History Of Portage County, Ohio, Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885.
Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge. Mary A. Brayton was a Nantucket girl, which explains much in her brave career and character. Left to themselves during the long and dangerous voyages of men who sought the northern seas for light, more light (in the halcyon days of spermaceti, before Colonel Drake struck oil from Pennsylvania’s bosom), the women of Nantucket were by nature and nurture hardy, strong and self-reliant. But with these qualities not sufficiently emphasized in the regulation pattern of the softer six, these unique islanders combined great tenderness and depth of head and conscience. How could it fail to be so, when they fervently prayed for the safe homecoming of their best-beloved and kept their memory green by constant recitals to their children of the virtues of their absent sons and sires? From the same lineage that has given us Professor Maria Mitchell, of Vassar College and Phoebe Hanaford, the preacher and poet, comes their cousin, Mary A. Woodbridge, whose name has already lent to temperance annals one of the brightest pages this century can show. Her father, Captain Isaac Brayton, a man of character and substance, repeats his noblest traits in his most gifted child, but more than all we trace the gentle, tender spirit which makes more firm her stand for truth and the unfailing trust in God which were the gift and teaching of a devoted mother to a tenderly loved daughter and see in her those rare qualities possessed by that mother (Love Mitchell Brayton) and her brother, Professor William Mitchell, the brilliant astronomer, of whom it is said none knew them but to love. Her sunny years of childhood were sedulously turned to account under the guidance of wise parental counsel and able teachers. Little Mary was the prodigy of the school room, especially in mathematics. That most progressive educator, Horace Mann, on witnessing some of her exploits at six years of age, said: Persevere, my child, you will yet make a notable woman. At eighteen our heroine was both wife and mother, having married Frederick Wells Woodbridge Esq., a successful young merchant, who made her acquaintance in the pleasant town of Ravenna, for some years her father’s home. A residence in Cleveland followed her marriage, where two daughters are now living. One son, though of the stature of manhood, is the joy of his parents, while the elder awaits their coming to the home beyond. Home cares did not prevent Mrs. Woodbridge’s constant growth in mental acquisitions and acumen. Books have always been her next of kin and of few can it be said with greater truth, that she lived on her ideas. She was Secretary of a literary club, over which General James A. Garfield presided (in his frequent visits to Cleveland) and all unconsciously she was preparing for the great work awaiting the Christian women of her native land. Finally, the clock of God struck the hour of the crusade and among the leaders which, in the sacred exclusion of their homes and manifold activities of their church life, had been serving their novitiate, forth came Mary A. Woodbridge into the peaceful war for God and home and native land. Of the three-fold call - opportunity, adaptation and success - by which she was ushered into gospel temperance work, let her own pastor, Rev. A.M. Hills, tell in the fitting words that follow: The crusade came with the suddenness and the power of Pentecost, bringing, also, like it, a baptism of the Holy Ghost. In common with thousands of others of her Ohio sisters, she felt the movings of the Spirit. Her eyes were opened to see in a new light the woes caused by intemperance. She went to her closet and there, when alone with her God, heard the Divine voice asking ‘Whom shall I send?’ She had the grace given her to lay herself upon the altar in consecration, with the prayer, ‘Here am I; I will be or do whatever pleaseth Thee.’ But she did not yet understand the vision, nor realize that a live coal had touched her lips. She had been a professing Christian for thirty years, but had never spoken a word in public or offered an audible prayer. Soon she attended a great union meeting which had come together in the excitement of the hour without any one having been appointed to preside when gathered. It was thought best that this should be done by a woman. Who should it be? One after another thought of her and she was asked to take the place. She was utterly overcome with fear and a sense of inability and pleaded to be excused. Her aged father came to her side and tenderly reminded her of her consecration vow and then left her. Her pastor came a second time, when, with a struggle, she said to one standing by, ’Doctor, ask the audience to rise and sing Coronation; I never can walk up the aisle with these people looking at me.’ As they sang, she went forward, trembling with weakness and praying every step ‘Lord, help me! Lord, help me!’ She called upon a brother to pray; then she read a verse of Scripture and began to say - she knew not what. But God put his own message into her anointed lips. The deeps of her woman’s heart were moved; self was forgotten in her message. She pleaded for the degraded victims of drink; for their heartbroken wives and mothers and for their suffering and degraded children. Her words poured forth in tender and resistless eloquence, till the multitude were moved as one man. The strong were melted to tears. Christians wept and prayed together. A cool headed Judge arose and solemnly declared that he had never been in an audience so manifestly moved by the Holy Ghost. In that one sacred hour she was lifted by the providence of God into a new life. Her mission had come. Like St. Paul, she had a revelation and she has not since that time been disobedient to the heavenly vision. Ever since then the history of Mrs. Woodbridge is part and parcel of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, that sober, second thought of the crusade. She has risen to her present eminence by sure and regular gradation, being at first President of the local union of her own home town at Ravenna, then for years President of her State and in 1878 she was chosen Recording Secretary of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a position which she fills with unrivaled ability, her minutes being almost never susceptible of improvement by even the slightest verbal change. This is, indeed a fact significant of much, for only the quickest ear, keenest perception and readiest hand could so keep the run of proceedings to the last degree intricate, rapid and changeful. Upon the resignation of Mrs. J. Ellen Foster (at the St. Louis National W.C.T.U. convention, in October 1884), Mrs. Woodbridge was unanimously chosen National Superintendent of the Department of Legislation and Petitions. She is now in the field addressing large audiences at leading centers of influence and is received with the consideration due her character, talents and influence. But the crowning work of Mrs. Woodbridge thus far, was her consummate conduct of the Constitution Amendment campaign, especially when the stage of submitting the prohibitory clause had been successfully passed. Her wonderful alertness of mind, facility of leadership, patience and far reaching wisdom, had here a splendid field. Political leaders in Ohio said they were out worked, out witted and out generaled. Almost unaided by the partisan press, with faithlessness in camp and field, the parties making a promise to the ear only to break it to the hope, this steadfast nature still held on its way, trusted by the people of Ohio and devoutly trusting them. But in God were the hidings of her power. Whether she edited the Amendment Herald, which under her leadership attained a weekly circulation of 100,000 copies, or directed the appointments of the temperance workers who were out campaigning, stirred the zeal of her local workers by letter and telegram, or pleaded for the sinews of war, her faith failed not and words of prayer were ever on her lips, or promises of God from the Book with which she has so great familiarity. What wonder that more than 300,000 voters responded by Yes ballots to such earnest workers at the White Ribbon women of Ohio, under such splendid leadership. Later on, when the amendment was counted out, Mrs. Woodbridge has taken positions so far advanced as to the safe conduct of prohibition movements, that many good people have been unable to see light in her light, but she goes bravely forward, undaunted, undeterred, with firmness in the right as God gives her to see the right exhibiting in this the choicest quality of her noble character, viz.: fidelity to her convictions at cost of comfort and of praise. The W.C.T.U. is unspeakably dear to Mrs. Woodbridge, but the temperance reform is dearer still and what she believes to be for its best interests, she will steadily pursue, with malice toward none and charity for all. Happily, for this gifted woman, her husband’s heart doth safely trust in her. Her noble son, now up to man’s estate, is so truly mother’s boy, that he drinks in her spirit and appreciates her work. Out of gratitude to God for the immunity of her own family circle, Mary A. Woodbridge works - not out of grief or desperation. Her home furnishes salient refutation to the foolish fallacy that women of brains, enterprise and public spirit are not good housekeepers. Mrs. Woodbridge is a rare florist; many varieties of roses embellish her garden. Rare exotics flourish in her sunny house; viands prepared by her own skilled and industrious hands render attractive her hospitable board. These things ought ye to have done and not left the other undone, seems to have been her motto. A model wife and mother, a royal friend, an earnest Christian, long may she live and labor for a sacred cause. - Frances E. Willard.