CRAIG, Mrs. Charity Rusk, national president of the Woman's Relief Corps, was born in Morgan county. Ohio, about 1851, and went with her parents to Wisconsin when about three years of age. Her father is Jeremiah M. Rusk, ex-governor of Wisconsin and a member of President Harrison's cabinet. Her mother's maiden name was Mary Martin, the present wife of the secretary of agriculture being her step-mother. At the age of thirteen years Charily Rusk entered a Catholic school. St. Clare Academy, where she remained for one year. She then entered a private school in Madison, Wis., and from that went to the University of Wisconsin, where she was graduated and afterward continued Latin and literature. She has had systematic studies every year since she left school, not neglecting them even during the four years spent in Washington, D. C., when her father was a member of Congress, and he had a brilliant social career. In 1875 she became the wife of a classical student of the Wisconsin University, Elmer H. Craig. They spent a year in Milwaukee, Wis., and a year in Boston, Mass. Mr. Craig was connected with the United States Pension Department. Resigning his position in order to connect himself with the banking firm of Lindeman & Rusk, he moved to Viroqua, Wis. where Mrs. Craig has since been the center of a coterie of distinguished people. In Viroqua is the Rusk homestead, which in summer is always sought by the Secretary of Agriculture and his family and more intimate friends. Mrs. Craig, after having long been quite prominently identified with various local charities and conspicuously interested in women's organizations, became a charter member of the Woman's Relief Corps, auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic. She was first president of
CHARITY RUSK CRAIG.
the corps in Viroqua, then president of the State department, and was finally elected the national president. While serving as department president, she visited many places in the State for the purpose of awakening the interest of the Woman's Relief Corps and the G. A. R. in the Veterans' Home in Waupaca. Wis. As national president she consolidated the work and introduced a new system of accounts, which was more successful. She was instrumental in extending the work into the new States, and laid the foundations for a wide increase of membership. She is a model presiding officer, conducting the deliberations of a large convention with grace and dignity. She admits that she likes to talk to bodies of women.
CRANE, Mrs. Mary Helen Peck, church and temperance worker, born in Wilkes barre, Pa.,
MARY HELEN PECK CRANE.
10th April, 1S27. She was the only daughter of Rev. George Peck, D. D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the well-known author and editor. She became the wife of the late Rev. Jonathan Townsley Crane, D. D., when twenty years of age, and was the mother of fourteen children. She was a devoted wife and mother and was energetic in assisting her husband in his work in the church and among the poor. Mrs. Crane was an ardent temperance worker and, as her children grew up, she devoted much time to the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Crane delivered addresses on several occasions before the members of the New Jersey Legislature, when temperance bills were pending, and she greatly aided the men who were lighting to secure good laws. As the pioneer of press-work by women at the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting, she did valuable work, and her reports for the New York "Tribune" and the New York Associated Press, during the last ten years of the great religious and temperance gatherings at the noted Mecca of the Methodists, are models of their kind. For about ten years she was the State superintendent of press for New Jersey of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She wrote several leaflets that were of great value to the press-workers of the local
