and a little more, did we marry. Meantime she lost by death a brother and a sister. Her mother died a few months before our marriage. Two brothers are living, one in business in Denver, the other a professor in a university on the Pacific coast. The latter, when a little boy, had a long and serious illness and probably owed his life to the care of his big sister whom he dearly loved. Why Wenona married me has been a mystery both to her friends and to mine. But she did, and I have Louisa, the best expression of her love. Wenona joined the church of her parents, the Presbyterian, in her youth, but became heretical and was glad upon her marriage to take her place by me as a Unitarian. The face of death was familiar to her and she did not believe in a future life. Neither do I. She thought this life its own sufficient justification, with its joys and sorrows, its successes and failures, and its noble possibilities which we by our faithfulness can bring nearer to realization in those that come after us. Had she known her end was at hand, she could have said good-by to life calmly, affirming with satisfaction the word of a Roman poet: Vixi—I have lived. After the accursed war barred me from "patriotic" pulpits, Wenona preferred the Sunday meetings of the Boston Ethical Society to those of any church. But when we moved to Newton Centre, Louisa went to the Unitarian Sunday-school there, and her mother attended the church quite regularly. Its minister, Dr. Dieffenbach, officiated at her funeral in the church on Sunday afternoon, the [8] LOUISA CATHERINE PINKHAM 12th, and spoke fitting words regarding her civic devotion and achievement. I am told that almost all the social workers of Boston were present. Among the flowers there was a wreath sent by Governor Allen. Cremation followed at Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge. The ashes now rest in the Bullen- Ripley lot in the Newton Cemetery where lie the bodies of my mother, who was a Ripley, and my Father. The death was untimely. Except for her furious pace Wenona might have lived on and in the longer run accomplished even more. High blood pressure and other symptoms gave her unmistakable warning, and indeed she made earnest efforts to moderate her zeal. But it was not in her to spare herself when she had undertaken a task. She was bound to "make good," at whatever cost. I suspect that as the crash drew near, she felt like one impelled by fate to rush her own doom. Her absorption in her work, her habit of achievement, her ambition to succeed, her extreme sensitiveness to praise and blame, in addition to the need of an income to meet the family budget which I seemed unable to provide, overmastered her. She would not attempt a moral justification of her course, could she speak for herself now. Doubtless it was unwise, it was wrong, for her to pour her life force so fast even for good causes. But who is disposed to condemn her? And while our minds disapprove, our hearts feel that there was something magnificent in it. She was and will continue to be an inspiration to those who knew her well. I am proud to have been her husband and I hope to see Louisa fulfilling her present promise and demonstrating, when she has reached maturity, that she is her mother's own daughter. hamlet suggests words that may appropriately conclude: Take her for all in all, We shall not look upon her like again. Henry W. Pinkham Newton Centre, Mass. August, 1930. [9] The Annual Meeting On December 1, 1922, Mrs. Pinkham became Associate Executive Secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League. On February 1, 1924, she became its Executive Secretary. At the Annual Meeting of the League, at the Twentieth Century Club in Boston, on January 11, 1930, three days after Mrs. Pinkham's death, remarks in appreciation of her seven years' service were made by the President of the League, Mr. Joseph Lee; by the Chairman of its Executive Committee, Mr. Jeffrey R. Brackett; by a member of its Executive Committee, Mrs. Leslie B. Cutler; by its Counsel, Mr. Cornelius A. Parker, and by its First Vice-President, Mr. Herbert C. Parsons. Mr. LEE: Mrs. Pinkham possessed qualities that are rarely found combined --zeal and serenity, warmth of feeling and fair-mindedness, burning conviction and a sense of humor. Incredibly busy yet unhurried, she combined with depth of understanding a mastery of both principle and detail, seeing each cause she undertook both in its far-reaching consequences and in its immediate human implications, and a simplicity and accuracy of statement that would have given her high standing as a lawyer and that, in combination with her other qualities, made her, a woman agitator, persona grata with our long-suffering Solons of the legislature. What was the secret of this unique and happy personality? I think the word that fits is unity--not a fortunate combination of these fine qualities, but the expression of a soul that was all one. The seeming blend of qualities was not a chance. It was inevitable. She served one master wholly and without reserve. "If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Mr. BRACKETT: We measure life by achievement, not by calendar years. Mrs. Pinkham was cut off in the very prime of life, but after rare accomplishments. Her judgment was quick and very accurate. She [ 10 ] was sensitive but always buoyant and hopeful; her capacity for friendliness, in both giving and taking, was great. She was progressive, a modernist, but she was very womanly. Her energy was unbounded, even to the point, perhaps, of overtaxing her servant-- her body. She was a very capable administrator, following high ends, with careful attention to each step along the way. Altogether, she was a rare and radiant personality. We think of her as akin to the higher types of men and women of the Elizabethan age-- with its adventure and heroism, its new worlds to conquer. We cannot believe her dead. We must keep her living in our faith and in our works. Dead--what a thoughtless spoken word. As if we said at coming of the night The great life-giving sun Has gone, and yet we know it has but run Beyond our narrow sight. Good men are not these shells of flesh That silent lie. They are that wondrous something that we name The soul, the onward guiding flame, That cannot die. Mrs. CUTLER: My first though in thinking over what I might say this afternoon was that after all it is impossible to think of Mrs. Pinkham as having left us. Her presence, her triumphant spirit, will always be with us even though she has passed beyond the Great Divide. Those of us who knew her as a friend will always feel her loss, a loss to the state as well as to our community in Boston, a personal loss to each one of us. And if our loss is great, think what it must mean to her own family, her daughter and husband, where her spirit was always present. Her spirit was an inspiration to all who came in contact with her. Perhaps you have had a busy week and you thought you could not possibly take on another thing. Then Mrs. Pinkham's cheerful voice came over the telephone asking if you would please go to this or that meeting or if you would see a certain legislator on some piece of legislation. You said, "But I can't possibly do it." Then she always said, "But you are the only one who can do this particular piece of work. You are the one that we want." And before [ 11 ] you knew it you had promised to help and had probably been told just what to say and how to say it. It was her quick sympathy that made her work so unique. When my little daughter was so sick, I don't think I ever came in to the League's office when Mrs. Pinkham didn't say, "How is the baby today, Mrs. Cutler?" If it is true, as Shakespeare said, that the evil men do lives after them, how much more true it is that the good we do lives after us. All of us will always do our work with more tolerance, more patience, more magnanimity and courage because of her. It was not only the work she did herself in the name of the League, but she so arranged things that we could work together. Above all else it was contact with her personality which inspired courage. This is what we shall remember. This is how we shall go forward remembering her triumphant spirit which was her great gift to us and to what she has done. We must strive to go forward in the presence of her triumphant spirit. "And so in the strife of the battle of life It's easy to fight when you're winning, It's easy to slave, and starve and be brave When the dawn of success is beginning-- But to labor with zest and to give of your best For the sweetness and joy of the giving, To help folks along with a hand and a song Why, there's the real sunshine of living-- Carry on, carry on, Let the world be the better for you; And at last when you die, let this be your cry-- Carry on, my soul, carry on." Mr. PARKER: There are some people with characters and characteristics which stand out clear-cut like some rare cameo. When the great mystery which we call death comes to such as these, our sense of the eternal values in their lives is so strong that death which ordinarily seems so real and important somehow fades into relative insignificance, and we feel that the eternal qualities are such that the life must go on. It is impossible for us to believe that the life which has been lived so forcefully and potently among us has ceased. We can only picture the influence of that life, still potent in the world [ 12 ] of our earthly vision, and the life itself cut short in its usefulness here, continuing on, progressing and winning new victories in that world of the spirit which we cannot grasp but which to many of us is not the less real. We are holding the annual meeting of the League which Mrs. Pinkham planned and we are trying to crystalize some of our impressions of her life and out of those impressions to gain strength and vision to carry on the work which was so dear to her and to which and for which in a very real sense she gave her life. Others have spoken and will speak of some of the habits and methods which contributed to the valuable work which she has done. First, perhaps, the habit of industry. Gamaliel Bradford said recently in regard to a national character that he worked not so much because work made him happy, as because idleness made him unhappy. Our friend here found definite, positive happiness in work. She never showed that trait which psychologists speak of as the "escape." If a task was there, no matter how hard, it was a challenge to begin which she accepted at once, and she rejoiced in the sense of overcoming. Second, the intellectual power to analyze each substantive problem and to give due weight to the different factors and to perceive the result to be accomplished. Again, the understanding of how to focus all the forces of argument and to take advantage of all approaches in carrying out the campaign. In dealing with her associates she was exacting of them, and critical when they failed to do their best work, but she never asked as much of them as of herself, and her criticism was always constructive. You have heard of the place which she filled in the hearts of the women of the state and of their loyalty to her. I might speak of her relation to her work with state executives and legislators. The reasons for her success in this field are threefold. First, she believed that each official should act upon his own convictions and not under duress from his constituents. She won her victories by clear-cut logic, not by threats. True, she appreciated the importance of public sentiment and bringing it to bear on members of the Legislature, but always as a means of opening their minds to argument --not as a threat of defeat for failure to respond. Second, while always womanly, and while the mainspring of her interest in reform arose out of her womanhood, she never used the fact that she was a woman as a means to win. She met Governors, Heads of Departments, Senators and Representatives alike, on the level, eye to eye, [ 13 ] seeking the best in them, intellectually and spiritually, and appealing to that to gain support. Third, she was eminently practical. She knew when to compromise. When it became apparent that it was impossible to gain all that was desired, she would survey the field, and if some real advance could be made by compromise, she would counsel its acceptance. These were the main factors in that general esteem and confidence in which she was held by Governors, Heads of Departments and Legislators. There are comparatively few of the Heads of Departments who have not sent for her to discuss their problems and to gain, through her, support of this League for the things deemed essential to their work. Perhaps I am wrong in saying that these are the main factors. The one factor which underlies the whole was a desire to make the world a better place to live in. She had the crusading spirit which grasped the idea of universal brotherhood and was interested in all its phases. While her work was confined largely in recent years to the work of our organization, her interest and sympathy reached out into national and international fields, and her approach to all those problems was based on the idea of brotherhood of all mankind. So far, I have referred only to her public life. Probably the mainspring of it all centered in the home. We who have sat and talked with her at her desk and seen the picture of that beautiful girl whom she brought into the world, know how her face was