MISS AGNES DEAN ABBATT,
artist, born in New York City, 23rd June, 1847. She still
resides in her native city. Her paternal ancestors were
English, and she is of French Huguenot descent on her mother's
side. Her great-grandfather and his family came from
England to this country in the latter part of the last century.
They settled in what is now Pleasant Valley, Dutchess county, N.
Y., where William D. Abbatt, the father of Agnes,
was born. He passed his life in business in Poughkeepsie,
Philadelphia and New York. Miss Abbatt's
grandmother, Mrs. Dean, an English woman, was an art
amateur of unusual talent and accomplishments. Of her
children, nearly all possessed the talent for painting, but of
all the descendants Agnes alone has adopted art as a
profession. She showed in early childhood a marked talent
for drawing, but it was not till 1873 that she took up the study
of art as a profession. In that year she entered the
Cooper Union art-school. She won a medal for a head of
Ajax in the first year of her studies, and on the merit of that
achievement she was admitted to the art-school of the National
academy of Design in New York. So decided was her progress
that, at the end of the first year in that institution her first
exhibition. As it was not her intention to become a
figure-painter, she left the Academy and devoted herself to the
study of landscape painting. That branch of art she
studied for several years under R. Swain Gifford, N. A.,
and James D. Smillie, N. A., constantly showing new
powers and making rapid progress. At the same time she was
gratifying her tastes in another direction, and she won
distinction as a water-colorist and also as a flower-painter.
Her first pictures, two panels of flowers, were shown in the
exhibition of the Brooklyn Art Club in 1875, where they
attracted much attention and found purchasers. Her next
picture, "My Next Neighbor," was shown in New York, and was the
subject of much favorable comment. In the Water Color
Society's exhibition, in 1880, she showed a composition named,
"When Autumn Turns the Leaves," which was one of the most
conspicuous features of the exhibition. In the same year
Miss Abbatt was elected a member of the American Water
Color Society, at once taking high rank in that somewhat
exclusive organization or artists. She is the second woman
on its list of members. She has given especial attention
to the painting of chrysanthemums. Besides the picture
entitled "When Autumn Turns the Leaves," she has painted others
that are noteworthy, among which are "The Last of the Flowers,"
"Flowers of the Frost," "Our Japanese Cousins," "From the Land
of the Mikado," "Autumn Colors," and "A Japanese Embassy," all
devoted to the royal chrysanthemum. In the landscape field
she has confined her work mostly to the rural scenes in
Westchester county, N. Y., the picturesque nooks of the eastern
end of Long Island, and the coast of Maine and Massachusetts
Bay. Among her notable productions in landscape are "Near
Barnstable, Cape Cod," "The Noisy Geese that Gabbled o'er the
Pool." "A Summer Afternoon on the New England Coast," and "In
Lobster Lane, Magnolia, Mass." The last named picture won
for her a silver medal in the exhibition of the Charitable
Mechanics' and Tradesmen's Association of Boston, Mass.
She works with equal facility and success in oil and water
colors, and she has also made a study of pastel work. In
addition to her own extended creative work, she has been a
successful art-teacher, in studio and in field. Aside from
her home studio, she has taught classes in Washington, D. C.,
Troy, N. Y., and in New Haven, Conn., while her field
instruction has been given in New York, Massachusetts and Maine.
She is a genuine enthusiast in art, both as creator and
instructor, and in these two fields, calling for so widely
differing powers, she has been equally at home. Her work
is distinct in character, in outline and tone in shades and
lights, and her proud position among the painters of the United
States is a one legitimately won and successfully held.
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| MRS. ELIZABETH ROBINSON ABBOTT ~ Page 2 |
| EMMA ABBOTT ~ Page 2 |
| MRS. SARAH C. ACHESON ~ Page 3 |
| MISS JESSIE A. ACKERMAN ~ Page 4 |
| MRS. ABIGAIL ADAMS ~ Page 5 |
| MRS. FLORENCE ADELAIDE FOWLE ADAMS ~ Page 5 |
| MISS HANNAH ADAMS ~ Page 6 |
MRS. JANE KELLEY ADAMS,
educator, born in Woburn, Mass., 30th October, 1852. Her
father was a member of a prominent firm of leather
manufacturers. Her family had gone from New Hampshire, her
mother being a descendant of the Marston family that came
over from England in 1634. Mrs. Adams as a child
showed great fondness for the school-room and for books.
When three-and-one-half years old she "ran away" to attend the
infant school, of which she became a regular member six months
later. From that time her connection with school work,
either as student, teacher, or committee-woman, has been almost
continuous. As a student, she worked steadily, in spite of
delicate health and the protests of physician and friends.
She was graduated from the Woburn high school in 1871, and from
Vassar College in 1875. In 1876 she became a teacher in
the high school from which she was graduated, leaving in 1881 to
become the wife of Charles Day Adams, a member of the
class of 1873 in Harvard, and a lawyer practicing in Boston.
Since her marriage, as before, her home has been in Woburn, and,
although a conscientious housekeeper and the mother of two
children, she has found time within the last ten years, not only
to have occasional private pupils, but also to identify herself
fully with the public work of her native city. In 1886-7
she was president of the Woburn Woman's Club. Within that
time she organized three parliamentary law clubs among her women
friends. Later, she was one of the founders of the Woburn
Home for Aged Women and was one of its vice-presidents.
She has served as a director and an auditor of the Woman's Club,
as president of a church society, and as chairman of the
executive committee of the Equal Suffrage League. In 1888
she was elected to a position on the Woburn school board, and in
1890 served as its presiding officer. In the spring of
1891, feeling from her work on the board of education the great
need the students had of instruction in manual training, she was
instrumental in establishing classes in sewing, sloyd and
cooking, which were largely attended. Besides her work in
her native town, Mrs. Adams has found time to be active
in the various societies for college-bred women in the
neighboring city of Boston. She is of a social nature, has
a great interest in her husband's work, and it is not impossible
that she will become a student of law.
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| MRS. LOUISE CATHERINE ADAMS ~ Page 7 |
| MRS. MARY MATTHEWS ADAMS ~ Page 8 |
| GRACE ADDISON ~ Page 9 |
MRS. MARY OSBURN ADKINSON,
temperance reformer, born in Rush County, Ind., 28th July, 1843;
the daughter of Harmon Osburn. Miss Osburn
was educated in Whitewater College, Centerville, Ind. She
began her married life as a pastor's wife in Laurel, Ind.
Removing to Madison, she was four times elected president of the
Madison district association of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Since 1873 she has actively engaged in temperance work, and is
now superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
among the colored people in the State of Louisiana.
Mrs. Adkinson is also matron and teacher of sewing and
dressmaking in New Orleans University, over which her husband
presides.
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| MRS. NANCY H. ADSIT ~ Page 8 |
MRS.
ELIZABETH CABOT AGASSIZ, naturalist. She is the
daughter of Thomas Graves Cary, of Boston, Mass.
She was married to Professor Louis Agassiz in 1850.
She accompanied her husband on his journey to Brazil in 1865-6
and on the Hassler expedition in 1871-2; of the second
she wrote an account for the "Atlantic Monthly," and was
associated with him in many of his studies and writings.
She has published "A First Lesson in Natural History" (Boston,
1859), and edited "Geological Sketches" (1866). Her
husband died in 1873, and Mrs. Agassiz edited his "Life
and Correspondence" in two volumes (Boston 1885), a very
important work. Mrs. Agassiz resides in
Cambridge, Mass., and has done much to further the interest of
Radcliffe College from its beginning when known as the Harvard
"Annex."
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| MRS. MARY A. AHRENS ~ Page 10 |
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