Woman of the Century/Emily Caroline Chandler Hodgin

HODGIN, Mrs. Emily Caroline Chandler, temperance reformer, born in Williamsport, Ind., EMILY CAROLINE CHANDLER HODGIN. 12th April, 1838. Her father, Hon. Robert A. Chandler, who was of German descent, emigrated from New York to western Indiana while it was yet a wilderness. Mr. Chandler was a self-made man, a scholarly lawyer. He accumulated a competence and reared a large family. The mother was a member of the Dodd family, of Orange, N. J., and was a cultured Christian lady. Mrs. Hodgin had the advantage of the best schools of Williamsport and her father's large library. Accepting her father's doctrine that every one should learn to be self-supporting, she early taught school, and paid her own way through the Illinois Normal University, graduating in 1867, making a record as a strong student, especially in mathematics. After graduating she became the wife of her classmate, Cyrus W. Hodgin, and settled in Richmond, Ind. There two years later, a daughter, her only child, was born. In 1872 she removed to Terre Haute, where for many years her husband was a teacher in the State Normal School. It was there Mrs. Hodgin entered the field of work that has since chiefly occupied her time and best thought. She was one of the leaders in the temperance crusade in the city, and was a delegate to the convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where the crusading spirit was crystallized by the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. After that she began the work of organizing the forces in neighboring parts of the State. In 1878 the strain upon her strength induced nervous exhaustion, from which she found relief by a six-months retirement in the sanitarium in Dansville, N. Y. In 1883 she returned to Richmond, and has since been devoting much of her time to furthering the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She is president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in her own county, is secretary of the State Suffrage Association, and is one of the trustees of the Hadley Industrial Home for the education of poor girls. In addition to these lines of work, she received in 1886 the Chautauqua diploma for a four-years course of study, and recently completed a course of biblical and theological study in Earlham College. She is a member of the Society of Friends and avails herself of the freedom accorded to the women of that church to "speak in meeting."