Woman of the Century/Caroline M. Clark Woodward

WOODWARD, Mrs. Caroline M. Clark, temperance worker, born in Mignon, near Milwaukee, Wis., November 17th, 1840. Her father, Jonathan M. Clark, was a Vermonter of English descent, who, born in 1812, of Revolutionary parentage, inherited an intense American patriotism. Her mother, Mary Turch Clark, of German and French ancestry, was born and bred on the banks of the Hudson river. Both were persons of more than ordinary education and, though burdened with the cares of a family of one son and seven daughters, were life-long students. Caroline was the oldest daughter. She attended the district school in a log house till seventeen years of age. To that was added one year of study in German in a private school. At the age of eight years she was considered quite a prodigy in her studies. At the age of seventeen she began to teach. After two years of study in the Milwaukee high school under John G. McKidley, famed as a teacher and organizer of educational work, she taught in the public schools of that city. She became the wife of William W. Woodward in 1861. For eighteen years they made their home on a farm near Milwaukee, a favorite resort for a large number of cultivated friends and acquaintances. In 1879 they removed to Seward, Neb., where they still reside. Since 1875 she has been engaged in public affairs, serving as secretary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society and as president of the Milwaukee district association. She has been identified with the same work in Nebraska. In 1882 she entered the field of temperance as a newspaper writer, and she has shown herself a consistent and useful Worker in that cause and in all the reformations of the times. In 1884 she was elected treasurer of the Nebraska Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in 1887 vice-president-at-large of the State, which office she still holds. In 1887 she was appointed organizer for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and was twice reappointed. In the Atlanta convention she was elected associate superintendent of the department of work among railroad employee. She has been a member of each national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union since and including the memorable St. Louis convention of 1884. She was a delegate to the National Prohibiton Party Convention of 1888, held in Indianapolis. She was nominated by that party for regent of the State University in 1891, and led the State ticket by a handsome vote. Mrs. Woodward is one of the clearest, most logical and forcible speakers in the West.