Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/146

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attends to a large amount of teaching, as in years gone by. In her own school she superintends the instruction. She gives class lessons daily for two hours in the Young Women's Christian Association, and, until recently, when her text-book on shorthand was selected for use in the evening schools of the City of New York, she conducted the free evening class in shorthand in Cooper Union. Mrs. Hurnz has been twice married, has had four children, and is the grandmother of eight.


MARY TOWNE BURT. BURT, Mrs. Mary Towne, temperance reformer, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, of English-American parentage. Her father, Thomas Towne, was educated in England for the ministry. After the death of her father, which occurred in her early childhood, her mother removed with her three children to Auburn. N. Y., where Mrs. Hurt received a liberal education, passing through the public schools and the Auburn Young Ladies' Institute. Four vears after leaving school she became the wife of Edward Burt, of Auburn. When the crusade opened, in 1887. Mrs. Burt began her work for temperance, which has continued without intermission, with the exception of seven months spent in the sick reform of her sister, Mrs. Pomeroy. So deeply was she stirred by the crusade that on 24th March, 1874, she addressed a great audience in the Auburn Opera House on temperance. Immediately after that, Mrs. Burt was elected president of the Auburn Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and served for two years. She was a delegate to the first national convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1874, was one of the secretaries of that body, and in the next national convention, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Was elected assistant recording secretary. In the year 1876. in the Newark, N. J., national convention, she was elected a member of the publishing committee of the "Woman's Temperance Union," the first official organ of the National union. She was afterwards made chairman of that committee and publisher of the paper. During the year 1877 she served as managing editor. At her suggestion the name "Our Union" was given to the paper, a name which it held until its consolidation with the "Signal," of Chicago, when it took the name of the "Union Signal." In Chicago, in 1877, she was elected corresponding secretary of the National Union, which office she held for three years, and during that term of office she opened the first headquarters of the National union in the Bible House, New York City. In 1882 she was elected president of the New York State Union, a position which she still holds. During the year* of her presidency the Stale union has increased from five-thousand to twenty-one-thousand members and from 17910 842 local unions, and in work, membership and organization stands at the head of the forty-lour States of the National union. Mrs. Hurt, with her husband and son. resides in New York. She is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.


JENNIE BURCHFIELD BUSH. BUSH, Mrs. Jennie Burchfield, author, born in Meadville. Pa., 28th of April, 1858. She is of Scotch, English and Irish descent. Her father w as lames Burchfield. a prominent journalist of Meadville and a brilliant Writer. Her mother, Sarah M. Coburn, also a journalist, was a woman of poetic temperament. The daughter was placed in the State Normal School in Edinburgh, Pa., at the age of six years, and remained there until she was sixteen years old. In 1875 she went to Augusta, Kara., where her mother was living, and she has been since then a resident of that State. She became the wife, on the 21st October. 1877, of A. T. Bush, a well-known stockman, of Louisville, Ky. Her family consists of two sons. Mrs. Bush was unconscious of her poetical powers until a few years ago. Since writing her first poem she has made a thorough study of the art of poetic expression. She has published extensively in newspapers and periodicals. Her literary work, while mainly poetical, includes a number of short stories and several serials. Her home in Wichita is an ideal one.


BUSHNELL, Miss Kate, physician and evangelist, born in Peru, Ill., 5th February, 1856. She is a descendant of a prominent family that traces its ancestors to John Rogers, the Smithfield martyr. She received a public-school education in her native State and attended the Northwestern University, in Evanston, III. Selecting the medical profession, she became n private pupil of Dr. James S. Jewell, the noted specialist in nerve diseases. Later she finished her medical education in the Chicago Woman's Medical College, was graduated M. D., and became a resident physician in the Hospital for Women and Children. She then went to China, and for nearly three years remained in that country as a medical missionary. Returning to America, she established herself as a physician in Denver, Col. In 1885, complying with earnest requests from the leaders, Dr. Bushnell gave up her practice and entered the field as an evangelist in the social-purity department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. It was she who laid the foundation of the Anchorage Mission in Chicago, Ill., an institution which has done great good for abandoned women, giving over five- thousand lodgings to women in one year. In 1888 Dr. Bushnell visited the dens and stockades in northern Wisconsin, where women were held in debasing slavery. That undertaking was heroic in its nature, for she took her life in her hand when she dated the opposition of those she encountered. Fearless and undaunted, she finished her investigations, and her report made to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union startled the reading public by