Cairns, Anna Sneed, educator, is a daughter of Rev. Samuel K. Sneed, of Louisville, Kentucky, and Rachel Crosby, of Milford, New Hampshire. Her father was for fifty-four years a minister of the Presbyterian Church, and. a pillar in the New School branch, which his influence held firmly to abolition sentiment, as he had freed his own slaves long before the birth of this daughter. Though a Whig, he voted for James G. Birney, the Free Soil candidate, then the third party. Being thus firm in his convictions, he was one of the early founders and voters of the Republican party. Mrs. Cairns' mother was educated by Mary Lyon and Miss Grant, in their school at Ipswich, from which she graduated the year that Mary Lyon was founding Mt. Holyoke. Her mother earned her own education by teaching school between different terms, and from her mother's early struggles for education came Mrs. Cairns' sympathy for young girls who desire education as a vital necessity, and have not the means to attain it by their own unaided effots. Her mother was the great-grandchild of Captain Josiah Crosby, who fought at Bunker Hill, with his four sons, and Mrs. Cairns is a member of the society of Daughters of the Revolution. As she came of the noted Crosby family, she was descended from a race of teachers, being connected with such men as Alpheus Crosby,-author of the first Greek grammar; Dr. Dixey Crosby and Chancellor Crosby, of New York.
With such an ancestry, she inherits from her father the fiery warm blood of Kentucky, and from her mother the granite rock of New Hampshire, and she dwells upon this ancestry with loving pride. Born in 1841, she was an omnivorous reader at five, at an age when, fortunately for her, children's books were not. Curled up in her little crib, or perched in one of her favorite seats, way up in the trees, she read Goldsmith's History of Rome, Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress, Milton's Paradise Lost, D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, and Robinson Crusoe, until Martin Luther, and Brutus, Christian and Christiana, Adam and Eve, and the affable Archangel Raphael, and her beloved Robinson Crusoe were as dear to her as Santa Claus and Jack the Giant Killer are to others.
Her father's theological and historical library was strong meat for babes, and well can she remember pulling down two large volumes named so attractively Tom I and Tom II, only to find, alas! that they were written in Hebrew, and were not delightful records of boys of that name.
At seventeen she began her life work of teaching. In 1861, the first year of the war, in troublous times, she founded Kirkwood Seminary, without a dollar in money, without a foot of ground, without a stick of school furniture, and with seven scholars. It grew for thirty years, until it was transferred, in 1891, to St. Louis, and -was then reincorporated as Foment Park University for Women, a school which is the outgrowth of all her life and thought, and is the true exponent of herself.
Besides her school, Mrs. Cairns has had a deep interest in many other directions. Missionary work has always had a warm place in her heart.
After the Centennial of 1876 she resumed her long-neglected study of painting and drawing. She became deeply interested in the effort that Mrs. John B. Henderson made to establish a school of design in St. Louis, attended its sessions on Saturday, and studied so faithfully that she filled her sideboards and mantelpieces with beautiful dishes and plaques, the work of her own hands. Then she became interested in wood carving, and carved the beautiful mantel in black walnut which is in her private parlor, and which has so many suggestive scenes from the life of her ancestors, and is so rich in precious memories of the past. This mantel has attracted so much attention that it has been many times written of in the papers. After giving her leisure time for several years to painting and drawing, the hand of Providence led her into total-abstinence and prohibition work. She united with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and was instrumental, with Mrs. H. H. Waggoner, the first president of the St. Louis W. C. T. U., in reviving this work very greatly in the city. Mrs. Governor Thomas C. Fletcher was elected its efficient president, and very much was accomplished. Gospel temperance meetings were held in all the churches, presided over by the leading ministers of St. Louis. The prohibitionists were making an effort to secure the submission of a constitutional amendment to the people of Missouri, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, importation and exportation of all intoxicants, including beer and cider. Miss Frances Willard, the great national president of the W. C. T. U., was invited to address the Legislature on the subject. Dr. Eliot, the distinguished chancellor of Washington University, and pastor of the Church of the Messiah, was a very active prohibitionist, having been made so by his efforts to suppress Uhrig's Cave and drive it away from the vicinity of Mary Institute and the resident portion of the city. Dr. Eliot was determined to find some one in the W. C. T. U. of St. Louis who would go up to Jefferson City and plead for the amendment with Miss Willard. Mrs. Cairns readily offered to find some one, but Dr. Eliot insisted that it was her duty. Mrs. Cairns steadily declined, on the plea that she had never spoken in public. She searched St. Louis and Kirkwood thoroughly, but could find no woman brave enough to take her stand by Miss Willard's side. Dr. Eliot laid it before her that it was her own duty to go, and on her again refusing, he said: "What, must a woman from Illinois be the only one to plead for prohibition in Missouri? Is there no Missouri woman that will stand by her side and plead for her own State?" Then Mrs. Cairns gave a reluctant consent. It was found that the Legislature had not had the grace to wait to hear the ladies argue the point, but had decided it against them before they came. Dr. Eliot insisted that the ladies should then work to have another amendment for prohibition introduced. When they arrived in Jefferson City the Rev. Dr. Palmore, now of the St. Louis "Christian. Advocate," was the only minister in Jefferson City brave enough to meet them at the depot and escort these advocates of an unpopular cause to the Legislature. When they arrived they urged the minority, who had so boldly made the fight for prohibition, to renew it by introducing another constitutional amendment, but not a man would dare to do it. Under these dispiriting circumstances they went to the House of Representatives that night. They found it crowded to its utmost capacity. Mrs. Cairns was to make the opening speech, which she had written laboriously and faithfully to defend an amendment now already dead and buried. Never was a more embarrassing position for a maiden speech. To relieve her embarrassment she told them a little story of a young minister, with his first sermon to be delivered in June, and lie thought the beauty of a summer day, fresh from the hand of God, would be a delightful subject for his first sermon. The day came, a pelting, cheerless, windy and terrible day, but the minister had but one sermon, and he preached it anyhow, no matter how much the eastern wind and rain might pour down. "So," said Mrs. Cairns, "we have but one sermon, and that is prohibition. We have nailed the flag to the mast, and we will never pull it down." She was followed by 'Miss Willard, that silver tongued orator, whose persuasive, wondrous power no one that has heard her can ever forget, and as the result of that evening, they rallied the dispirited forces of prohibition, and another constitutional amendment was introduced the next morning by those who had utterly declined to do so the evening before. She was appointed legislative superintendent of the Missouri State W. C. T. U., an office which she filled for seven years. Her sister, Mrs. Harriet Worthington, was made superintendent of scientific instruction, and under the heroic leadership of these two sisters the Scientific Temperance Law of Missouri was gained. Then came the six years' struggle for the submission of a prohibition amendment to the people of Missouri.