lighted whenever any reference was made to her and how happy she was in telling of her progress and successes. In her heart was the love of home and it was her desire to make the homes and the lives of the future a little better than those today that animated her life of public service. I suppose if she could speak to us today, and it seems as though she were here, I think she would pass over somewhat lightly the things which we have said about her, although she was human and valued friendship, and she would say, "Let us talk about something else." I think her message would be that if we have an appreciation of her life and its purposes and if we have a deep and abiding love for her, we shall translate that into action, and that we shall take up these problems of children's welfare, continuation school, public health, all of these things for which she has worked and shall resolve that there shall be no weakening of our efforts; that together we will work for the accomplishment of those ends to which she had [14] dedicated her life, and make this League more potent for good even than in the past. Mr. PARSONS: I guess one after another of us has made some contribution to the expression of the thought that has been in our minds. I have been sensible of the fact that the most we can say is a feeble utterance of what is in our thought and heart. To each one of us, what makes this occasion impressive is not the words that any of us speak but the presence of her deep spirit. As Mr. Parker has said, it is impossible not to think of her as here too. So what is said by any one of us is but a restatement of that great fact in our thought who have in our hearts the sharing of that great ambition she had to make life better. I like to think of Mrs. Pinkham, and perhaps it is best that we should recall that part of her, of her abundant joyousness. I have arrived at that period in life when I like to make comparisons from the limited number of humankind I have known. I can't pass the opportunity here to say that never have I discovered more than one other person, a man of very great achievement, who was comparable to Mrs. Pinkham in energy. It would be interesting to hear of her unceasing and perfectly unrelenting activity but I feel disposed to recall back her joyousness, a feature of her life which not only made her effective but which made her all the stronger in our combination. It was a supreme joy to come in contact with her. As of all who greatly achieve, it cannot be said of Mrs. Pinkham whether her greater joy was in the pursuit or the attainment. Both yielded richly to her. She loved the race; she gloried in the goal. Her energy seemed to have no limit—and it had no uncertainty of direction. The end was clearly in view—and towards it she moved swiftly, confidently, determinedly, impatient only with obstacles. And when it was reached she rejoiced. Not, however, did she tarry to glory in the victory. The prize she won—the prize she loved best—was new challenge to another contest. Such picture of her fails of truth in that her task was not so simple. She may not truthfully be thought of in modern fashion—as one with hand on the engine's throttle. She was a charioteer. Could we who were close to her detach ourselves from the grief of this hour—as we cannot—so far as to make a broad summary of the significance of her life in the period of its rich fruition, [15] perhaps it would be to say that she but fulfilled the promise in which she had shared, that the full civic endowment of woman would release a new power for the world's good. With all her vitality, with all her success in command, she was splendidly womanly. She seems to have given us, with all else that she gave, the demonstration that the place of woman in a world struggling towards a better social order, a fuller and richer common life, was in the freest championship of great causes and in the fullest partnership in their winning. The added word is again repetition. It is the word of challenge to all the rest of us to take up the work where Mrs. Pinkham left it. It is indeed for us to pay that only substantial tribute, the combination of our energies to the things she would have us do. [16] MRS. PINKHAM—1915 Praises by Comrades MRS. PINKHAM was a woman in ten thousand. She united, in an extraordinary degree, strength with sweetness, intelligence with goodness, and great gifts with entire simplicity and modesty. Built upon a large scale physically, and endowed with rare muscular power, she had also a big and generous heart, bountiful in its overflowing kindness to all who needed help. As she sat in her office at 3 Joy Street, she often made me think of some lines written about the Madonna: "She sits in her shrine in the heart of the city, The Mother of Mercy, whom all men seek; Clear eyes to see, kind heart to pity, Strong hand to succor the wronged and weak." She was pre-eminently a person who got things done. As State Organizer long ago for the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, she was unrivalled. In more recent years, some one said that the success of the Massachusetts Civic League in getting its various good measures passed was "almost uncanny"; and we all knew it was due mainly to Mrs. Pinkham. Her great abilities were used in a manner so quiet and unassuming that a friend compared the changes she brought about to the change that follows the rising of the sun; all is noiseless, we do not realize that anything has happened, but suddenly we look out and see that the land is bright. She had not a trace of vanity, or selfishness, or ill temper. Broad and progressive in her views, she had so much tact that she could work with persons wholly out of sympathy with her advanced ideas and seldom gave offence. Like Lucy Stone, with one hand she worked to make her family comfortable, and with the other to promote the public good; and she was able to do both efficiently. She was an affectionate wife and a devoted mother. I never saw a more striking picture of mother love than when she sat one day, many years ago, gazing at her small daughter with her whole soul in her eyes; and the child was gazing back with almost the same expression. [17] There was no one upon whom I relied so much for counsel, or for help in many different lines; and I was but one of a multitude who must have felt, with her passing, "Oh, fallen at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!" No one can fill her place. We who loved and honored her must work the harder for the good causes to which she was devoted, and recall, while we grieve, the words of the old hymn, "But we shall still be joined in heart, And hope to meet again." ALICE STONE BLACKWELL WENONA OSBORNE PINKHAM, who died a short time ago at the Newton hospital, belonged to the East and to the West. She was born in a pioneer home in Colorado, where she lived until she was married and came East accompanying her husband. She was then a tall, stalwart built young woman with a face expressing intelligence and power and vast good will. Coming from a state where she had been a voter, it was inevitable that she should lend a hand, and a powerful hand it proved to be, in helping the women of Massachusetts with the vote. With the entry of our country into the war, her husband, who was a Unitarian minister and a strong pacifist, was thrown out of his job, and thereafter his wife became the main bread winner of the family. Long before death overtook her in her 48th year, she had become the most notable leader in this state in a variety of public enterprises. She was truly a great woman—great in her private life, great in her public career and greatest of all, perhaps, in herself, in her character and personality. I speak as one who knows, for we shared one home together for some eight years and I saw her tested in all capacities. Her secret was that she was made all of one piece —from the inner core of her being to her finger tips. She had no divided impulses. "I want to do this—and I want to do that—and I want to do the other, too," is the way with most of us, with one set of impulses trampling upon the other. Wenona Pinkham knew no such conflict. Whatever job she undertook must be one to benefit this sore beset world—and having undertaken her job, she gave herself to it, heart and soul. [18] She was lovely as a woman, gentle, feminine, hospitable. She might be called and called and called on the telephone when she was so weary that most of us would have wanted only to scream, and always came her answer —"Yes? What is it?" in a tone that soothed all jangled nerves. It is as the Executive Secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League that she is most widely known. Of that work many are better qualified to speak than I—of her initiative, her imagination, her capacity for detail, her unfailing harmony of temper and her genius for enrolling others, some of them humble souls, all needed to do their part in making the League function in the world. For these qualities she is bound to receive the full measure of honor due her. Let me tell just one story which dropped from her lips quite inadvertently which indicates the well-spring of her inner life from which her public achievements flowed. She was living with her widowed mother and her brothers in a bare home in the West. She was teaching school, and her tiny salary was the family maintenance. A dearly loved brother lay ill for months, and I think for years, with a tube to drain off his bodily infection. And it was she who used to read and read and read to the sick lad, when she came home from her duties at school, and her strong arms it was which were best able to lift him, to change his bedding and make his body clean. Oh, how she loved that boy! And how she delighted in the career that came to him later; today he is a professor in a great western university. That brother knows, as perhaps no one else in all the world, the heart of better than gold that beat in her breast. And I know from her casual words—it was of her brother that she thought she was telling me—that in her heart glowed the love of God and the strength of God that passes all understanding. ELIZABETH GLENDOWER EVANS. TO me Wenona was a miracle. It was almost unbelievable that one human being could have so rounded a personality, could in so many aspects of life and such diverse ones be so beautifully and nobly developed. There are those with the vision to conceive great plans. There are practical executives who organize men for achievement. There are patient toilers who perfect tiny details. They are three very different types. Wenona was all of them in her one self. [19] Some persons have towering abilities and shrunken hearts. Hers was the greatest, warmest heart I ever knew. Her abounding love overflowed to a great host of friends of every kind and condition, and poured itself out in deeds of kindness and friendliness and hospitality. Her daughter she idolized, to family and friends she gave herself unsparingly, and her goodwill stood at the service of all mankind. She was never too busy or too weary to do all in her power for any person or cause that turned to her for help. Her marvelous wisdom drew to her as to a lodestone the most varied causes, all seeking her guidance, her counsel, her vision. She had an almost instantaneous grasp of a question, a power to see all round it. When some new plan was broached I would see a disadvantage or advantage and form my opinion accordingly. While I was thinking out this one reason she would have grasped all the pros and cons, results and ramifications and reactions I never dreamed of, and have balanced them and drawn the wise conclusion. What wonder that hundreds sought her judgment! What wonder that she succeeded in her undertakings! She knew and trusted her own abilities, yet she was always humble and unassuming. Her ability to deal with people was amazing. She could enlist their aid, kindle their enthusiasm, win them with humor and with the force of her personality. Her tact in handling people was limitless. She was clever in avoiding giving offense. But hand in hand with this quality went outstanding courage, boldness of action, honesty to her convictions, willingness to espouse the unpopular. Tactful and courageous, —a rare combination. There is no end to what one could write of her, —her zest, her will power, her alertness, her merciless hard work, her charm, her beauty. It is almost inconceivable how her life ramified out into the most diverse activities of community and commonwealth and she was called upon to assist in scores of undertakings for human service. I have kept in fairly close touch with the civic life of my state for years, and do not know of one man or woman in Massachusetts whose loss would be a greater civic tragedy. It is amazing that she could have attained such leadership, in the circumstances of her life. She lived less than eighteen years in this section of the country rather wary and cold toward strangers, and accepting them only very slowly. She came from half a continent away, unknown, without social prestige, and neither then nor [20] later with wealth. Her husband stood by such unpopular convictions in the hour of war frenzy that he became for years a veritable outcast. That in spite of these things she made herself the outstanding woman in the civic life of the commonwealth was a miracle of character, ability and personality. I end as I began: she was a miracle. FLORENCE H. LUSCOMB. In the death of