Woman of the Century/Cora Stuart Wheeler

WHEELER, Mrs. Cora Stuart, poet and author, born in Rockford, III., 6th September, 1852. Her mother, Mrs. Harriet L. Norton, from whom her poetic talent was inherited, died when Cora was two years old. Both her parents were of New England birth, her mother of Scotch extraction. She was placed in school in the Emmittsburg. Md., convent, and later in the Convent of the Visitation Nuns in Georgetown, D. C, where she passed the last years of the war, and was with her father in Ford's Theater, in Washington, when President Lincoln was shot. She witnessed the closing review of the Grand Army in Washington after the Civil War was ended. She was then sent to Howland College, Springport, N. Y., a school conducted under Quaker patronage. CORA STUART WHEELER. Eighteen months after leaving that college, she became the wife of a Moravian. Three children were born to them, one of whom, a daughter, survives. She lived among the Moravians two years, and then moved to the Southwest. Business reverses in 1882, while in Connecticut, threw her upon her own resources. She then began to give readings, and later wrote for the Hartford "Courant." in the office of Charles Dudley Warner. In 1884 she wrote her first story, "Twixt Cup and Lip," which took a prize in the Chicago "Tribune." Under the pen-name "Trebor Ohl" she contributed, the same year, regular articles to the Cleveland "Leader," the Kansas City "Journal," the Detroit "Post," "Tribune" and the "Free Press." She next took up biography, and wrote brief lives of prominent women. For one year she served as art critic on the Boston "Transcript." In November, 1885, with six other women, she formed the New England Women's Press Association. She was then, in addition to all other work, furnishing specials to the Boston "Advertiser" and "Record" and the Providence "Journal." In 1886 she wrote a series of social, dramatic and literary sketches for a Chicago syndicate, the A. N. Kellogg Company, and short stories, sketches and specials for the Hartford "Times," the Boston "Globe," New York "Herald" and other papers, which at once found favor. She edited the "Yankee Blade" at that time, and furnished largely the humor for the "Portfolio " of the "American Magazine." She has won fame also as a household writer. Those of her biographical sketches which appear in the "Daughters of America" are to be collected for publication in book form, as are also her short stories, "The Fardel's Christmas," "The Bings' Baby," "The White Arrow" and others For six years she has written under her own name. Since 1882 she has made her permanent home with her father and daughter in Boston, Mass. Her best work, if not her most voluminous, is her poetry; but she shows a wide range of talent in all departments of prose, and prefers it. She is an industrious worker, and her home is one of the many social and literary attractions of Boston. She has published, from time to time, lyrics and verse in "Harper's Magazine," "Century," the "Ladies' Home journal." 'Youth's Companion," "Wide-Awake" and other literary publications. She has lectured in Boston, Hartford and New York on "Authors Whom I Have Known," "Moravians As I Lived Among Them," "Cervantes," "Legends and Superstitions" and "Fallacies of Family Life."