FREMONT, Mrs. Jessie Benton, born in Virginia, in 1824. She is a daughter of the late Hon. Thomas Hart Benton, of Missouri, who was conspicuous as editor, soldier and statesman, and famous for thirty years in the United States Senate, from 1820 to 1851. During the long period of Col. Benton's public life Jessie Benton was an acknowledged belle of the old regime. She possessed all the qualities of her long and illustrious ancestry, illuminated by her father's record, and was the center of a circle of famous men and women. She became the wife of John Charles Fremont, the traveler and explorer, who was born in Savannah, Ga., in 1813. Gen. Fremont is known to the world as the "Great Path Finder," and a "Grateful Republic" recognized his services. In 1849 he settled in California and was elected senator for that State. He received in 1856 the first nomination ever made by the Republican party for president. His wife was a prominent factor 1n that campaign. A major-general's commission was conferred in 1862, but General Fremont was more famous as explorer than as statesman or general. In 1878 he was appointed Governor of Arizona, where both he and Mrs. Fremont were very popular. Then closed the long and honorable public life of the Pioneer of the Pacific. In all these public positions Mrs. Fremont won renown in her own right. As a writer she is brilliant, concise and at all times interesting. Her extensive acquaintance with the brightest intellects of the world enabled her to enter the field of literature fully equipped, and since the death of Gen. Fremont she finds pleasure in her pen. The memoirs of Mrs. Fremont will find a large circle of readers. She is now a resident of Los Angeles, Cal., and lives with her daughter. Congress has recognized the services of "The Great Explorer" and given his widow a pension of two-thousand dollars per annum. Her published books are "Story of the Guard, a Chronicle of the War," with a German translation (Boston, 1863), a sketch of her father, Thomas H. Benton, prefixed to her husband's memoirs (1886), and "Souvenirs of my Time" (Boston, 1887). She is passing her days in quiet retirement.
(Source: American Women by Frances Elizabeth Willard, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Vol. 1, 1897. Transcribed by Marla Snow)

GALPIN, Mrs. Kate Tupper, educator, born in Brighton, Iowa, 3rd August, 1855. She is a sister of Mrs. Wilkes and Miss Tupper, whose lives are found elsewhere in this book. She lived during her girlhood on a farm near Brighton. As a child she was very frail, but the free and active life of her country home gave her robust health. Her first teacher was her mother, who taught school while her father was in the war. Her mother would go to school on horseback, with Kate behind her and a baby sister in her lap. Later she attended the village school until she was fifteen, when she was sent to the Iowa Agricultural College in Ames, where she was graduated in 1874. The vacations of the college were in the winter, and in the vacation following her sophomore year she had her first
experience in teaching, in a district school three miles out of Des Moines, Iowa, where the family was then living. The next winter, when seventeen years of age, she was an assistant in a Baptist college in Des Moines, her earnings enabling her to pay most of her college expenses. As a student her especial delight was in oratory. In an oratorical contest, during her senior year, she was successful over a number of young men who have since become well-known lawyers of the State, and in the intercollegiate contest which followed she received second honor among the representatives of all the colleges of the State. She has very marked dramatic ability, but this has been chiefly used by her in drilling students for the presentation of dramas. Her first schools after graduating were in Iowa. From 1875 to 1879 she taught in the Marshalltown, Iowa, high school, having held responsible positions in summer institutes in many parts of the State. In 1878 she taught an ungraded school in the little village of Beloit, Iowa, in order to be near her parents, who were living on a homestead in Dakota, and to have with her in the school her younger brother and sister. Later she taught for four years as principal of the academic department of the Wisconsin Normal School in Whitewater. During the following three years she held positions in the high school of Portland, Ore. Next she was called to the professorship of pedagogics in the State University of Nevada, with salary and authority the same as the men of the faculty. In 1890 she resigned her professorship in the university and received a call to the presidency of a prominent normal school, which she refused. That summer she became the wife of Cromwell Galpin, of Los Angeles, Cal., consummating a somewhat romantic attachment of her college life. Since then she has rested from her profession, but has taught special classes in oratory in the University of Los Angeles. All the ambition, energy and ingenuity that made her so distinguished as a teacher are now expended with equal success in the management of her housekeeping and the care of her husband's children. She has one child, a daughter.
(Source: American Women by Frances Elizabeth Willard, Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, Vol. 1, 1897. Transcribed by Marla Snow)

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