Mrs. Wenona Pinkham this Commonwealth loses a great public servant. To those of us who worked closely with her, it hardly seemed credible that one woman could carry so many great qualities: steady, sane judgment, the power to get on with every sort of person, to win and hold their respect and love; independence of action, espousing the unpopular as well as the popular; great power to make workers of all those about her; unselfish and self-spending beyond belief. Cause after cause in this state tonight is retarded because her animating, thorough touch is withdrawn; the governor's child welfare program, the smoke nuisance, kindergartens, juvenile delinquency, the raising of the school age, protective work for youth along our state roads, the regulation of overnight camps, these were simply some of the things that she was steadily pushing forward. In fullest measure she was a wife, a mother, a friend, a social worker, a public servant. To those who knew her this praise is not exaggerated. It is the simple truth; hers was a nature of abounding parts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has lost one of its greatest public servants. ELIZABETH H. TILTON. The Child of a Colorado Pioneer By Wenona Osborne Pinkham TWENTY-FIVE YEARS* ago a large part of the area of Colorado was in the arid region known as the "Rain-belt." The name was given, not because of the abundance of moisture, but because of the farmers' absolute dependence on the rain; that is, there was no water for irrigating. The land had been used chiefly for grazing and the cattle raisers resented the coming of the farmers. Thousands of cattle and a large number of horses, too, were turned out on the prairie to take care of themselves. Each ranch employed a cow-boy or two to look after the stock in a general sort of way and to "round them up" at branding time. A part of their business was to spy on the newcomers to see that they did not kill cattle for beef or steal calves before they had been branded. Scores of cattle perished every winter from starvation and exposure. They tore down the farmers' fences and ate their fodder and hay. Seldom did a settler succeed in collecting damages from a cattleman, but a man who killed a steer for food for his family was prosecuted to the full extent of the law. My father was attracted by the greatly exaggerated stories, circulated by unscrupulous speculators, of the wonderful opportunities of the new country. A picture purporting to be a bird's-eye view of the section in which he became interested gave the impression of a modern city. As a matter of fact, there was a railroad station, one store which was also the postoffice, and a few dwellings. The soil was said to be fertile, and the moisture sufficient for vegetables, wheat and alfalfa. Each settler was allowed to "take up" 160 acres. My father had been having such a hard struggle by teaching school to take care of a wife, an aged father-in-law, and three children, that he was more than ready to try the unknown when it offered such bright prospects. He had always said he would like to live on a farm and that he thought it was the ideal place to bring up a family. But my mother as a child had lived on a farm in Illinois when that was a pioneer state, and she felt as if she could not go through such experiences again. With her woman's intuition fortified by her girlhood experience she had a conception of what they *It was in 1913 that Mrs. Pinkham wrote this story of her childhood. [22] were planning to face which her husband did not have. Over and over to herself she said, "I can't go, oh, I can't!" But when she saw the look of disappointment come over his face she said, "For his sake, I must," and with smiling face and a heavy heart she yielded against her better judgment. We arrived about the first of September, having traveled overland 150 miles in a "prairie schooner." The "schooner" was a big two-horse wagon with a canvas cover stretched over wooden bows. It contained our clothing, household furniture, and provisions. The cow was tied to the rear end. Mother and we three children slept in the wagon, while my father lay on the ground underneath. The horses and cow were picketed near by. They made their supper of prairie grass before dark but we could hear the cow chewing her cud after we had gone to bed. We cooked our supper over a camp fire. Warm milk from the cow furnished the larger part of our evening meal. A number of men had gone out in the early summer ahead of their families to prepare some sort of dwelling for them. They helped one another to build houses, dig wells, and put up barbed wire fences. Some built frame houses; others, sod houses; and still others made "dug-outs." The last, as the name indicates, was dug out of the earth, usually to a depth of about five feet. Several layers of sod were laid above the surface to afford a place for tiny windows. The walls and the floor were of dirt. Our house was of sod and contained three rooms. "Sod" is turf containing the wild grass, cut about a foot square and three or four inches thick. It is laid up, the large faces together, soon after being cut, and allowed to dry afterward. Many of the houses were built entirely of this material, but ours had a rough frame-work inside, which mother covered with brown paper. This made the house warmer and improved its appearance. The roof was thatched with the long grass which grew abundantly in the sandhills a few miles distant. The two horses, Rocket and Clipper, the cow, Old Susie, and the hens also, had sod houses. For fuel we laid in a store of the dried cow manure, called "buffalo chips" by the settlers, that could be found lying on the prairie. We were three miles from the nearest neighbor and eight miles from the nearest town. Such was the place in which my mother was left with her father, a man seventy years of age and crippled by rheumatism, and with three little children of whom I, five years of age, was the eldest. [23] For, as soon as we were settled, my father went away to earn money by teaching, with which to buy farming implements and seed for the first planting. Weeks often passed without a human being's coming to our house. Usually my mother went to town once a fortnight to buy provisions and to get the mail, driving eight miles and back in an open wagon on a cold winter day. Surely no Pilgrim mother was made of sterner stuff. Many a time the wind, blowing at a high rate of speed across the great open plans, moaned and sighed, and rattled the windows and swayed the walls of our little house all day long and all night long, and perhaps all the next day, falling with the setting of the sun. What relaxing of nerve tension, what peace and rest, came with the ceasing of the wind! We walked about the house more quietly and spoke to one another more gently. More than once the range cattle broke through the fence at night and came up to the house, trampling the earth, bellowing, and even hooking their horns into the sod walls. A few times an overmastering longing for the wild, lawless life of the range seized Old Susie, our chief food supply, and bursting all bonds she escaped. Then mother must ride over the prairies until she found her, single her out from the herd and drive her home. When riding on horseback one had constantly to be on the lookout for the treacherous prairie-dog holes, lest the horse when going at full gallop should break a leg by stepping into one of them. Almost our only friends that first winter were the cow-boys. They were a wild, reckless sort of men for the most part, usually considered the enemies of the farmers because they were employed by the cattlemen. Some of them were very kind to us, however. Twice they brought home the cow when she had run off; they often brought the mail; in return for a meal they repaired the fences and did other odd jobs; one of them brought us children the only candy we tasted for a year; and it was a cow-boy who rode to town through a blinding snow storm to call the doctor when my little brother was taken ill with scarlet fever. Ah, what a dreadful time that was! The doctor did not come for three days. There was no one to relieve my mother for a single hour of the care of the sick child. He did recover from the fever, but died several years later as a result of the lack of proper medical attention at that time. It is sometimes said that pioneer life develops strength and vigor. The truth is that only the strongest and most vigorous are able to survive, and the life is judged [24] by these rather than by the unknown, unmarked graves out on the prairie, trampled by the feet of the wild cattle and the wild horses. It is not that pioneer life makes strong bodies and brave souls, but that only the strong and the brave can be pioneers. The first winter passed somehow, and all rejoiced at the coming of the spring. There was much work to be done. Men, women, and children worked from before daylight until after dark "getting in the crops." The first season was a good one, nothing suffering seriously from lack of moisture. When the autumn came we had beets, turnips, carrots, squashes, potatoes, cabbages and a quantity of dried corn, to put away for the winter. The barn was filled with hay and fodder for the stock, and another cow was added to the little family in the barnyard. We gave thanks to the God of the Harvest in the spirit of the first Thanksgiving Day. The second winter was long and lonely, but hopes and plans of what could be done another year helped the time to pass quickly. The opening of the early spring brought hard toil and new interests, and there was the joy of looking forward to another harvest time. The winter had been mild, there was little rain in the spring, and as the summer came on the heat and dryness increased. Weeks went by with never a cloud in the sky. Sometimes there would be a little bluster of wind and a few drops of rain, bu the next day was as blistering as ever. Every green thing turned brown. The cows went almost dry, the hens stopped laying, and the young chickens drooped and died. Only sage brush and cactus flourished. The prickly pears of the cactus were our only fruit. We children gathered them with sticks, and with old gloves on our hands rubbed off the needles. Then we cooled them in the well and they tasted good. The hotter and drier the weather became, the more numerous were the rattlesnakes. We had to be on the watch constantly lest they find their way into the house or the outbuildings. I shall never forget my mother's cries for help as she sat inside our little house one hot July afternoon with a baby on her knee. A large rattler had crawled up to the door, and when she observed it, it was coiled up, ready to spring. She backed away as far as possible, but could not get into another room without passing too near it for safety. Father was in the field and I was out playing, the only person within hearing. I started to run to the house. As I came [25] in sight mother screamed to me to stop. Then she told me to go for my father as fast as I could. He soon came and killed the snake. The fright affected us all for a long time. I was afraid to go anywhere alone, and often I had fearful nightmares, dreaming that snakes were ready to spring upon me while I was too paralyzed by fear to move. As the summer advanced, neighbors drove over and with drawn and anxious faces talked of the coming winter which all predicted would be a hard one. The men who could do so planned to leave their families and go away to find work. My father succeeded in getting a school to teach at a salary of thirty-five dollars a month in a district where the railroad paid enough taxes to enable the people to have a school a few months in the year. The winter was as severe as had been predicted. There were terrible blizzards in which men lost their way and were frozen to death. After one of the most severe storms the bodies of two men were found frozen in a snowdrift less than a mile from our house. One storm is especially vivid in my memory because my father and brother and I were caught in it. Father took us to school with him, a distance of about seven miles. We went in a home-made sleigh, or sled, as we called it. One evening when school closed, at four o'clock, the air was unusually mild, almost as on an early June day. "Hurry," said my father, "there is no time to lose. We are going to have a blizzard." We had not gone more than a mile when the warm wind suddenly veered to the north, turning very cold and blowing directly in our faces. In ten minutes snow was falling. The wind blew harder and harder, until it did not seem possible that any human being could find his way in the blinding, whirling snow. It would have been almost as hard to get back to the schoolhouse as to go forward. There would have been no food there, and, besides, the suspense for my mother would have been terrible. There was nothing to do but to press on. Father had my brother and me lie down in the bottom of the sled. Then he gave the horses free rein, and they finally succeeded in reaching home. Mother had been standing in the door watching for us almost from the time the blizzard began. When she heard my father's shout she fell unconscious and lay in that condition for a number of hours. Already worn out by hard work and privation this experience brought her a long period of nervous prostration from which she never fully recovered. The horses, half broncho as they were, had been faithful almost [26] unto