Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/180

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CHURCHILL.
CHURCHILL.
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larger and larger ones, until she had charge of the most important station belonging to the road that employed her. She next mastered stenography without a teacher and practiced it for a time. In LIDE A. CHURCHILL. 1889 Rev. Charles A. Dickinson, who is at the head of Berkeley Temple, Boston, desired a private secretary for stenographic and literary work, and offered the position to Miss Churchill, who accepted it. Its duties demand knowledge, skill, tact and literary ability. Miss Churchill has written and published continuously during all the years she has been engaged as telegrapher and literary secretary. Her first book, "My Girls" (Boston, 18821 has passed through several editions. She has also written " Interweaving" and "Raid on New England." She has clone much good magazine work.


LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. CHURCHILL, Lady Randolph, social leader and politician, wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, of England, is a native of the United Suites. She was born in Brooklyn, N. Y. Her maiden name was Jennie Jerome, daughter of Leonard Jerome, a prominent citizen of New York City Miss Jerome and her two sisters were educated mainly in Paris, France, where they were thoroughly taught in all the accomplishments common to wealthy women of the time. While visiting the Isle of Wight. England, Miss Jerome met Lord Randolph Churchill, who was then known simply as the second son of the Duke of Marlborough. Their acquaintance ripened to love, engagement followed, and in January, 1874, they were married at the British Embassy in Paris. Lord Randolph's political career began immediately after his marriage, when he entered the House of Commons as a member from Woodstock. Lady Churchill entered into her husband's plans and aspirations with all her native energy and determination, and to her assistance and counsel is credited much of his success in Parliament. Lady Randolph was one of the first members of the Primrose League, the organization of the Conservatives, and it is largely due to her efforts that in Great Britain the order can boast of nearly 2,000 habitations. Lady Churchill is an effective worker in political campaigns, and she has thoroughly mastered all the intricacies of British politics. Besides her activity in politics, Lady Churchill devotes much well-directed effort to art and charity, and in British society she is looked upon as a great force. Born in the Republic, she illustrates the self-adapting power of the genuine American in the ease with which she has taken up and mastered the difficult and delicate problems implied in her situation as a wife of a peer of the English realm.


CLAFLIN, Mrs. Adelaide Avery, woman suffragist, born in Boston, Mass , 28th July, 1846. She is a daughter of Alden Avery and Luanda Miller Brown, both natives of Maine, and both of English extraction, although there is a little Scotch-Irish blood on the Miller side. Narcissa Adelaide was the second of four children. Her father, although an active business man, had much poetical and religious feeling. He is a prominent member of the Methodist Church, and, on account of his eloquence, was often in earlier life advised to become a minister. Her mother, of a practical, common-sense temperament, had much appreciation of nature and of scientific fact, and a gift for witty and concise expression of thought. So from both parents Mrs. Claflin has derived the ability to speak with clearness and epigrammatic force. Adelaide was sixteen when she was graduated from the Boston girls' high school, and a year or two later she became a teacher in the Winthrop school. Although in childhood attending the Methodist Church with their parents, both her sister and herself early adopted the so-called liberal faith, and joined the church of Rev. James Freeman Clarke. She became the wife of Frederic A. Claflin,