image, and of all His creatures which were in the beginning spiritual. Through social persecution for her advanced position, the responsibilities of wifehood, motherhood and widowhood, the magical word "Liberty" has been a talisman to her. As far as can be ascertained, Mrs, Humphreys is the only woman in the United States ever put on the board of directors of a public road by the vote of the officers and stockholders, and probably the only one ever elected to the office of public lecturer to an Alliance lodge. Both of these offices she holds at present. Mrs. Humphreys, gifted as a musician, writer and a woman of affairs, is a bright star in the galaxy of noted southern women.
HUNT, Mrs. Augusta Merrill, philanthropist, born in Portland, Me., 6th June, 1842. She was the youngest daughter of George S. and Ellen Merrill Barston, of Portland, Me. In 1863 she became the wife of George S. Hunt, a prominent and successful merchant of Portland. From her
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AUGUSTA MERRILL HUNT.
mother Mrs. Hunt inherited intellectual ability, an earnest religious faith and a cheerful disposition, and from her father practical common-sense, a strong sense of justice, and the courage of her convictions. She has been actively identified with many of the prominent charitable organizations of Portland, notably that of the Portland Fraternity, the Associated Charities, the Home for Aged Women, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Woman's Suffrage Association. For seven years she has been the president of the Ladies' History Club, the first literary society organized by the women of Portland, which was originated in 1874. In the spring of 1876 a public meeting was called in Portland, composed of two women delegales from each church in the city, to consider the feasibility of forming a Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Hunt was present as one of the representatives from the First Universalist Church, and was called to preside over the meeting, and when, as its result, the Woman's Temperance Society was formed, the members called her to the position of president Under her direction the coffee-house, diet kitchen and diet mission and the flower mission were successfully organized and carried forward. In 1878 the society became auxiliary to the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Hunt continued as its president, which position she still retains. She has three times held the position of national superintendent in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the last department being that of higher education. In 1890 she was obliged to resign that position on account of ill health. In 1884 she was appointed by the governor of Maine as a member of the Reform School Committee. At the end of three years she declined a re-appointment on account of the pressure of other duties. In 1873, after the death of her mother, Mrs. Hunt assumed the place tins made vacant on the board of managers of the Home for Aged Women, and in 1889 was unanimously elected president of that association, which position she still retains. She has several times appeared before the Maine legislative committee in advocacy of the establishment of a reformatory prison for women in Maine, of better laws for the protection of young girls, of municipal suffrage for women, and of the cottage system in the Reform School for Boys.
HUNT, Mrs. Mary H., temperance reformer, born in Litchfield, Conn., 4th July, 18—. Mrs. Hunt's ancestry included the celebrated Thatcher preachers, first of whom was the first pastor of the Old South Church in Boston. This was on her mother's side. On her father's side she comes rightly enough by her inheritance. Her father, Ephraim Hanchett, was a large-souled, godly man, with an enthusiasm for humanity that made him an ardent participator in the anti-slavery struggle of his day and an early advocate of total abstinence in the beginning of that reform. He was one of the vice-presidents of the first temperance society in the United States. Of such a birth, from such a parentage, followed naturally an education in the best schools at command, an education that fitted her for a professorship of natural science in a leading educational institution in Baltimore, Md., where she remained until the next step in her true education, the development that comes with wifehood and motherhood began. Then, in the home life, the study of the highest need of her own son led to the study of the needs and the problem of supply for the highest needs of all the young. In her outreach for all humanity brain kept pace with heart. Deeply stirred by the fact that the great foe to human progress and the great danger to youth lay in the domination of the liquor habit, Mrs. Hunt was warmly interested in the question of opposing effective barriers to the ever-increasing tide of misery and sin. She studied carefully the sentimental, religious and legal phases of the reform, and became convinced that, if the nation were to be saved, it must be by the wide dissemination of actual knowledge concerning the nature and effects of alcohol upon the body, the mind and the soul of man. Such knowledge might come too late for the present generation of drunkards, but, in the might of one inspired by a great new hope for the world, she went forth to demand of this mighty Pharaoh of the liquor interest that it "Let our children go." To reach the children with this saving knowledge, that should guide them through the wilderness period of temptation, she felt she must reach the public school. To reach the public school, with authority to teach, she must ave behind her the power of the law, and her
