Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/426

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JOHNS.
JOHNSON.
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and force with which she has used those and all other instrumentalities to bring out, cultivate and utilize suffrage sentiment have helped to gain great victories for woman suffrage in Kansas and in the nation. With the idea of pushing the agitation and of massing the forces to secure municipal suffrage she arranged for a long series of congressional conventions in Kansas, beginning in Leavenworth in 1886. Mrs. Johns worked in the legislative sessions of 1885, 1886 and 1S87 in the interest of the municipal woman suffrage bill, and there displayed the tact which has later marked her work and made much of its success. In her legislative work she had the support of her husband. Since the bill became a law, her constant effort has been to make it and the puhlic sentiment created serve as a stepping-stone to full enfranchisement, and to induce other States to give a wise and just recognition to the rights of their women citizens. She has spoken effectively in public on this question in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia. She took an active part in the woman suffrage amendment campaign in South Dakota. She visited the Territory of Arizona in the interest of the recognition of woman's claim to the ballot in the proposed State constitution framed in Pharnix in September, 1891. Recognition of her services has come in six elections to the presidency of the State Suffrage Association. H r last work consisted of thirty great conventions, beginning in Kansas City, in February, 1892, and held in various important cities of the State. In those conventions she had as speakers Rev. Anna H. Shaw, Mrs. Clara H. Hoffman, Miss Florence Ralgarnie and Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell. As workers and speakers from the ranks in Kansas there were Mrs. Johnston, Mrs. Belleville-Brown, Mrs. Shelby-Boyd, Mrs. Denton and Mrs. Hopkins. Mrs. Johns was enabled to lift the financial burden, of this great undertaking by the generous gift of $ 1,000 from Mrs. Rachel Foster-Avery, of Philadelphia. Although she has given time, service and money to this cause and received little in return, save the gratitude and esteem of thinking people, it is not because she prefers the care, labor, responsibility and unrest involved in this work to the quiet home-life she must often forego for its sake. Her cozv home is a marvel of good taste and comfort.


CARRIE ASHTON JOHNSON. JOHNSON, Mrs. Carrie Ashton, editor and author, born in Durand, Ill., 24th August, 1863. Her maiden name was Ashton. When she was fifteen years old. her parents moved to Rockford, III., where she attended the high school and private schools for several years. Then she took a course in the business college and was graduated there. She is an active member of the Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union and of the Equal Suffrage Association. She has been State secretary of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association for the past three years. Four years ago she published "Glimpses of Sunshine," a volume of sketches and quotations on suffrage work and workers. She is a contributor to the "Cottage Hearth," the "Housewife." "Table Talk." the "Ladies' Home Companion," the "Household," the "Housekeeper." the " Modern Priscilla," "Godey's Magazine," "Home Magazine," the " Decorator and Furnisher," " Interior Decorator," and other journals. She writes mainly on domestic topics, interior decorations, suffrage and temperance subjects. She was for more than three years in charge of the woman's department of the " Farmer's Voice," of Chicago, called "The Bureau for Better Halves," and is now conducting a like page for the "Spectator," a family magazine published in Rockford. She became the wife, 27th November, 1889, of Harry M. Johnson, managing editor of the Rockford "Morning Star." Their home is in Rockford.


JOHNSON, Mrs. Electa Amanda, philanthropist, born in the town of Arcadia, Wayne county, N. Y.. 13th November, 1838. Her maiden name was Wright Her father was of revolutionary stock, and her mother, born Kipp, was of an old Knickerbocker family. While she was still a child, her parents moved west and settled near Madison, Wis. She attended the common schools of the neighborhood and finished her school life in the high school in Madison. After that she became a successful teacher in that city. In 1860 she became the wife of D. H. Johnson, a lawyer of Prairie du Chien, Wis. In 1862 she and her husband settled in .Milwaukee, where he is now a circuit judge, and where they have ever since resided. Her attention was early directed to works of charity and reform. She was one of the founders of the Wisconsin Industrial School for Girls, was for many years its secretary, and is now an active member of its board of managers. It commenced operations as a small local charity in Milwaukee and has grown to be a great State institution. Mrs. Johnson has been several times commissioned by the Governor of Wisconsin to represent the State in the national conferences of charities and reforms, and in that capacity has participated in their deliberations in Washington, Louisville, St Louis, Madison and Sin Francisco. She has interested herself in the associated charities of Milwaukee. Her views of public charity strongly favor efforts to aid and encourage the unfortunate to become self-supporting and self-respecting, in preference to mere almsgiving. She recognizes the necessity of immediate pecuniary assistance in urgent cases, but deprecates that met nod of relief, when it can be avoided, as the cheapest, laziest and least beneficial of all forms of charity. A close and thoughtful student of all forms and schemes of relief and repression, she has