The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Oberholtzer, Sara Louisa (Vickers)

OBERHOLTZER, Sara Louisa (Vickers), poet, author and philanthropist: b. Uwchlan, Chester County, Pa., 20 May 1841. She was educated at Friends Boarding School, Millersville Normal, and by private tutors. From 1890 Mrs. Oberholtzer devoted much of her time to the introduction of the school savings banks system into the public schools of the United States and Canada. Mrs. Oberholtzer was one of the speakers at the first meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D. C., 1890; at the World's Congress of Women in Chicago in 1893; at the Geneva (Switzerland) meeting in 1903, etc. Her bulletin on ‘School Savings Banks,’ written for the United States Bureau of Education, and printed by the government in 1914, has been widely distributed. Files of her Thrift Tidings, the quarterly she issued regularly for the public since 1907, will be found in most of our State and public libraries. Mrs. Oberholtzer is the acknowledged leader of the school savings banks movement now established in public schools in nearly every State in the Union and some schools in Canada. Her published books are ‘Violet Lee,’ ‘Come for Arbutus,’ ‘Hope's Heart Bells,’ ‘Daisies of Verse,’ ‘Souvenirs of Occasions,’ ‘Dialogues,’ ‘Letters of Travel.’ Her songs and hymns set to music by different composers are in hymnals and many of them in sheet form.