death. We were grateful to them ever after. Clipper was pretty vicious sometimes, and they both liked to run away, but let some one say, "Remember the blizzard," and they were forgiven. I have a vivid recollection of another incident of this same winter. It was a cold, crisp night. The sun had been warm during the day, but as the early December evening came on, the weather turned cold. My brother and I went out to the barn with my father to look after the horses and cows for the night, and to put extra bars across the hen-house door, for hungry coyotes would be prowling before morning. As we returned we noticed how our little house stood in clear, black outline against the horizon, lighted up by the pale, cold gleams of the full moon. There was nothing to be seen in any direction but great stretches of level prairie, the dreary, desolate plains of Eastern Colorado. To save fuel and light we always went to bed early. It must have been nearly ten o'clock this night, when we were awakened by the rumbling of heavy wagon wheels and the hoof beats of horses driven rapidly over the rough, frozen ground. Suddenly all became still for, perhaps, ten minutes. Then the noise began again, gradually dying away in the distance. I knew the meaning of rapid driving at that time of night. It was not the first time we had heard it; and that very evening father had remarked, "This will be a good night for the cattle rustlers. There is no tell-tale snow and the moon affords plenty of light." That terrible winter men, as well as coyotes, had to seek their food by night. Only a few weeks before, a neighbor had been convicted of killing range cattle and sent to the penitentiary, though the officers testified that they found nothing in the house for his family to eat except the stolen beef. I lay very still, listening with bated breath to catch the sound of the last hoof-beats. Presently I heard my parents conversing in low tones in the next room. "I wonder how they happened to be so near our house to-night. And what do you suppose they stopped for?" said my father. "Possibly they thought some one was pursuing them and they stopped to listen, or perhaps something about the harness came loose," replied my mother. After a pause, she went on, "Do you know that we are making enemies by our attitude in this matter? Mrs. Harding stopped on her way home from town today and asked if she might come in to [27] get warm. She has always been so friendly, but today she acted very strangely. Two or three times she started to go and then came back as if she had something on her mind. Finally she burst out, 'So your husband thinks he is too good to kill range cattle, does he? Well, I warn you as a friend, he'd better not take chances telling on anybody else. Feeling has been running pretty high since Henry Martin was sent up.' And she was gone before I could reply." Then I heard my father's voice, "I didn't mean to tell you, but Jim Taylor rode over this afternoon and asked me to go out with him tonight. When I refused, he went off muttering that there are worse things than killing range cattle. They evidently think I had something to do with Martin's being caught. God knows I didn't blame him. A man can't see his wife and children starve! I am no better than the others, but I have not yet been so tempted." Then anxiously he added, "I'm sorry to have the other settlers feel this way toward us and I can't help being a little uneasy." "Don't worry," answered my mother's brave and gentle voice; "if we do what is right, the Lord will take care of us in some way. But we must stop talking or we shall disturb the children." I lay awake a long time, almost too frightened to move. I was a little girl, only seven years old, but I understood that father feared the settlers might seek to avenge the wrong which they imagined he had done to one of their number. When I did fall asleep, it was to dream that an officer came for my father and took him away to prison while we stood by helpless. The next morning father rose early and went out to do the chores. In a few minutes he came back, and called mother aside to speak to her in low tones. Then they went out together. I dressed as quickly as I could and ran out to see what had happened. The barn door had been forced open, and just inside lay the half of a freshly killed steer. On the hide was the brand of the Big Four Ranch, the company which had prosecuted our neighbor, Mr. Martin. Further in lay the head, and blood was spilled about, evidently on purpose. The sudden stopping of the wagon in the night was explained. Very likely a hint had been given to the cattlemen that it might be well to have some one visit our house that day. If this meat were found on our premises, it might be difficult for myec father to prove his innocence. It must be got out of sight at once. There was a vegetable cellar under the house, entered by a trap-door in the floor. Mother suggested that by changing the furniture about, [28] it would be possible to set the bed over this door, and with a piece of carpet laid in front of the bed,—there was not enough carpet to cover the floor,—the entrance could be effectively concealed. Father chopped the meat into pieces small enough to handle and placed it in this cellar. Then he and mother with great pains sought to remove every sign of what had taken place. As expected, about noon a cow-boy, or a man dressed as one, stopped at our house and asked for a bite to eat. While mother was preparing the food, he spent some time in the barn looking after his horse and walking about the yard. I kept out of his sight, fearing that my frightened face would give everything away. We waited anxiously for days, but no trouble followed. Evidently our visitor had seen nothing which looked suspicious. The next night father hauled the stolen beef out on the prairie and left it for the coyotes to feast upon. The long winter with its snowstorms and the cold spring with its drizzling rains meant a good year, and hope once more filled the hearts of the farmers as the third spring rolled around. The prairie was fresh and green again. The pretty white sand lilies with their golden centers thickly dotted the landscape. I gathered them by the apronful and filled every empty vessel I could with them. My brother and I had our own gardens and each of us had a calf. One day we found a stray lamb and took it home. We tried keeping toads for pets, but they either escaped from captivity and went back to their old haunts, or else they were released by death. We built playhouses in the cornfield and surreptitiously took cornsilk to use as hangings and as hair for the clothespin dolls who inhabited the playhouses. My favorite resort was a heap of sand back of the house, which had been thrown out of a new cellar. Here I spent many hours fashioning Cinderellas and Sleeping Beauties and Fairy Princes. I had just begun to read fairy tales and I tried to make everything I read about them seem real by modeling it in the sand. I watched for the fashion plates which sometimes came wrapped up in packages, and cut out the figures of the fine ladies and the beautiful children. Thus playing and dreaming and helping to the best of my ability, either in the house or in the field, I was very happy. This was the only world I knew. Cities with their crowds of people and great buildings, trains, ships, music, and beautiful gowns were all a sort of jumble in my mind along with elves, giants, and fairy godmothers. I knew nothing of any of them except from the tales I had read [29] and the stories I had heard father and mother tell. They were beautiful things to think and dream about, and I liked to play that I was going to see them all some day, but it was only play. There were two distinct worlds: the one I knew, the lonely farm life; and the one I imagined, which included everything I had heard or read about. That the dream life should ever become real did not occur to me. Indeed, I did not want it to. My mother was not well and father said she must have a change. After much thought and planning, they decided to go to a town about forty miles distant to attend a county teachers' institute. Father thought that this would not only secure a rest for mother, but also enable him to get into touch with teachers again, and possibly to learn of a position for the coming year. Mother's health made it imperative that we leave the farm as soon as possible. I looked forward to the trip with keen delight, for we were going in a covered wagon, the very same we had traveled in when we came to our new home, and there would be bacon and eggs and roasted potatoes cooked by a camp-fire, and at night we should sleep in the bed of the wagon. Could anything be more delightful! The night we were out was glorious with moonlight. The plains to the westward were covered with flocks of sheep, and now and then the call of the shepherd or the bark of a sheep dog broke the stillness. Father had written ahead and engaged a small furnished house to which we went directly. How strange it seemed to be on a street and to see groups of people constantly passing! I became so fascinated watching them from an upstairs window that mother had to call me several times before I realized that she wanted me to come to supper. I hardly waited to eat for I wanted to get back to my window. I began to associate the passing groups with the people of my dreams. To such as pleased me I gave my favorite names. In the evening we all walked down town. The stores were open and brightly lighted. In the streets were what seemed to me a multitude of people. I was dazed. I could not comprehend what I saw. I did not say a word, but just looked and looked, trying to associate the strange, new sights with something I knew. The beginning I had made in the afternoon by naming some of the people did not seem to help me now. I felt disturbed and agitated and wanted to go home. I wanted to get away from the confusion, to be alone and to think about what I had seen. Mother thought it strange that I did not appear more interested, but I could not explain. After I went to bed, I tried to think, but I was so tired that I soon [30] fell asleep. The next morning I was sure it had all been a dream, but presently I knew that the people and the houses were real. It was Sunday and we went to church and Sunday-school. The singing, the organ, the solemn hush, the people walking in quietly, were entirely different from any of my fancies. I had been in many a king's palace and should have known how to behave there, but my imagination had never pictured a church. A kind-faced old man took me to a group of little girls about my own age. They had curls and great ribbon bows, and such pretty dresses,—just like those I had seen in the fashion plates. I don't know anything the teacher said, because I did not hear a word. All I could do was to attempt to connect these new experiences with something I had known before. After a few days I began to feel that this was a real world, too, though so different from the little prairie settlement that it seemed impossible to bring them together. I gave up the effort and entered whole-heartedly into the joy of the passing days. I no longer wanted to go home to think. I had accepted things as they were, and I wanted to be in the midst of them every minute. They were so wonderful and so beautiful! There was the reception given to the visiting teachers, with music by an orchestra, and dancing, and ice cream and cake! Then there was "Uncle Tom's Cabin"! I can not put into words the feelings awakened by that play. The performance was very bad, of course, but the finest acting in the world could not so thrill me to-day. The days flew by as if on wings, and the time came when we must go back to the little house on the lonely farm. The country life had become the dream now, but not one that I cared to dwell upon. I begged to stay, but that was impossible. We reached home one afternoon about four o'clock. The house looked so plain and ugly in the hot afternoon sun, and everything was so quiet! I helped carry in some things from the wagon and then ran out to my beloved sandpile. A rain had washed away the playhouses, and the fine gentlemen and ladies cut out of the fashion plates lay scattered about, faded and torn. This was more than I could bear. I threw myself on the ground and sobbed aloud. After a while I heard my mother's voice calling, "Nona, Nona." There was anxiety in her tone. I tried to answer but could not make her hear. "Nona, where are you? It is getting late." Still calling, she walked around back of the house and happened to turn in the direction of the sand pile. In the gathering gloom she did not see me until she was quite near. There I lay, stretched out, my face buried [31] on my arm. When she asked why I was crying, I could only stammer, "I didn't want to come home. I can't stand it to live here any longer." I don't know how much she understood of the crisis I was passing through, but she wisely refrained from questioning me further. She gave me a glass of milk, and then tenderly undressed me and put me to bed as she had done when I was a very little girl. The next day I leveled the sand, and dug a grave in which to bury my treasures,—the corncob giants, the clothespin ladies, some precious cornsilk, the paper dolls, and some bits of velvet and lace. I had loved them as a mother loves her child. I clung to them still, as a mother clings to the lifeless body of her babe; but they had to be buried, for they were dead! With tears streaming down my cheeks, I covered them over with the earth. We left the farm a few months later and went to live in a small town where my father had secured a position as principal of the school. I do not know what I should have done during the time we remained, if there had not been the approaching change to look forward to. I felt stifled, oppressed. The thought sometimes comes: suppose I had never awakened, had never learned that there was a life vastly larger than the little prairie settlement. [32] (Copy) CITY OF BOSTON Committee on Public Safety. 