Year after year she gathered petitions, only to go to the Legislature and be defeated. In the meantime, through the kindness of the late Wm. C. Wilson, prohibition literature and submission petitions were scattered all over the State. The W. C. T. U. in every county were instructed to interview every candidate for the Legislature, to secure from him a written pledge that he would vote for the submission of the prohibition amendment to the people of Missouri, and to concentrate the religious and temperance people on the candidate who would thus pledge himself. As a result of these labors, when the Legislature of 1887 convened there was a clear majority in both houses for submission. Then the great fight began. Mrs. Cairns went up on the opening day, and put in her amendment as the first bill of the session. Every morning, after the morning prayer, the petitions were presented in both Senate and House from every county in the State. The work of gathering petitions was continued ceaselessly in every county. If a member seemed to be faltering, his friends at home were written to, great meetings were held, resolutions adopted and sent to him. Committees were sent to Jefferson City from every city. The fight lasted five weeks, and all the time the petitions fell in the Senate and House every morning. On Friday night, when school closed, Mrs. Cairns would slip up to Jefferson Citv, and find the stalwart, brave, unflinching farmers, ministers, lawyers and judges that were pledged to prohibition. She would hold caucuses with the noble band of eighty-two men who were standing by their guns so firmly. Then Saturday they would push the cause along a step or two. Sunday there would be held a great meeting in the Hall of Representatives, and, perhaps, Saturday evening she would address members of the Legislature, and speak to crowded houses. The position was an invincible one, that the people of Missouri had a right to have anything submitted to them for their decision, that the people were the source and fountain of all power, and that, as thirty-five thousand of her best citizens had publicly petitioned the Legislature to submit the question of prohibition to their decision, the Legislature should undoubtedly do so. Finally came the decisive day in the House; after many great skirmishes, all the forces were gathered, the numbers were counted and one man was missing. He was found in a drunken sleep in his hotel, but the messenger that was sent for him assured him that Mrs. Cairns said he was to bring him, alive or dead. Not one of her forces was to stay in the grip of the enemy, but all were mustered. The battle raged all day, substitutes, amendments, resolutions to table, were all voted down; impassioned speeches were made by the liquor men, but the submissionists followed the plan ably laid down by Mrs. Cairns, to say nothing and vote solidly. Mrs. Cairns tallied every vote of the eleven different times that the votes were taken that day, and when the last vote was taken there were the eighty-two votes solid for submitting prohibition to the choice of the people of Missouri. Mrs. Cairns, generalizing the submission forces to this victory, had accomplished what no man or woman before, nor, alas! since, has done. She had persuaded the Missouri House of Representatives to vote, by an overwhelming majority for the submission of a prohibition amendment to the people. But the Senate defeated the proposed amendment and prevented it from going before the people.
With this deep interest in politics, civics, and with her business interests, it goes without saying, that Mrs. Cairns has favored equal suffrage for women. Herself a tax-payer, she has felt the injustice of having no voice as to what should be done with her money, and who should represent her in both the State Legislature and in Congress.
In the winter of 1897 she introduced a constitutional amendment into the Legislature to strike out the word male from the constitution, and made an impassioned appeal in the Senate Chamber at Jefferson City in its favor. She has also been interested in having women as school directors and superintendents throughout Missouri. She, with her sister, Mrs. Harriet Worthington, represented the Forest Park University Alumnae Association at the Biennial Conference of Women's Clubs in Denver, in June, 1898, where she spoke in one of the churches on the Sabbath, and more recently has been interested in temperance work among the soldiers of Jefferson Barracks. But all of this is but the play of a mind and heart whose life work is found in Forest Park University. As long as this building, and the university within its walls, remains the pride of St. Louis, it will be her monument, as it is her life-work.
In the first eight years after she planted it in St. Louis she took no salary whatever from the proceeds of the school.
When she went down into the business part of St. Louis, for these years, she would not spend upon herself even the amount of a meager lunch, because the university, with all its great needs has tugged at her heart strings, and her purse strings as well, and she has always seen ten places where she could put each particular cent. She has looked upon herself as simply a steward for Christ, and has hoped that the labor and economy and business management of her whole life might build up a lasting university for women in the Empire City of the great Southwest.
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