Mary Chawner Woody

Mary Williams Chawner was born in Azalia, Indiana, December 22, 1846. She was of English ancestry. Her parents were Chalkley Albertson Chawner and Sarah (Cox) Chawner. supplemented by training in the Friends' Bloomingdale Academy (Bloomingdale, Indiana), at Albion College (Albion, Michigan), and in Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana), to which was added a year of studies in law and public speaking in University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan). In all those institutions, coeducation was the rule, and the principles of equality witnessed there gave shape to the pupils' sentiments. ==Career==

She entered, as teacher, the Friends' Bloomingdale Academy where her brother, John Chawner, A.M., was principal. At the second State convention, held in Asheville, North Carolina in October 1884, she was chosen president, a position to which she was elected to for several years thereafter. The requirements of this office were not easily met. The unsettled conditions of society, the novelty of cooperative women's enterprises, the questionings that existed everywhere about the best ways of doing temperance wor, combined to make it unusually difficult in this State, as well as all through the South. At the time of her election to the W.C.T.U. presidency (1884), the church at home was completing its proceedings in setting her apart for the ministry. Later teaching positions were held at Whittier College (Whittier, California) and Friends University (Wichita, Kansas). ==Death==

Mary C. Woody died December 25, 1928, High Point, North Carolina. Interment was at New Garden Friends Cemetery, Guilford College. ==See also==