PORTAGE COUNTY OHIO: BIO:  WOODBRIDGE, Mary A. (Brayton)
"History of Portage County, Ohio" published by Warner, Beers & Co., 
Chicago, 1885

Copyright 1999 by  Betty Ralph. This copy contributed for use in
the USGenWeb Archives.  bralph@hiwaay.net


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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 Col. 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 home-coming 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 Prof. 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, Capt.
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, Prof. 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 Gen. 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 alter 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 unrivalled 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.Y. 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
altertness 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 hops, 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
advance 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 house-keepers.  Mrs. Woodbridge is a rare
florist; many varieties of roses embellish her garden.  Rare exotics
flourish in he 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.