Woman of the Century/Mary Hayes Houghton

HOUGHTON, Mrs. Mary Hayes, journalist, born in Penheld, Lorain county, Ohio, 36th March, MARY HAYES HOUGHTON. 1837. Her maiden name was Hayes. Her parents were Western Reserve pioneers from New England, whose ancestry was Norman-French. She was the oldest daughter of a large family. She was in childhood of a nervous temperament, slight in figure, active, energetic, with a strong memory, an omnivorous reader, and always a student. Her school-life was interrupted by ill-health, but her reading and study went on, covering a large range in history, philosophy and literature. In the Civil War and its excitements her family had full share. There was prodigal expenditure of strength and sympathy, resulting in broken health, but no abatement of industry. She became the wife of J. W. Houghton, A.M., MD, in 1874. Two years after, he became proprietor of the Wellington, Ohio, "Enterprise," in which, with his wife as editorial assistant, they continued nine years, when it was sold on account of failing health. From the age of eighteen years Mrs. Houghton had written more or less for publication, chiefly upon current topics, and her connection with the press served to give variety, breadth and finish to her composition She has the journalistic faculty and reportorial instinct in a marked degree, selecting, discarding, condensing, revising and editing with swift judgment The bulk of her literary work has been anonymously written, and some of it has been widely copied. Impelled by anxiety for an over-tasked and frail husband, the wife became familiar with his many lines of business, private, professional and official, and with many years of efficient service proves that "woman's work" may cover a wide range without impairing her womanliness, her taste for domestic life or her skill in feminine accomplishments. With organizations religious, reformatory and literary, she is actively identified, and she cooperates with all that will elevate humanity. She is president of a woman's club which fur years has done excellent work, and is also a member of the Ohio Woman's Press Club. An enthusiastic student of sociology, she aids the aspiring and arouses all who know her to higher ambitions and more exalted views of the real purposes of life. Her home is in Wellington, Ohio, and her energies and sympathies are now chiefly occupied in repeating earlier experience, comforting bereaved old age and caring for motherless childhood, in which labor of love her nature finds large compensations.