War and was reelected and served seven years. Mrs. Coolidge was delicate in childhood, and her philanthropic spirit was early shown in flower-mission and hospital work in Boston. For several years she was instructed at home, and she was sent to the private boarding-school of Dr. Dio Lewis, of Lexington, Mass. In November, 1872, Harriet Abbott Lincoln became the wife of George A. Coolidge, a publishing agent of Boston. With maternal duties came the untiring devotion of conscientious motherhood. Mrs. Coolidge gave her children her best thoughts and studied closely the best methods of infant hygiene. She soon began a series of illustrated articles for the instruction of mothers in a New York magazine, and while residing in that city studied for three years and visited the hospitals for children. Ill health obliged her to return to Washington, D. C, where, before going to New York, she was interested in charities and hospitals for children. Meeting the mothers of both the rich and the poor, and seeing the great need of intelligent care in bringing up little children, she soon found a large correspondence on her hands. Her devotion to the waifs of the Foundling Hospital in Washington, and the great hygienic reformation she brought about, gave that institutional record of no deaths among its inmates during the six months she acted as a member of its executive board of officers. Frequent inquiries from mothers desiring information on hygienic subjects relating to children suggested the idea of a series of nursery talks to mothers and the fitting up of a model nursery in tier residence, where every accessory of babyhood could be practically presented. "Nursery Talks" were inaugurated by a "Nursery Tea," and five-hundred women from official and leading circles were present. Classes were formed, and a paid course and a free one made those lectures available for all desiring information. Even into midsummer, at the urgent request of mothers, Mrs. Coolidge continued to give her mornings to answering questions. She remained in Washington during the summer, guiding those who did not know how to feed their infants proper food, and, as a consequence, her health was impaired, and she was obliged to give up her nursery lectures until her health was restored. She then commenced a scientific course of hygienic study, and was made president of the Woman's Clinic, where women and children are treated by women physicians, free of charge or for a mere trine. Mrs. Coolidge is always busy. She is an active member of four of the leading charity organizations in Washington, a valued member of the Woman's National Press Association and devoted to every movement in which women's higher education is considered.
COOLIDGE, Susan, see Woolsey, Miss Sarah Channing.
COOPER, Mrs. Sarah Brown Ingersoll, educator, author and evangelist, born in Cazenovia, N. Y., 12th December, 1836. She was graduated from the Cazenovia Seminary in 1853. She subsequently attended the Troy Female Seminary. When but fourteen years of age she opened a Sunday-school class in a village adjoining Cazenovia, and that class was the germ which finally grew into a church congregation. When she started her school some of the committeemen came to her and told her that, while they believed her to be qualified in every way to teach, at the same time they would all like it better if she would go home and lengthen her skirts. When twelve years old, she appeared in print in the village paper, the "Madison County Whig," and from that time to the present she has been more or less engaged in literary work on papers and magazines. After her graduation from college she went to Augusta, Ga., as a governess in the family of Governor Schley. On the Governor's plantation there were five-hundred or more slaves, and Mrs. Cooper, then Miss Ingersoll, used to gather them about her to teach them the Scriptures. While in Augusta she became the wife of Halsey Fenimore Cooper, also a Cazenovia Seminary graduate, who had been appointed by President Pierce to the office of surveyor and inspector of the port of Chattanooga. Mr. and Mrs. Cooper were living in Chattanooga at the breaking out of the Civil War, but soon after removed to Memphis, where Mr. Cooper was appointed assessor of internal revenue. There Mrs. Cooper was elected president of the Society for the Aid of Refugees. She taught a large Bible class, which comprised from one to three hundred soldiers. In 1869 she removed with her husband to California. Her first Bible class in San Francisco was in the Howard Presbyterian Church, where Dr. Scudder was filling
SARAH BROWN INGERSOLL COOPER.
the pulpit. From there she went to the Calvary Presbyterian Church, and still later opened the class in the First Congregational Church. That class numbered over three-hundred members and embraced persons representing every sect, including even those of the Jewish and the Roman Catholic faith. While the credit of establishing the first free kindergarten in San Francisco is due to Prof. Felix Adler and a few of his friends, yet the credit of the extraordinary growth of the work is almost entirely due to Mrs. Cooper, who paid a visit to the Silver street free kindergarten in November, 1878, and from that moment became the leader of the kindergarten work and the friend of the training school for kindergarten teachers. The rapid growth of the free kindergarten system in California had its first impulse in six articles written by Mrs. Cooper for the San Francisco " Bulletin " in 1879. The first of these was entitled "The Kindergarten, a Remedy for Hoodlumism," and was of vital