65 City Hall. Victor A. Heath Chairman of Executive Committee. March 27, 1918. Mrs. Evelyn Peverley Coe, 1213 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. My dear Mrs. Coe: This is just a reminder that the meeting of the Executive Committee will be held on Saturday morning, March 30th, at 10 A.M. You probably have received a formal notice of this meeting, but for fear that it had not been sent, I am taking this means of notifying you, because we surely want you present. Of course I am very sorry indeed to learn that Mrs. Pinkham could not serve on this Executive Committee, because her work in connection with the City of Boston Public Safety Committee has been invaluable. There has not been a time when we have called upon her for meetings -or anything else - that she has not responded upon the instant and the service she has rendered has been invaluable. I recall particularly her very able and efficient cooperation in the matter of Registration, and other work with which I have been connected. She has been one of the very best members of the Committee and reflects credit, not only upon herself, but also upon the organization which she represents. I mention these facts to you, because, I wanted Mrs. Pinkham to understand that we all appreciated what she had done in connection with the Public Safety work in Boston. Yours very truly, (signed) P.F. O'Keefe Chairman, Committee on Co-ordination of Aid Societies. MASSACHUSETTS LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS 31 Mt. Vernon Street Boston Meeting of the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Thursday, October 2, 1930 The regular monthly meeting of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters was held at League Headquarters, Thursday, October 2nd, at 10:30 A.M. Presiding: Mrs. Mary Tenney Healy, President Present: Mrs. Arthur G. Rotch, Mrs. Ralph M. Sparks, Mrs. Guy W. Stantial, Mrs. Katharine Page Hersey, Mrs. H.S. Griffin, Mrs. Robert C. Sweetser, Mrs. Elizabeth Towne, Mrs. Paul M. Swift, Mrs. Louis M. Howe, Mrs. Edward S. O'Keefe, Miss Miriam B. Clark, Mrs. George G. Brayley, Mrs. Robert L. DeNormandie, Mrs. True Worthy White, Miss Harriet M. Jones, Mrs. Lewis E. Pierce, Mrs. Walter E. Dewey, Miss Helen M. Kelsey, Mrs. Lois B. Rantoul, Mrs. Grove R. Branch, Mrs. E. Lawrence Shaw, and as guest, Mrs. Earl Dempsey. Treasurer's Report was read and showed a cash balance as of October first, $332.56. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. Stantial that the report be referred to the auditor. Mrs. Stantial reported on the Wenona O. Pinkham Fund. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. Stantial that the fund of approximately $1275.00 raised by a group in the Massachusetts League of Women Voters now on deposit at the Andover Savings Bank under the name, Wenona O. Pinkham Memorial Fund, be transferred to the Trustees of the Fund, to be administered in accordance with the plan drawn up and approved by the committee of sponsors. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. Stantial that the Massachusetts League of Women Voters appoint the following Advisory Committee to whom shall be referred all matters relating to the League's share in the joint fund including future nominations in the Board of Trustees: Mrs. Alice W. DeNormandie Mrs. Mary Livermore Barrows Mrs. Hilda H. Quirk Mrs. Emily M. Woodbury, Mrs. Edna L. Stantial Report of the Finance Committee was given by Mrs. Sparks, Chairman VOTED: that authorization be given Mrs. Sparks to sign a contract with Miss Crawford to undertake the publicity work for the meeting of the Grand Duchess Marie at the Copley-Plaza for the fee of $100.00 Report of the Secretary of Political Education read and accepted. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White to confirm Mrs. G. Lawrence Roberts of Reading as Chairman of the Credential Committee for the Fall Business Meeting with Mrs. Ralph M. Bragdon of Melrose and Mrs. Annie B.S. Faull of Cambridge. For Luncheon Committee, Mrs. George C. Morton Chairman with Mrs. Harry S. Griffin, Miss Elizabeth B. Piper, Mrs. Howard J. Chidley, Mrs. Elias Field and Miss Florence B. Crane. For Publications Committee, Mrs. John J. Horgan, chairman with Mrs. Bertrand Hooper and Miss Harriet M. Jones. Meeting of the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Thursday, October 2, 1930. -2- VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that a letter of appreciation be sent to the Editor of the Traveler for his excellent publicity in regard to the questionnaires sent to candidates. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that the Foreign Affairs School be held as usual and if practicable, January 20, 21, 22, at Radcliffe College. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that the matter of the Printing of the Sample Ballot be left to the Executive Committee. The Report of the Field Secretary, Miss Harriet M. Jones, was read. VOTED: On motion of Miss Jones that letter of appreciation be sent to Miss Brown of Holyoke, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Lockwood, Miss Fisher of Springfield, Mrs. Towne of Holyoke, Mrs. G.W. Atkinson, Miss Molly H. Bowne and Miss Eastman of Springfield, Miss Miriam B. Clark of Northampton for their good work in connection with the Eastern States Exposition. VOTED: On recommendation of Miss Jones that the Massachusetts League of Women Voters should not be responsible for the program and personnel at the Eastern States Exposition when the other states in the region are in charge; that the Massachusetts League shall have full responsibility for inviting other states as guests if the region is not in charge. VOTED: On motion of Miss Jones that the National League Legislative News letters be sent to the local Leagues Legislative chairmen. VOTED: On motion of Miss Jones that copies of letters sent to local chairmen be sent to the local Presidents. Mrs. Earl Dempsey of St. Paul who has come to live in Boston reported on her work organizing a Young Voter's Study Class and the possibility of starting such an organization here. The President asked for recommendations for Membership Chairman and Social Hygiene Chairman. Report of the Bulletin Chairman was read and accepted. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. DeNormandie that chairmen of State Departments and Committees meet in the field with groups of those corresponding local chairmen who find it difficult to come to Boston. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. DeNormandie that we have a meeting of the Board in Springfield some convenient time during the winter. Report of the Living Costs Chairman was given by Mrs. White in absence of Dr. Selekman. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that the Board authorize the expenditure of not more than $50.00 for the Living Costs Committee on the "kit" and that the details be left to the Executive Committee. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that the Board approve a conference arranged by the Living Costs Committee on Living Costs at Wellesley in the Spring. Meeting of the BOARD OF DIRECTORS, Thursday, October 2, 1930. -3- Report of the Government Efficiency Chairman, Mrs. Lewis Pierce Mrs. Rotch made temporary chairman while Mrs. Healy gave her report as Chairman of Organization. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that the Board approve that one Department or Committee chairman present the substance of her program at each meeting of the Board. Report of the Women in Industry chairman, Mrs. Lois B. Rantoul. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that the Board approve Mrs. Rantoul's plan of starting League of Women Voters Clubs in the Y.W.C.A. and that she be allowed to work out details of her plan. A letter was read from Miss Sherwin thanking us for our part in her book. A letter was read from Miss Sherwin thanking us for our part in her book. Report of the chairman of International Co-operation to Prevent War, Mrs. Walter E. Dewey. A letter was read asking us to co-operate with the Institute of the International Problems of the U.S. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. DeNormandie that we co-operate with them with the understanding that we incur no financial expense and that Mrs. Dewey be our representative on their Board. Report of Chairman of Education, Miss Helen M. Kelsey Report of Chairman of Legislation, Mrs. Arthur G. Rotch VOTED: On motion of Mrs. White that we establish a New Voters Committee with Mrs. Earle J. Dempsey as chairman. A letter was read from Mrs. Wise offering her resignation. VOTED: On motion of Mrs. DeNormandie that we do not accept Mrs. Wise's resignation and that we ask her to give us some time on publicity in the afternoons. Meeting adjourned at 12:40 P.M. Respectfully submitted Mrs. Katherine Page Hersey Secretary ADDENDUM By inadvertence on my part the following appreciations of Mrs. Pinkham, received from organizations of which she was a member, were left out of the memorial booklet. They are impressive and should by all means be included with the "praises by comrades." I make amends by adding these pages, to be inserted in the booklet. H.W.P. BOSTON COUNCIL OF SOCIAL AGENCIES Dear Mr. Pinkham: At the annual meeting of the Boston Council of Social Agencies, the following resolution, offered by Mr. William H. Pear, was unanimously, and with deep feeling, adopted. I should like to add to what the resolution says about Mrs. Pinkham a personal word of appreciation of her services to the State, and of her friendship. I cannot tell you how deeply the social workers of Boston appreciated Mrs. Pinkham, and how much they admired her ability. Boston and the State have suffered an irreparable loss in her passing. You and your daughter have the greatest sympathy of all of us. Sincerely yours, ROY M. CUSHMAN, Executive Secretary. January 20, 1930. Resolution adopted at the meeting of January 16, 1930. Since we last met, Wenona Pinkham has finished her work among us and passed on. Hers was a key position. She was our emissary to the legislator and the bearer of our message to the citizen. It was her task to show the way where there seemed to be no way. But she led, and she did it with a force which was almost masculine but was really the more effective because of the feminine grace which was hers. We look upon Wenona Pinkham's vacant chair with sorrow, but we look back with unbounded pride on the service she so ably rendered to the State. WILLIAM H. PEAR. WOMEN'S CITY CLUB OF BOSTON My dear Mr. Pinkham: We of the Women's City Club have been deeply grieved to learn of the loss which has befallen you and us and our old Commonwealth. There is no need for me to attempt to set forth in words our appreciation of Mrs. Pinkham's life and service. Her valiant record is well known to every one. Now as that record closes, the Women's City Club is proud that a part of her interest and devotion has been given to us, and that she has left with us the inspiration of her spirit. We send to you and to your daughter our heartfelt sympathy in your loss. But we feel that your pride in Mrs. Pinkham's life must cast a golden light over your dark sorrow in her death. Surely for her it is the day breaking. Very sincerely, MARY M. LONGFELLOW, Secretary. January 11, 1930. LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, MASSACHUSETTS STATE FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS My dear Mr. Pinkham: At the last meeting of the Legislative Committee of the Massachusetts State Federation of Women's Clubs held on February sixth, it was unanimously voted that they should express their sense of loss in the death of Mrs. Wenona Osborne Pinkham. As a member of this group I was asked to convey their sincere sympathy to you and your family. The vital and understanding interest in all the affairs of the Committee which she showed made her ever an inspiring person to work with, and her knowledge of legislative procedure and her ever clear judgment and vision in regard to the many questions coming up for consideration will make her loss an abiding regret. I am, Very sincerely yours, ELEANOR TUDOR, For the Legislative Committee. WOMEN'S MONDAY LUNCHEON CLUB The Women's Monday Luncheon Club, of which Mrs. Pinkham was a member and former chairman, extends its heartfelt sympathy to Mr. Pinkham and his family in their bereavement. The Luncheon Club is a small and intimate group where the members are in friendly touch with one another. One of the most delightful meetings was that—scarcely a year ago—at which Mrs. Pinkham told the story of her girlhood days. Everyone loved and admired her for her generous personality, her cheery friendliness, and her delightful humor. She had a most wonderful and sympathetic understanding. She was unfailing in her response to those who needed help. She gave herself unsparingly to others, to