playful self-defense, soon became an absorbing interest. For two years she taught, traveled and studied, preparatory to taking the architectural course in Cornell University. In 1876 she received
LOUISE BRETHUNE.
an offer of an office position as draughtsman and relinquished her former intention of college study. The hours were from eight to six, and the pay was small, but her employer's library was at her service. In 1881 she opened an independent office, thus becoming the first woman architect. She was afterward joined by Robert A. Bethune, to whom she was married in December of the same year. During the ten years of its existence the firm has
erected fifteen public buildings and several hundred
miscellaneous buildings, mostly in Buffalo and its
immediate neighborhood. Mrs. Bethune has made a special study of schools and has been particularly successful in that direction, but refuses to confine herself exclusively to that branch, believing that women who are pioneers in any profession should be proficient in every department, and that now at least women architects must be practical superintendents as well as designers and scientific constructors, and that woman's complete emancipation lies in "equal pay for equal service." Because the competition for the Woman's Building of the
Columbia Exposition was not conducted on that principle, Mrs. Bethune refused to submit a design. The remuneration offered to the successful woman was less than half that given for similar service to the men who designed the other buildings. In 1885 Mrs. Bethune was elected a member of the Western Association of Architects. She is still the only woman member of the American Institute. In 1886 she inaugurated the Buffalo Society of Architects, from which has grown the Western New York Association Both were active in securing the
passage of the Architects' Licensing Bill, intended to enforce rigid preliminary examinations and designed to place the profession in a position similar to that occupied by medicine and law. In the last five or six years a dozen young women have been graduated from the different architectural courses now open to them, and
Mrs. Bethune has ceased to be the "only woman architect."
BICKERDYKE, Mrs. Mary A., philanthropist and army nurse, born near Mount Vernon, Knox county, Ohio, 19th July, 1817. She is the daughter of Hiram and Anna Ball. The mother died when Mary was only seventeen months old. The little one was reared by her grandparents. Her grandsire was a Revolutionary soldier named Rogers and a descendant of the Rogers who landed on Plymouth Rock. While young, she was married to Mr. Bickerdyke, and in a few years was left a widow, with helpless little ones to rear. When the Civil War came, she left home and loved ones to offer her services as nurse to the soldiers, who were dying by scores for lack of food and care. When the supplies to the army were sent from Galesburg to Cairo, Mrs. Bickerdyke accompanied them as delegate. After the battle of Belmont she was assigned as nurse to the field
hospital. Fort Donelson brought her in sight of battle for the first time. She obtained supplies sometimes by visiting the North and superintending fairs, by a simple note to a pastor at sermon time, and by her famous "cow and hen " mission, by which she furnished the wounded soldiers with a hundred cows and a thousand hens, to provide fresh dainties for the sufferers. During the winter of 1863-64 she made a short visit home, and returned and took part in the establishment of Adams
Block Hospital, Memphis. Tenn. This accommodated about 6,000 men, and from this she became
MARY A. BICKERDYKE.
the matron of Gayoso Hospital, in which were more than 700 wounded men brought in from Sherman's battle of Arkansas Post. She took charge in Memphis, Tenn., of a small-pox hospital and cleansed
