Woman of the Century/Esther Housh

ESTHER T. HOUSH. HOUSH, Mrs. Esther T., temperance worker and author, was born in Ross county, Ohio. She is descended from Scotch and English ancestors. Her grandfather was Col. Robert Stewart, of Ohio, whose home was a station on the "underground railroad." Her grandmother was the first one of the family to sign the Washingtonian pledge. Her father was a Congregational minister. Her mother, Mrs Margaretta Stewart, was a cultured and refined woman. Esther was the second child in a family of eight, and her early days were full of cares and work. She received a liberal education, and studied her Greek and Latin while busy with the work of the home. In childhood she became a believer in woman's rights. She was married at an early age. She has one living child. One other died in childhood. Her son, Frank, was the publisher of the " Woman's Magazine," commenced in Louisville, Ky., in 1877, and continued in Brattleboro, Vt.. until 1890. Mrs Housh did all the editorial work on that periodical. She became prominent in temperance work. In 1883 she was sent from Brattleboro as a delegate to the State convention in West Randolph. She was invited to attend the national convention in Detroit, Mich., and there she was elected national press superintendent of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She held that position until 1888. She instituted the "National Bulletin," which averaged eighty-thousand copies a year. She wrote special reports and numerous leaflets, some of which reached a sale of two-hundred thousand copies. In the national conventions in Nashville and New York she furnished a report to a thousand selected papers of high standing. In 1885 she was elected State secretary of the Vermont Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and she has ever since had editorial charge of "Our Home Guards," the State organ. In 1877 she was elected State president of Vermont. In 1890 and 1891, in Boston, Mass., she edited the " Household," which had been removed from Brattleboro. In 1891 she returned to Vermont. She is a dignified presiding officer, and her work has been of a most valuable character. Besides her prose works, she has written a number of poems of merit. Her home is now in Brattleboro.