the causes she served, to her friends and associates, to all who came to her for advice and comfort. She devoted her exceptional powers, her rare executive ability, her skill in leadership, unselfishly to the public service. All who came in close contact with her were strengthened by her cheerful spirit, her kindly wholesome nature. The community is better because she has lived. In thinking of the passing of a life so fine and brave and generous as hers, there should be something more than the feeling of grief over her loss. There should be gratitude for what she did, gratitude for the helpful and ennobling influence she was to many lives, gratitude for the splendid and courageous support she gave to so many movements for the public good. There should be this; and for her sake, courage to go on with the work she was obliged to lay down. FLORA E. BURTON, Chairman. January 14, 1930. LEAGUE OF WOMEN FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE My dear Mr. Pinkham: We were deeply moved to learn of the passing of our friend, Mrs. Pinkham. So much faith and enthusiasm were put into her work and so much was accomplished by her for the good of the Commonwealth at large that she made future generations her debtors. Sincerely yours, SARA VAN B. SCHENCK, President. January 29, 1930. THE PUBLICITY GROUP The Publicity Group of the Boston Council of Social Agencies in meeting assembled voted to express its profound sorrow at the passing of Mrs. Wenona O. Pinkham. Mrs. Pinkham was not only an active member of the Publicity Group but a member of its Executive Committee and deeply interested in the promotion of the interpretation of social work. By authorization of the Group the Chairman of the Committee transmits to the family of Mrs. Pinkham this message of sympathy and it is also ordered that this be spread upon the records of the Organization. FRANK KIERNAN, Chairman. February 7, 1930. MASSACHUSETTS COUNCIL FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY My dear Mr. Pinkham: The members of the executive committee of our organization have asked me to send their expression of deepest sympathy to you and to tell you that Mrs. Pinkham's death is a most serious and irreplaceable loss to them all. To me, personally, Mrs. Pinkham has been by far my greatest source of wisdom and inspiration. More than any other person she has encouraged us in the performance of a difficult task and in innumerable ways she has given invaluable assistance. I am deeply grateful for the privilege of having known and worked with Mrs. Pinkham. I am sure that this will always be an inspiration in any work which I shall undertake. We send the kindest of greetings to you and Louisa. SARA R. EHRMANN. NEWTON CENTRE WOMAN'S CLUB Dear Mr. Pinkham: It is with deep regret that the Newton Centre Woman's Club learned of the death of Mrs. Pinkham, its very capable member. She will be greatly missed. Do accept their deepest sympathy. Very sincerely, ALICE B. ANDREWS. January 8, 1930. Health can be Taught — Teach It [*WOP*] Health can be Bought—Buy It How to be Healthy and Happy, and Grow the Right Size HEALTH PAYS DIVIDENDS DISEASE PILES UP LIABILITIES 35% of our men failed to pass the draft. But, in Massachusetts 47% failed. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University says: "The percentage of defective bodies in both school children and young men drafted for military and naval service has surprised and mortified the American public. It is some consolation that many of the defects and disorders in the school schildren are remediable, but thus far the organization and enforcement of remedial processes are by no means sufficiently general to cope with the existing evil. Most of the attempts at remedy are municipal only. The Nation and the States have not yet attacked the grave problem in earnest. To secure for every child in the country a complete course of physical training is a great national object in war times and peace times alike." WHAT WE NEED 1. In our State Department of Education a Director of Health Education, with local supervisors who shall direct in our Normal and Public Schools courses in simple Health Habits and Physical Activities. (To keep physically fit children must eat right, sleep right, play right.) 2. One or more School Nurses in every town or group of towns. (Under-par children must be brought up to normal. About 10% of our children have adenoids, about 20% mal-nutrition; 95% carious teeth, etc.) But, bills calling for precisely the above needs, though urged by the Departments of Health and of Education were lost last year. They will be lost this year unless Everybody Works. WHAT TO DO Hold a meeting. Pass resolutions. Send them to the press and to your legislators. Form a Local Health Education Committee of leading men and women and wait upon your State Senator and Representatives. Prove to them the local sentiment for these bills, ask for their votes, and send us their replies. Inertia never yet saved anybody but your activity can Give Every School Child a Chance at Health. PLEASE ACT--and write to Health Education Committee, 553 Little Building, Boston, Mass. Inquiries concerning details of bills may be sent to E.T. Hartman, Massachusetts Civic League, 3 Joy Street, Boston, Mass. Telephone Haymarket 2102. BILL I PROPOSED MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH EDUCATION LAW October, 1919 1. The Department of Education, after consultation with State Department of Health, shall establish minimum rules and regulations and courses of instruction for the teaching of Health Education in the public schools and the normal schools of the Commonwealth. This shall include instruction in personal and community health, and in physical activities related to the healthful living and normal recreation. 2. The Commissioner of Education, with the approval of the Board of Education, shall appoint a director of Health Education, with necessary associates, who shall be qualified to supervise and direct the work of Health Education and physical activity. 3. The director of Health Education shall, under the supervision of the Commissioner of Education, work in close cooperation with the school physicians, public health officers and civic agencies in promoting child welfare. 4. The School Committees in cities and towns, or groups of towns, shall appoint a supervisor of health education, with necessary associates, who shall, under the direction of the School Committee, establish, supervise and direct systematic courses of instruction in health and physical activity. 5. Each city and town, or group of towns, shall furnish adequate instruction and supervision to provide each pupil with a minimum of 60 minutes of systematic health instruction, physical exercise, and recess play during each school day. The school committee may arrange for the use of the school buildings and grounds after regular school hours as community centers for the promotion of healthy recreation. 6. The state shall appropriate annually to the State Department of Education a minimum of 3 cents per year per child (6 to 18 years of age) for the promotion, supervision and inspection of health instruction and directed activity. COMMITTEE DR. HARRY A. GARFIELD, Honorary Chairman MRS. WILLIAM TILTON, Chairman DR. WILLIAM HEALY, Treasurer MRS. W. O. PINKHAM, Secretary ADVISORY COMMITTEE Henry Abrahams, Boston Dr. Vanderpoel Adriance, Williamstown Superintendent Hector L. Belisle, Fall River Professor George A. Churchill, Amherst President Kenyon I. Butterfield, Amherst Superintendent Clarence H. Dempsey, Haverhill Dr. Charles W. Eliot, Cambridge Superintendent Michael E. Fitzgerald, Cambridge Dr. George P. Hunt, Pittsfield Joseph Lee, Boston Dr. J.H. McCurdy, Springfield Superintendent Frances McSherry, Holyoke Superintendent John F. Scully, Brockton Dr. Samuel B. Woodward, Worcester Dr. Alfred Worcester, Waltham (President Massachusetts Medical Society) The aforementioned Legislation is approved by the Commissioner of Education, the State Department of Health, Massachusetts Superintendents' Association, Massachusetts Teachers' Federation, etc. etc. BILL I PROPOSED MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH EDUCATION LAW October, 1919 1. The Department of Education, after consultation with State Department of Health, shall establish minimum rules and regulations and courses of instruction for the teaching of Health Education in the public schools and the normal schools of the Commonwealth. This shall include instruction in personal and community health, and in physical activities related to healthful living and normal recreation. 2. The Commissioner of Education, with the approval of the Board of Education, shall appoint a director of Health Education, with necessary associates, who shall be qualified to supervise and direct the work of Health Education and physical activity. 3. The director of Health Education shall, under the supervision of the Commissioner of Education, work in close cooperation with the school physicians, public health officers and civic agencies in promoting child welfare. 4. The School Committees in cities and towns, or groups of towns, shall appoint a supervisor of health education, with necessary associates, who shall, under the direction of the School Committee, establish, supervise and direct systematic courses of instruction in health and physical activity. 5. Each city and town, or group of towns, shall furnish adequate instruction and supervision to provide each pupil with a minimum of 60 minutes of systematic health instruction, physical exercise, and recess play during each school day. The school committee may arrange for the use of the school buildings and grounds after regular school hours as community centers for the promotion of healthy recreation. 6. The state shall appropriate annually to the State Department of Education a minimum of 3 cents per year per child (6 to 18 years of age) for the promotion, supervision and inspection of health instruction and directed activity. PINKHAM later as consulting neurologist to the Lying- In-Hospital, posts which he held continuously to the end of his life. In 1915 he became a member of the neurological department of the Cornell University Medical School, and shortly afterward was appointed instructor in neurology, in which post he was widely known and admired by many college generations of medical students. Upon the entrance of the United States into the World War, Dr. Stephenson volunteered for military service as first lieutenant of the Medical Corps on 8 June, 1918. His first assignment was as neurologist to Base Hospital No. 48 at Fort McHenry, Md. He was promoted to rank of captain on 15 June, 1918, and on 4 July, 1918, sailed for overseas and was stationed at Roanne, France, with his Base Hospital. On 3 Jan., 1919, Dr. Stephenson was transferred to the Fifth Division as Division Psychiatrist. He remained with this Division until it returned to the United States in July, 1919. In February, 1919, Dr. Stephenson was promoted to the rank of major in the United States Medical Corps and was consultant in Neuro- Psychiatry to the Hospital Center at Mar Sur Allier. He was discharged from Camp Upton on 5 Oct., 1919. Upon his return to this country after the cessation of hostilities, he resumed his large and distinguished private practice and continued vigorously in his numerous broad and exacting activities until his sudden death ten years later. Dr. Stephenson's professional affiliations included the American Medical Association and the New York Academy of Medicine, of both of which he was a fellow, and the New York Neurological Society. Dr. Stephenson was also a member of the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Sons of the Revolution, the Masonic Order, the New York Athletic Club, "The Virginians," the Southern Society, and the Phi Chi Fraternity. He married, in New York City, 23 Feb., 1921, Ruth Story, daughter of Henry Walther, a lumber dealer of Rushville, N.Y., who survives him. He is also survived by their two children, Junius Winfield and Walther Story Stephenson. PINKHAM, Wenona Osborn (Mrs. Henry Winn Pinkham), civic worker, b. in Longmont, Colo., 4 Sept. ,1882; d. in Newton Centre, Mass., 8 Jan., 1930, daughter of George E. and Mary Catherine (Morrison) Osborne. Mrs. Pinkham's childhood knew the strenuous environment of pioneer life on the windswept plains of eastern Colorado, where her parents settled when she was five years old. There for several years they struggled with the hardships and loneliness of life in a sod house on the plains, miles from a neighbor and from medical assistance. Mrs. Pinkham daily accompanied her father, who taught in the winter, seven miles to the nearest school. In her playtime she ran wild in the clean outdoor air, gaining that glowing health PINKHAM and strength which characterized her throughout her life. When she was eleven years old her family gave up pioneering and moved to Denver, and there she was graduated from the high school, and was completing a course in the Denver Normal School when the death of her father left her the chief support of her mother and five younger brothers and sisters. She obtained a teaching appointment in the public schools, where she served for five years as grade teacher, three years as assistant principal and two years as high school teacher, while at the same time, for eight years of this period, she studied in the evenings and on Saturdays at the University