THOMPSON, Mrs. Eliza J., temperance reformer and original crusader, born in Hillsborough, Ohio, in 1813. She is the wife of Judge Thompson, of Hillsborough. She was early led
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ELIZA J. THOMPSON.
into temperance work, both by her own inclinations and by the influence of her father, the late Governor Trimble, of Ohio. In her youth she accompanied her father to Saratoga Springs, N. Y., to attend a national temperance convention, and was the only woman in that meeting. On 23rd December, 1873, in Hillsborough, she opened the temperance movement that in a few weeks culminated in the Woman's Temperance Crusade. She was, by common consent of all the churches in her town, chosen the leader of the first band of women who set out to visit the saloons. That movement was a success in many ways, and much of its success is to be credited to Mrs. Thompson. She is now living in Hillsborough. She has one son, a distinguished clergyman of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
THOMPSON, Mrs. Eva Griffith, editor, born near Jennerville, Somerset county, Pa., 30th June, 1842. Her father, Abner Griffith, a Quaker, died at the age of seventy-two. Her mother, Eliza Cooper Griffith, Scotch-Irish, an octogenarian, still survives. Miss Griffith was married at the beginning of the Civil War, and her husband joined the Union army.
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EVA GRIFFITH THOMPSON.
In six months she was a widow, at the age of twenty. School duties, never given up, were continued, and in 1865 she was graduated from the female seminary in Steubenville, Ohio. S. J. Craighead, county superintendent of common schools of Indiana county, Pa., appointed her deputy superintendent. That is said to be the first time such an honor was conferred upon a woman. For years she has held the office of president of the Presbyterian Home Missionary Society. The Grand Army of the Republic men claim her as a comrade, and in many of their meetings she has been called upon to make addresses. At the inauguration of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union movement in Indiana county, she was appointed organizer, a position she still holds. As State superintendent of franchise in the Pennsylvania Woman's Christian Temperance Union she is doing an aggressive work. As editor and proprietor of the "News," Indiana, Pa., she wields her pen in behalf of temperance and reform. The paper indorses the People's Party. Mrs. Thompson is active and earnest in her work.
THOMPSON, Miss Mary Sophia, Delsartean instructor and elocutionist, born in Princeton. Ill., in 1859. Her father was a native of London, Eng. Her mother, a descendant of the Puritans, came from central Massachusetts. From her earliest childhood Mary possessed a wonderfuly sweet voice and an equally wonderful aptitude in using it to the very best effect in childish exercises of recitation, dramatization and even weird improvisation. When she grew to womanhood, her talents attracted such attention that the usual inducements looking to a public use of her gifts were not wanting, but so long as the family circle, whose pride she was, continued intact, she preferred her life there. She varied the monotony of country-town existence by accepting an offer to teach in the high school in which she was graduated. Then her father died suddenly, and the daughter was left helpless by a bereavement so terrible as to plunge her into the profoundest dejection and to deprive her of all capacity for ordinary vocations. Feeling assured that then her only refuge lay in unceasing productive activity, she went to Chicago. Ill., and, after some preliminary training under the mastership of Mrs. Abby Sage Richardson, went, by that lady's advice, to Boston, Mass., where she was placed in the classes of the school of oratory of the Boston University, presided over by Louis B. Monroe. There she remained six or seven years as pupil,
