Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/576

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PICKETT.
PIER.
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threatened with total blindness. As with one heart, the South gave her assurances of sympathy and support, and messages flashed over the wires that she had only to command Pickett's old comrades, and they would rally to her aid. To her belongs the honor of uniting the Blue and the Gray in fraternal bonds. She has been the messenger of peace, trying to reconcile the two factions and ridge over the chasm once so broad and deep. No woman to-day is more widely known and honored than Mrs. Pickett. Beautiful still, attracting by her grace and dignity the worthy and illustrious of all circles; gifted with intellect and known as an author, though only by her pen-name, she commands admiration everywhere. With health broken and the almost total loss of her sight, she retains her position in the clerical service of the government, in Washington, and honestly earns her own living, when she could have been heir to the liberality of the South.


PIER, Miss Caroline Hamilton, lawyer, born in Fond du Lac, Wis., 18th September, 1870. She was educated in the public schools of that city and was graduated in the classical course of the high school, after studying music and perfecting herself in various womanly accomplishments, until ready to enter the law school of the Wisconsin University. CAROLINE HAMILTON PIER. That she did in 1889, finishing the course in 1891 and receiving the degree of LL. B. She belongs to the firm in Milwaukee, Wis., of which her mother and two sisters are the other members. She is paying special attention to admiralty and maritime law and will make it a specialty. The women of Wisconsin should certainly appreciate the fact that their legislature has been far ahead of those of very many States in granting privileges to, or rather, declaring the rights of women. That Caroline H. Pier will follow in the footsteps of her mother and sister in helping to liberalize the code still more is a very natural belief on the part of those who have watched the remarkable career of the legal quartette thus far.


PIER, Miss Harriet Hamilton, lawyer, born in Fond du Lac, Wis., 26th April, 1872. She is the third daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Pier, and a sister of Kate H. and Caroline H. Pier. All the daughters of Mrs. Pier have received her maiden name, Hamilton. HARRIET HAMILTON PIER. Harriet was educated in the public schools of Fond du Lac, Madison and Milwaukee, and was graduated from the Milwaukee high school in 1889. She entered the law department of the Wisconsin University soon after, and at the end of two years she took her degree of LL.B. With her sister she is now studying the Polish language, all having practical knowledge of the German. The Pier family can not fail to be known in future as the family of women lawyers.


PIER, Mrs. Kate, court commissioner, born in St. Albans, Vt., 22nd June. 1845. Her father was John Hamilton, and her mother's maiden name was Mary Meekin. Both parents were of Scotch-Irish descent. Kate Hamilton was educated in the public schools of Fond du Lac, Wis., and she taught there for about three years. She became the wife of C. K. Pier, of Fond du Lac, in 1866. Her father died in 1870, and since that time her mother has lived with her, thus making it possible for Mrs. Pier to accomplish what no other woman in America, or in the world, has done. She has made a lawyer of herself and lawyers of her three daughters. Misses Kate H. Pier, Caroline H. Pier and Harriet H. Pier, with herself, constitute a law firm now practicing in Milwaukee, Wis. Mrs. Pier began business life by assuming the charge of her mother's and her own share of a large estate left by her father. Her success therein brought others to her for assistance in their own affairs, and so, from a general real estate business, in which there was naturally more or less legal work continually, Mrs Pier, under the advice of her friends, entered upon the profession of law,