Woman of the Century/Ella Bagnell Kendrick

KENDRICK, Mrs. Ella Bagnell, temperance worker, born within a stone's cast of Plymouth Rock, 24th May, 1849. ELLA BAGNELL KENDRICK. She is the daughter of Richard W. and Harriet S. Allen Bagnell. She was educated in the public schools, and graduated from the Plymouth high school at the age of sixteen In 1870 she became the wife of Henry H. Kendrick, and in the following year removed to Meriden, Conn., where she spent several years in her husband's store and acquired tact and skill in business management, which has stood her in good stead. She was early interested in scientific studies, first especially in astronomy, and later in botany, and she spent much time in the fields and woods and among the rugged hills of Meriden, gaining a thorough knowledge of the flora of the town. For a number of years she was among the most zealous and active members of the Meriden Scientific Assonation, serving on different committees and reading papers from time to time on a variety of subjects, especially those pertaining to plants and plant life. She was at the same time an efficient member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, being always an earnest advocate of temperance reform. Her home in Meriden was a museum of antiques and curios, books, pictures, china, articles of furniture and bric-a-brac, together with various objects of natural history, stones and plants, including a unique fossil of a fruit of the cycad, taken by her husband from the Triassic shales of Durham. Conn. She takes a strong interest in public affairs, and especially in politics. She is accounted one of the active leaders of the Prohibition party in Connecticut She was formerly secretary of the Meriden Prohibition Club, also secretary for New Haven county, and in the latter capacity was an active director of the party work in the campaign of 1890. In 1891 she removed from Meriden to Hartford, where her husband became business manager of the "New England Home," one of the leading prohibition newspapers of the country, and Mrs. Kendrick became associate editor. She is assistant secretary of the Hartford Prohibition Club and State superintendent of Demurest Medal Contests. She is a woman of active habits and strong character, and she makes her influence felt in any cause that enlists her sympathies.