Elizabeth W. Greenwood

Elizabeth Ward Greenwood (1849/1850 – November 28, 1922) was an American social reformer in the temperance movement, and evangelist in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

[3] She was educated at Miss Harvey's private school and later, at the age of 18, graduated from the Brooklyn Heights Seminary under Dr. Charles E. West, winning highest honors and acting as valedictorian of her class.

[4][3][5] After graduating, in 1869, she took a post-graduate course, and then spent some time at Brooklyn Heights Seminary as a teacher of the higher branches, and in giving weekly lectures in the Senior and Junior departments.

When scientific temperance instruction in the New York City schools was being provided for, Greenwood did important work with the legislature, as State superintendent of that department.

Her remarkable quickness and versatility, her culture and her consecration admirably adapted her to the variety of methods in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

"[5] As superintendent of the New York State Department of Temperance Instructions in Schools and Colleges, a position she was instrumental in creating through her tireless efforts to bring about the law warranting it, Greenwood made a strenuous campaign in favor of the bill, which carried her all over the State of New York, and worked for it unceasingly.

[5] For eighteen years, she was a preacher of the Gospel at Collinsville, Connecticut, and for an even longer period at Sheffield, Massachusetts, where, at the request of neighbors, she commenced a summer Sunday service in the old Ward School House near her home.

For the last eight or nine years, she was forced to curtail her active interests in the varied crusades to which she gave her life, but to the last, she read magazines of current events.