Representative women of New England/Anna Barrows
ANNA BARROWS, teacher of cookery and lecturer on home science, was born in Fryeburg, Me., May 24, 1861, the daughter of George Bradley antl Georgiana (Souther) Barrows. Her father, George Bradley Barrows, who was at one time president of the Maine Senate, was the son of John S. Barrows and his wife, Anna Ayer Bradley, and grandson of William Barrows, the founder of Hebron Academy, Maine. The first of the name in this country was John Barrowe, of Yarmouth, England, who came to New England in 1637, and about thirty years later settled in Plymouth, Mass., where some of his early descendants occupied the Bonum house, which is still standing.
Miss Barrows' ancestry is chiefly English. Her paternal grandmother was a daughter of John and Hannah (Ayer) Bradley and grand-daughter of Samuel Bradley, who was killed by the Indians near Concord, N.H., in 1746; and on the maternal side she was grand-daughter of Samuel Ayer, of Haverhill, Mass., and his wife, Ann Hazen. (See Bouton's History of Concord, N.H., for these and other particulars.) Her maternal grandparents (as mentioned in "Memoranda relating to the Descentlants of Joseph Souther, of Boston") were Samuel and Mary (Webster) Souther, the grandfather a son of John Souther, whose wife Mary was a daugh- ter of Colonel Thomas Stickney, of Concord, N.H., who commantled a regiment at the battle of Bennington.
On her mother's side Miss Barrows traces her descent from a sister of General John Stark and from Hugh Stirling, a native of Glasgow, who came to America about 1745, having served previously as Lieutenant in the British army. Several of Miss Barrows's ancestors on both sides served in the colonial and Revolutionary wars.
After graduating from Fryeburg Academy in 1882, Miss Barrows taught in the public schools of that town and of Conway, N.H. From her girlhood she was a practical housekeeper, and before leaving Fryeburg she served in many capacities, from that of organist in the Congregational church, of which she is a member, to that of village postmistress. In 1886 she took the normal course at the Boston Cooking School under Miss Ida Maynard. The following autumn, after supervising the opening of a new cottage at Wellesley College, in which a full system of domestic work was to be tried, she became the teacher of cooking at the North Bennet Street Industrial School, Boston, where she remained five years. This was before manual training was included in the regular studies of the public schools. A class from a different school came at each session.
The New England Journal of Education, commenting on her work, said, " Miss Anna Barrows has made such a success of cooking as an educational force, as well as an industrial activity, that her work deserves study, and commands the respect of the most devout student of pedagogy, as well as of specialties." Mr. Howells, the novelist, after watching a boys' class in cooking at that school, said that he had " heard more natural philosophy demonstrated in half an hour than some people acquired in the whole course of their lives."
In 1891 Miss Barrows resigned, to accept the position of instructor in the School of Domestic Science connected with the Boston Young Women's Christian Association, and in addition to this work gave lectures and class instruction in cookery at Lasell Seminary, Auburndale, Mass. The growing public interest in domestic science and consequent demand for lectures occupied so much time that the routine school work was given up for the larger field.
Miss Barrows has lectured for women's clubs and given over a thousand demonstrations in cookery in many States. She has lectured in New York for several seasons in the Farmers' Institute courses, and has given addresses before many State agricultural organizations in that and other States, as the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Maine Pomological Society, the Vermont Dairymen's Association, and the Western New York Horticultural Society. At the present time the only regular school work that Miss Barrows continues is an annual course of fifteen weekly lessons at Robinson Seminary, Exeter, N.H.
In 1894 she became one of the editors and proprietors of the (then New England) American Kitchen Magazine, a monthly devoted to home science, in which much of her writing was published until March, 1904, when she severed her connection with the Home Science Publishing Company.
For other periodicals she has written many articles on her specialty and allied topics. She has published a small book on Eggs, and with Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln, the "Home Science Cook Book," and has other books in preparation.
The constant aim of all her teaching and writing is the simplification of the processes of housekeeping. She devotes herself not to a multiplication of recipes and the preparation of fancy dishes, but the teaching of fundamental principles, from which each housekeeper may adapt herself to her individual limitations and needs. The agricultural and horticultural bearings of the subject are particularly interesting to her.
For several years a summer school of cookery at the Fryeburg Chautauqua Assembly was in her charge. From this she was called to be instructor in cookery at the School of Domestic Science of the original Chautauqua in New York State. She has been superintendent of the department of hygienic cooking in the Massachusetts W. C. T. U., president of the Cooking School Teachers' League, director of the National Household Economic Association, and secretary of the Association of the Alumni and Friends of Fryeburg Academy, a Massachusetts corporation.
In 1900 Miss Barrows was chosen a member of the Boston School Committee, being nominated on a reform ticket and endorsed by the Independent Women Voters and the Republicans. Although she made no personal canvass, she was elected by the largest number of votes cast for any city officer at that election. Her work on the committee was done quietly, with careful regard for the interests of the schools.