Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/374

Church since childhood, her work has always been with young people, with whom she is very popular.

HEAD, Mrs. Ozella Shields, author, born in Macon, Ga., 19th October, 1869. Her maiden OZELLA SHIELDS HEAD. name was Shields. She was reared and educated in Atlanta, Ga., and she is a thorough Georgian in heart as well as by birth. Her taste for literature and her talent for production were shown in childhood, when she wrote a number of love stories. Her first published work, a sensational love story of thirty chapters, was "Sundered Hearts." published in the Philadelphia "Saturday Night," when Miss Shields was eighteen years old. Her next works were "Verona's Mistake" and "A Sinless Crime," published in the same journal. Other stories followed in quick succession. In 1889 she brought out her "Izma" through a New York house. In November, 1889, she became the wife of Daliel B. Head, of Greenville. Miss., and her home is now in that town.

MERCEDES LEIGH HEARNE. HEARNE, Miss Mercedes Leigh, actor, was born in Atlanta, Ga., 20th March, 1867. She is widely known by her stage name, Mercedes Leigh, which she chose when she began her professional career. Miss Leigh was born into the changed conditions that followed the Civil War in the South, and her early life was full of the echoes of the great struggle. She was educated in a private school in Philadelphia, Pa. At an early age she developed marked dramatic talent, which was carefully cultivated. Her histrionic powers and her emotional nature fitted her for stage work. She went to England, and while there achieved a brilliant success in London drawing-rooms as a dramatic reader. The critics abroad gave her high rank, and at home she has repeated Tier successes on an even greater scale. Besides her dramatic talents, Miss Leigh is the possessor of poetic talent of a fine order. Her work in verse bears every mark of culture. Her home is now in New York.

HEATON, Mrs. Eliza Putnam, journalist and editor, born in Danvers, Mass., 8th August, 1860. She is the daughter of the late Rev. James W. Putnam, a Universalist minister. She comes from Revolutionary ancestry. She was in youth a delicate girl and attended school irregularly. In 1882 she was graduated from the Boston University with the first Tionors of her class. In that year she became the wife of John L. Hcaton, then associate-editor of the Brooklyn "Daily Times." Her newspaper work as an occasional contributor to the columns of that paper began almost immediately. In 1S86 she took an office desk and position upon the editorial staff of the "Times." For four years her pen was busy in nearly every department of the paper, her work appearing mostly on the editorial page and in the special sheets of the Saturday edition, and ranging from politics to illustrated city sketches, for which her camera furnished the pictures. She handled the exchange editor's scissors and did a vast deal of descriptive writing and interviewing. Almost coincident with her engagement upon the "Times" was her entrance into the syndicate field. Through a prominent syndicate publishing firm of New York she sent out an average of three New York letters per week, illustrated from photographs taken by herself, and dealing with men, women and current topics of the day. In September, 1888, she took passage from Liverpool to New York in the steerage of the Cunarder "Aurania," for the purpose of studying life among the emigrants. She not only landed with her fellow-travelers at Castle Garden, but accompanied them as far west as Chicago in an emigrant train. When the New York "Recorder" was started in 1891, she undertook a task never before attempted by any New York daily, to run a daily news page dealing with women's movements. The experiment was successful and had become recognized as the unique and especially attractive feature