Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/775

fondness was for the mathematical, scientific and logical branches of study. The next year she became the wife of Rev. Herbert Whitney and became an active assistant in his work, pursuing such lines of study as a busy life would permit, and teaching several terms with him in the old academy in Webster. N. Y. In 1881 she was graduated from the Chicago Kindergarten Training School, and taught that valuable system for two years.

MARY TRAFFARN WHITNEY. She had preached and lectured occasionally up to 1885, when she was asked to take charge of a church in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, which she did, finding in the ministry the real work of her life. At present she has charge of the First Unitarian Church in West Somerville. Mass. She is an ideal homemaker, rinding the highest uses for her learning in its devotion to the problem how to make the happiest and most helpful home for her husband and her four boys. The trend of her ministry is in the direction of the practical and spiritual, rather than the theoretic. As a lecturer on reform subjects she has won popularity, and in all philanthropic work and the great social problems of the day she takes a deep interest. Earnestly desirous of the advancement of women, she has felt that she might do most to promote that advancement by practically demonstrating in her own work that woman has a place in the ministry. In accord with this thought, her aim has been to do her best and most faithful work in whatever place was open to her. The motive of her ministry has been to add something to the helpful forces of the world. The secret of her success is hard work, making no account of difficulties. The methods and means of her progress may be described as a habit of learning from experience and from passing events, taking great lessons for life from humble sources.

WHITTEN, Mrs. Martha Elizabeth Hotchkiss, author, born near Austin, Texas, 3rd October. 1842. She is the daughter of Hon. William S. and Hannah B. Hotchkiss. She entered school when she was five years old and was educated principally in the Collegiate Female Institute in Austin. At the age of fourteen years she was sent to McKenzie College. She began to MARTHA ELIZABETH HOTCHKISS WHITTEN. write verses at the age of eleven, and at twelve and thirteen she contributed to the press. The death of her mother, before she was ten years old, saddened her life and gave to all her early poems an undertone of sorrow. Soon after entering McKenzie College she wrote her poem "Do They Miss Me at Home?" She was married when quite young, widowed at twenty-four, and left without money or home and with but little knowledge of business. She resorted to teaching as a means of support for herself and fatherless boys, and made a grand success of it, and soon gained not only a competency, but secured a comfortable home and other property. She has written on a variety of subjects and displays great versatility in her poems, historical, descriptive, memorial and joyous. Her poems were collected in 1886 in book-form under the title of "Texas Garlands," and have won appreciation in the literary world and success financially. She has written many poems since the publication of her book. She read a poem before a Chautauqua audience on Poet's Day, 23rd July, 1888, and one written by request, and read in Tuscola, Ill., 4th July, 1889, to a large audience. She is now engaged on her "Sketch- Book," which will contain both prose and poetry, letters of travel and fiction. She has been twice married and has reared a large family. Her home is in Austin.

WICKENS, Mrs. Margaret R., worker in the Woman's Relief Corps, born in Indianapolis, Ind., 3rd August, 1843. Her father, Thomas Brown, was a native of Dublin county. Ireland. Her mother was Judith Bennett, of Cumberland county. New Jersey, a descendant of the Bennetts of Mayflower and Revolutionary fame. Margaret