of Denver, by which in 1910, she was awarded the A.B. degree. Inasmuch as the State of Colorado had introduced woman's suffrage in 1893, Mrs. Pinkham had grown up in an atmosphere of women's rights, and had taken the political liberty of her sex for granted. Accordingly, upon her marriage and subsequent removal to Boston, Mass., in 1912, she felt unjustly deprived of her privileges in this respect, and threw herself with characteristic vigor into the work of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, where her great administrative gifts and powers of leadership were speedily recognized by her associates. From 1913 to 1915 she served as state chairman of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1917 became executive secretary of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association, later the Boston League of Women Voters, and held this post until 1923. An effective speaker and an unsurpassed executive and organizer, she had a large part in 1918 in defeating John W. Weeks as United States Senator on the issue of woman suffrage. In 1923 Mrs. Pinkham became executive secretary of the Massachusetts Civic League, an organization established for the purpose of educating public opinion in the interest of civic reform and advance, working for the passage of enlightened legislation, and maintaining public interest in law enforcement. The league is non-partisan, non-sectarian, and open to men and women throughout the state. Its organization at the time of Mrs. Pinkham's connection with it included committees on child welfare, billboards, delinquency and crime, education, kindergartens, housing and town planning, legislation and administration, membership, public health, public service, streets and alleys, and a committee to obtain the appointment of more women in the administration and enforcement of law. In 1929 the league brought about the appointment of a Massachusetts Commission to Revise the Children's Laws, which was considered by Mrs. Pinkham to be one of the most important measures, from a social standpoint, ever achieved by the organization. It was Mrs. Pinkham's especial responsibility to plan what work the league should chiefly devote itself 384 STRATEMEYER pioneer in the utilization of the new field of modern invention as a subject for boys' adventure stories. Tales of a Jules Verne nature, in modern style, dealing with airplanes, submarines, wireless telegraphy and other similar inventions, marvelous at that time, but with sufficient basis in contemporary fact to be plausible, he made the basis of a group of books known as the "Tom Swift Series", which met instantaneous success and sold additional millions of copies. He was also among the first of the juvenile writers to introduce foreign backgrounds into his stories, describing scenes in far countries with a vividness and authenticity of detail which made necessary extensive reading and study. The Pan-American Series, the Motor Boys, the Dave Porter Series, the Putman Hall Series, the Mexican Border Series, "The American Boys' Life of William McKinley" and "The American Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt" are a few of the most noted among the dozens of other books and series of which he was the author, and which enjoyed a total sale of more than 12,000,000 clothbound volumes. Mr. Stratemeyer's books have been sold and eagerly welcomed by young readers in every corner of the earth, from Canada and Great Britain to Australia and South Africa. Thousands of letters from boys and girls constantly poured in upon him, expressing their approval and asking for further information concerning the characters in the various stories. It may be truly said that there are few authors in the world whose influence has been so widespread, and whose passing will leave so great a void in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of children. At the time of his death Mr. Stratemeyer was deeply interested in a series of stories of baseball, a game about which he was very enthusiastic, which described the rise of a team of sand-lot players through school and college until they were a member of one of the big leagues, and included descriptions of numerous accurate and carefully worked out games. Beside this, he covered in stories nearly every form of sport, and keenly enjoyed working out mystery plots. He also at various times planned out series for girls and for younger children, keeping the characters wide-awake and interesting. Early in his career Mr. Stratemeyer made the acquaintance of his boyhood heroes, Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger, Jr., and had the interesting experience of completing for both of them several books left unfinished at the time of their deaths. It may be said, however, that it is to his credit, rather than to theirs, that the content of juvenile literature has been changed within the last thirty years from the old fashioned moralistic and "Sunday School" stories to tales of adventure, travel, invention and sports popular with boys of today. Mr. Stratemeyer contributed freely to many enterprises and charitable organizations devoted to STEPHENSON young people's work. He also established several Sunday School libraries. He was a member of the Author's League, as well as of the National Geographic Society, the New Jersey Historical Society and the Roseville Athletic Association. He married, in Newark, N.J., 25 Mar., 1891, Magdalene, daughter of Silas Van Camp. Mr. and Mrs. Stratemeyer had two daughters, Harriet, now Mrs. Russell V. Adams, and Edna C. Stratemeyer. STEPHENSON, Junius Winfield, physician and neurologist, b. in Huntington, Prince George County, Va., 22 May, 1885; d. in Pelham, N. Y., 8 Mar., 1930, son of Junius Winfield and Rosa Estelle (Harrison) Stephenson. Dr. Stephenson's father, the elder Dr. Stephenson (21 Apr., 1856 - 16 Mar., 1889), was a prominent physician and citizen of Huntington, Va., where until his promising career was cut short by his premature death at the age of thirty-two, he played an active part in the civic and political affairs of the community, serving for some years as superintendent of public schools and as chairman of the local Democratic party. He married the daughter of Richard Marks Harrison, a farmer of Huntington, and through herd their son, Junius Winfield Stephenson, traced his descent from the Revolutionary patriot, Benjamin Harrison, an early member of the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress. The line is traced through his son, Robert Harrison; his son, Robert, 2nd; his son Robert, 3rd; his son, William Hardiman; and his son, Richard Marks Harrison, Dr. Stephenson's maternal grandfather. Dr. Stephenson lived in Virginia throughout his boyhood, and attended local private schools, including Miss Harrison's School and the Anderson School. He completed his college preparation at the Petersburg High School in 1903, receiving a medal for brilliant scholarship at the time of his graduation. The following fall he entered the Medical College of Virginia, where he was elected to the honorary medical fraternity of Phi Mu and received the M.D. degree in 1907. Dr. Stephenson served a general internship at Memorial Hospital in Richmond, Va. He was engaged in the general practice of medicine for a short period of time in Toano, Va., before he became a member of the staff of Harrison's Sanatorium on Long Island. From there he sought an appointment at the Neurological Institute of New York. After serving his internship he established himself successfully in the private practice of his specialty and engaged in graduate work in Neurology at Cornell University Medical College, where he was a member of the Phi Chi Fraternity. At this time he received appointment as associate neurologist to the Neurological Institute and Bellevue Hospital, and 383 PINKHAM itself to from season to season, to coordinate and present to the public the undertakings the league sponsored, and the results of investigations made by others, and to maintain the executive offices in which all these activities centered, besides attending committee meetings, representing the league at innumerable conferences, and speaking before citizen groups and organizations. She was also responsible for the publication of "The Lens", a quarterly periodical informing members of the league concerning issues at hand and work accomplished, besides preparing personally the constant stream of bulletins presenting the various phases of the league's work. She was also the director of the Town Room, housing the sociological library of the organization, one corner of which was set off as her office by dark oak panelings. The library is one of the best collections of its kind in Boston, and is largely used for reference by students and research workers. At her untimely death by a paralytic shock Mrs. Pinkham held an undisputed position as one of the leading figures in the civic life of the state. Her wise and efficient and inspiring powers of persuasion and leadership, her ability as an organizer, and her broad knowledge of social conditions and needs led to her appointment to many posts of a social or civic nature. She served at various times as a member of the Advisory Committee on Women and Children in the Massachusetts State Department of Labor and Industry, the Advisory Council on Crime Prevention of the State Department of Correction, the executive committee of the State Conference of Social Work, the legislative committee of the Greater Boston Federation of Churches, and the National Council of the National Economic League. She was noted for her success as a lobbyist for legislation for such causes as prison reform, children's welfare, playgrounds, school nurses, juvenile courts, law enforcement, and road house and night camp regulation. Her professional affiliations included the American Association of Social Workers, the Consumers' League of Massachusetts, the Joint Industrial Committee, the League of Nations Association, the League of Women Voters, the Monday Evening Club, the Massachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene, and the Women's Trade Union League. She was also an active member of the Women's Club of Newton Centre, Mass., the town where she made her home, and a member of the Women's City Club of Boston and of the Boston Ethical Society. Despite the remendous demands of her life of service to the community, Mrs. Pinkham found time to be a devoted wife and mother and a gracious and charming hostess. Her death called forth universal tribute not only to her achievements but to the strength and beauty of her character and personality. One of the most PARSONS revealing of these was a brief eulogy written by her friend and associate, Mrs. Elizabeth H. Tilton, and appearing in the "Boston Evening Transcript" of 10 Jan., 1930, which we reproduce herewith: "In the death of Mrs. Wenona Pinkham this Commonwealth loses a great public servant. To those of us who worked closely with her, it hardly seemed credible that one woman could carry so many great qualities: steady, sane judgment, the power to get on with every sort of person, to win and hold their respect and love; independence of action, espousing the unpopular as well as the popular; great power to make workers of all those about her; unselfish and self-spending beyond belief. Cause after cause in this State tonight is retarded because her animating, thorough touch is withdrawn: the Governor's child welfare program, the smoke nuisance, kindergartens, juvenile delinquency, the raising of the school age, protective work for youth along our State roads, the regulation of over-night camps,--these were simply some of the things that she was steadily pushing forward. In fullest measure she was a wife, a mother, a friend, a social worker, a public servant. To those who knew her this praise is not exaggerated. It is the simple truth; hers was a nature of abounding parts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has lost one of its greatest public servants." Mrs. Pinkham married, in Colorado Springs, Colo., 24 Nov., 1911, the Reverend Henry Winn Pinkham, a Unitarian minister of Denver, Colo., son of the Reverend N.J. Pinkham of Connecticut. They had one daughter, Louisa Catherine, born 22 Sept., 1915, who, with Mr. Pinkham, survives. Two brothers of Mrs. Pinkham are also living; one, Dwight H. Osborne, in business in Denver, and the other, George E. Osborne, a professor in the law school of Stanford University, Cal. PARSONS, Walter Wood, insurance executive, b. in Hooick Falls, N.Y., 3 Feb., 1874, son of James Russell and Ellen Edgerton (Hinsdill) Parsons. Mr. Parsons comes of old colonial stock on both sides of the family. The first American representative of the paternal line was Samuel Parsons (b. 1630), a native of Hereford, England, who came to this country in 1650 and settled in East Hampton, Long Island. Some years later he removed to Springfield, Mass., where he died 6 July, 1714. The family line was continued through his son, Seth (1665 - September, 1725); his son, John (1706 - 1793), and his second wife, Phebe (Mulford) Chatfield; their son, Seth (b. 1749); and his son, Seth, the grandfather of our subject. As a young man Seth Parsons removed to Hoosick Falls, N. Y., where he achieved a position of singular prominence in the life of the community. In 1822, he was appointed the first postmaster of the village, and, at the time 385 [left column] PARSONS of its incorporation on 14 