Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1899 — AMERICAN WOMAN HONORED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AMERICAN WOMAN HONORED.

Mrs. Bewail! President sf the International Connell of Women. Mrs. May Wright Sewall, who has been elected president of the International Council of Women, which met in London, is well fitted by education, tastes and wide experience as a leader of women along higher educational lines for the important public position with which she has been honored. For several years Mrs. Sewall has been president of the National Council of Women, and for a great many years her public work has been devoted almost exclusively to the furtherance of organization among women. Mrs. Sewall was born in Wisconsin and is a graduate of Northwestern University in the class of 1866. It was, however, one of her greatest'grief s that she could not enter Yale University as her father had done, and it was said that it was largely her sense of injustice in this matter that led her to identify herself with the woman suffrage movement. After her graduation she occupied important positions as a teacher until her marriage with Theodore Sewall in 1880, when she and her husband opened a classical school for girls in Indianapolis, and she is still head of that school: Mrs. Sewall has been abroad several times and has devoted considerable of her attention to getting acquainted with the leading women of the old world. As president of the National Council she visited Hamburg, by appointment with the Empress Frederick, who gave her an hour’s interview and was deeply Interested In the work she outlined. In Brussels Mrs. Sewall addressed the Woman’s League of Belgium, and In Paris she spoke in the Marie St. Sulplce before a large audience of leading

men and women. This address attracted great attention and was widely noticed In the press of France, Russia, Italy and England. Another great triumph was in 1889, when as a delegate she addressed the Woman’s Congress of Paris in the purest French and received commendation from M. Jules Simon and other noted French writers. As a presiding officer Mrs. Sewall Is said to be uniformly successful, being dignified, clear-beaded and quick to see the point. She is also a newspaper contributor and magazine writer and a lecturer of some renown.

MRS. SEWALL.