Martha McClellan Brown
Martha McClellan Brown (April 16, 1838 – August 31, 1916) was an American lecturer, educator, reformer, newspaper editor, and major leader in the temperance movement in Ohio.
[6] At the age of 20, Martha made the acquaintance of Reverend W. Kennedy Brown, of the Pittsburgh Methodist Episcopal Conference, and on November 15, 1858, they were married.
That position she held from 1867, through the organization of the Prohibition party in 1869, the Ohio Woman's Crusade in 1873, and the founding of the National WCTU in 1874, in each of which movements she was a leader.
She also sharply criticised the efforts of what she recognized as the rum oligarchy at political domination, and she reprimanded the truculent spirit and conduct of many politicians.
Julius A. Spencer, of Cleveland, secretary of Ohio Good Templary in 1868, proposed to Brown the formation of an independent political party, and she extended her hand to assist him.
The question being further discussed, Brown's husband required that, before his wife should unite in the movement for a new party, there must be an agreement to place woman on an equal status with man.
Spencer finally agreed that woman should have equal status in the new party, and that a plank asserting this fact should be inserted in the platform, provided they were not expected to discuss that issue before the people.
[7] In 1870, Mr. Brown purchased the political newspaper, of which his wife was editor, and for years that paper was made the vehicle of vigorous warfare against the liquor traffic.
As a member of the executive committee of Good Templars in Ohio, she had almost constant opportunity, apart from her position as editor of a local city paper, for the circulation of her views.
When she appeared upon the platform in Scotland and England in 1873, audiences of from 5,000 to 10,000 greeted the American temperance woman, and her title of Grand Chief Templar of Ohio was a passport to recognitions of royalty, even so far remote as Milan, Italy.
Believing that it was a visitation from the Lord in answer to years of work and much prayer, she in her capacity of Chief Templar issued an order in January, 1874, for a day of fasting and prayer in the 300 lodges of Ohio under her jurisdiction, and encouraged that all ministers of religion favorable to the order and the cause of temperance be invited to unite with the Good Templars in a day of humiliation and worship for enlightenment and power for a dispensation of a much-needed temperance revival.
[7] Just after the founding of the WCTU in August, 1874, Brown was elected Right Grand Vice-Templar of the International Order of Good Templars, in Boston, Massachusetts.
She had also a secondary aim, which was to make that organization a barrier and corrective against the growing defection of temperance workers from radical measures of reform.
Through those years, she maintained an office in New York City without salary, while her husband continued in the ministry and, with their family of five children, remained at his work in Pittsburgh.
[7] In the winter of 1881–82, from a caucus of Republicans, directed by Simon Cameron, she received the tender of the highly remunerative position of Superintendent of Public Instruction in the State of Pennsylvania.
[7] In October, 1881, Brown gathered through personal letters, special circulars, and press notices a large National Conference of leading Prohibitionists and reformers in the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City.
At that conference, Frances E. Willard and her immediate following of Home Protectionists and the WCTU were brought into the Prohibition Party, besides many local organizations of temperance workers.