Apr., 1827, was selected as the first president. His son, James Russell (14 Oct., 1830 - 22 June, 1899), who gained wide recognition as an engineer and manufacturer, received his scientific training in Brown University, which he entered with the class of 1854. He did not, however, proceed to graduation, but as soon as he had mastered the fundamental principles of engineering, set out upon the actual practice of his profession. His most noteworthy achievement in the field of engineering was the construction of the Rome, Watertown and Ogdensburg Railway through the north central part of New York State. Shortly after the completion of that important undertaking he became associated with his brother-in-law, Walter A. Wood, a successful manufacturer of modern farm machinery, and, in 1855, they organized the Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping Machine Company, with Mr. Parsons as vice-president. This company soon established an international reputation for the excellence of its products, which were awarded the highest prizes at fairs and expositions throughout the United States and Europe. Mr. Parsons married Ellen Edgerton Hinsdill, whose father, Normal Hinsdill, was a prominent educator in Bennington, Vt. Through his mother Walter Wood Parsons traces his ancestry to another pre-Revolutionary family, first represented in America by John and Richard Edgerton, who, in 1632, settled in Saybrook, Conn. John Edgerton later returned to England, but his younger brother remained in this country, thus becoming the founder of the American branch of the family. In 1668, Richard Edgerton took the oath as one of the thirty-nine freemen of Norwich, Conn., and for a number of years thereafter figured prominently in the civic and political affairs of that community. In 1672, he was elected fence-viewer, and, in 1676, was honored with the office of townsman. He married, 7 Apr., 1653, Mary Sylvester, and they had a son, Samuel (1670 - 1748), who married, 18 Apr., 1703, Alice (b. 17 Sept., 1683), the daughter of Joshua and Hannah (Bradford) Ripley. Mrs. Ripley was the daughter of Major William Bradford, the son of Governor William Bradford, of Plymouth, Mass. Thus Mr. Parsons is a direct descendant of William Bradford, first governor of Massachusetts. Walter Wood Parsons prepared for college at St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and, in 1892, entered Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., from which he was graduated A.B. in 1896. Immediately after his graduation he became associated with Mather and Company, prominent marine insurance brokers and average adjusters, of New York City, with whom he continued for a period of ten years. On 12 Jan., 1909, he joined the Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company as assistant to the president, and since that time he has 386 [right column] PALMER been intimately connected with the progress of the organization. On 4 Jan., 1911, he was promoted to the office of second vice-president of the company, and on 9 Feb., 1915, he was elected vice-president, the position he retained for the succeeding fifteen years. On 11 Feb., 1930, he became president of the company, the post he now occupies. For many years Mr. Parsons has enjoyed an enviable reputation as an authority of unusual ability in the field of marine insurance. He is a member of the board of managers of the American Marine Insurance Syndicates; vice-president and a member of the board of managers of the American Bureau of Shipping; and a director of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters, the United States Salvage Association, Incorporated, and the Board of Underwriters of New York. He is also a trustee of the Bank of New York and Trust Company. Aside from his numerous business responsibilities, he is actively interested in benevolent work for seamen, and is a member of the board of managers of the Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York and the Seamen's Church Institute. His club memberships include the Down Town Association, and the University and Church clubs of New York City. He also belongs to the American and National Geographic societies. Mr. Parsons married, at Great Neck, Long Island, 5 June, 1901, May Hall, the daughter of the late H.C. Childs, a prosperous merchant, of New York City. They had two children: Harris Childs, and Emily Parsons. PALMER, William Irving, lumber dealer, b. in Winchester, Mass., 1 Mar., 1869; d. there, 7 Feb., 1929, son of Irving Stevens and Eugenia Elizabeth (Parker) Palmer. Mr. Palmer's name is a distinguished one among those of the early settlers of New England. The first pioneer member of his direct line, William Palmer, came to the New World from England on the ship "Fortune" in 1621, and with his son, also named William, and his wife, Frances, who followed two years later on the ship "Anne", joined the Mayflower Colony in Plymouth, where he lived until his death. Mr. Palmer's father, the late Irving Stevens Palmer (15 Nov., 1838 - 19 Sept., 1911), a prominent business man and lumber merchant of Winchester, was throughout his life the treasurer and chief owner of the old Charlestown firm of Palmer and Parker, mahogany importers, which was established by his father-in-law, Harrison Parker, in 1833, and which at the present time claims the distinction of being the oldest manufacturer of mahogany woodwork in the world. The elder Mr. Palmer moved to Winchester from New Hampshire, from which state, in his early manhood, he had served with distinction through the Civil War as sergeant in the First New Hampshire Light Artillery. His son, William Irving Palmer, was closely [next page] WENONA OSBORNE PINKHAM Rare indeed are lives as fruitful in ways that benefit the world as that of Wenona Osborne Pinkham whose death, in the midst of its fullest activity, has brought a profound sense of grief to the community and an almost shattering loss to the causes for which she labored. To her many friends and co-workers comes the spontaneous impulse to make concrete recognition of her devoted service to civic and social ends and of her helpfulness in every human need. Those who have watched the illumination of Mrs. Pinkham's countenance at the sight or thought of her only child or who have shared in her deep concern for her daughter's future feel that the most fitting memorial is a fund to ensure ample provision for Louisa's education through her school and college years. Such a memorial seems the natural fulfilment of a trust left to us by her mother. The privilege of sharing in the establishment of this memorial fund is offered to all whose lives have been enriched by the inspiration of Mrs. Pinkham's wonderful personality. Mrs. Julius Andrews Mrs. Jessie D. Hodder Miss Alice Stone Blackwell Mr. Joseph Lee Mrs. Glendower Evans Miss Florence Luscomb Mrs. J. Murray Forbes Mr. Herbert C. Parsons Mrs. Robert F. Herrick Miss Frances G. Curtis Mrs Wenona Osborn Pinkham (film w. 13 7) 7 x 9 Wenona Osborne Pinkham May 19, 1919. To the Delegates and Alternates of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association: In view of the fact that many delegates have been personally visited and urged to defeat Mrs. Pinkham for Clerk of the Mass. Woman Suffrage Association, we desire to present the following facts. Mrs. Pinkham has been nominated only for Clerk, an unpaid position, and is not a candidate for the entirely separate position of Executive Secretary. We consider the attacks made upon her - that she is lacking in loyalty to America and given to dangerous radicalism, - utterly without foundation and intended merely for political purposes. We would call to your attention that similar attacks upon Mrs. Pinkham were made last year just before the annual election; that a whole year has passed and nothing further has been heard of such charges until the approach of another election; that these charges have never been breathed by any others besides this small suffrage group, not even by the anti-suffragists themselves, ever ready as they are to seize upon the smallest ground for attack; that last year the Association after hearing all the evidence presented voted that it considered these charges to be without foundation; and that these attacks have failed utterly to impair Mrs. Pinkham's effectiveness as a suffrage worker, as is demonstrated beyond question by the remarkable record of work accomplished by the Boston Equal Suffrage Association during the past year under her direction and inspiration. Such being the case, we consider it regrettable that the elections of our Association every year should be involved in charges such as these. This most critical year of ratification or defeat calls for the greatest possible loyalty to suffrage without regard to personal considerations and it requires that we should elect the strongest possible women to the Board. We believe Mrs. Pinkham's election would make possible a more effective cooperation between the Massachusetts and the Boston Associations, would add to the State Board a woman of sound judgment and rare ability, and would further strengthen the Board by giving it the benefit of her many years of experience in suffrage work at the very time when members of ripe experience are most needed. Alice Stone Blackwell Mary Livermore Barrows (Mrs. Malcolm D.) Louise Merritt Parker (Mrs. George H.) 1213 Beacon Street, Brookline, May 5, 1918. Dear Delegate to the State Convention: Wenona Osborne Pinkham is candidate for First Vice-President of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. She is undoubtedly one of the ablest women in this state and as an organizer is remarkable. Added to her executive ability is a largeness of vision and a gentleness that make her greatly beloved. She has the gift of not only calling forth the devotion of those working with her but of bringing back to the field many who have left it. I am chairman of the War Service Committee of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association of which she is Executive Secretary. Devoting my time entirely to war work, and believing firmly that to win the war is now our first duty, I should like to say to you that Mrs. Pinkham in the past year and at the present time is the best worker that I have yet seen. Her work with the Boston Public Safety Committee, her planning and warm support of the Boston Association war program, has brought to that organization a co-operation and good feeling from other organizations and from the City authorities such as few suffrage organizations have secured. Mrs. Pinkham believes and supports President Wilson in his war aims, and I am sure that she is as warm a patriot as you or I. There has been objection to Mrs. Pinkham on the ground that she has a leaning toward pacifism; but it seems to me that if the Boston Public Safety Committee feels confident enough of her loyalty after investigation, which I am told by the Executive Secretary has been made, to ask her to serve on the Executive Committee of Fifteen for the co-ordination and direction of war work of the women's organizations in Boston; and if the Federal Government is willing to call steadily upon an organization with an executive secretary who is responsible for most of its work to do important public service like the Hoover Registration and the Child Welfare Canvass; and if during the year of her office, it has not been deemed wise by the anti-suffragists to attack us for having her, the suffragists should be the last to object. In addition to this, Mrs. Pinkham has served as Second Vice-President for the year since the war began and is the logical candidate for the First Vice-Presidency. I sincerely hope that you will give her your warm support and your vote. Yours very sincerely, Evelyn Beverley Coe- P. S. If you do not go to the Convention, will you please give this material to your alternate. E.P.C. NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION BRANCH OF INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE AND OF NATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN MRS. CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT, President NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS, 171 MADISON AVENUE TELEPHONE, 4818 MURRAY HILL NEW YORK 1ST VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. STANLEY MCCORMICK, MASS. 2ND VICE-PRESIDENT MISS MARY GARRET HAY, NEW YORK 3RD VICE-PRESIDNET MRS. GUILDFORD DUDLEY, TENNESSEE 4TH VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. RAYMOND BROWN, NEW YORK 5TH VICE-PRESIDENT MRS. HELEN GARDENER, WASHINGTON, D.C. TREASURER MRS. HENRY WADE ROGERS, CONNECTICUT CORRESPONDING SECRETARY MRS. FRANK J. SHULER, NEW YORK RECORDING SECRETARY MRS. HALSEY W. WILSON, NEW YORK [LOGO]429 PRESS DEPARTMENT MISS ROSE YOUNG, Director 171 Madison Ave., New York DIRECTORS MRS. CHARLES H. BROOKS, Kansas MRS. J.C. CANTRILL, Kentucky MRS. RICHARD E. EDWARDS, Indiana MRS. GEORGE GELLHORN, Missouri MRS. BEN HOOPER, Wisconsin MRS. ARTHUR LIVERMORE, New York MISS ESTHER G. OGDEN, New York MRS. GEORGE A. PIERSOL, Pennsylvania January 24th, 1921. Mrs. Wenona Osborn Pinkham, 552 Little Building, Boston, Massachusetts My dear Mrs. Pinkham:- This is to acknowledge the receipt of your leaflet which I think is fine. I am not any longer in the business of distributing literature or I should want some of them. I am glad you got it out. Most cordially yours, Carrie Chapman Catt President Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.