Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Angela F. Newman 1837 ~

Born December 4, 1837, in Montpelier, Vermont. She taught school at the age of fourteen in the city of her birth. In 1856 she married Frank Kilgour, of Madison, who died within a year.

Afterwards she became the wife of D. Newman, a merchant of Beaverdam, Wisconsin. In 1871 they removed to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has held the position of Western secretary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, and lectured on missions throughout the West.

In 1883 at the request of Bishop Wiley, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, her attention having been drawn to the condition of the Mormon women, she went to Cincinnati, Ohio, and presented the Mormon problem to the National Home Missionary Society, and a Mormon Bureau was created to push missionary work in Utah, of which she was made secretary. She acted also as chairman of a committee appointed to consider a plan for founding a home for Mormon women who wished to escape from polygamy, to be sustained by the society.

The Gentiles of Utah formed a home association, and on Mrs. Newman's recovery from a serious accident she was sent as an unsalaried philanthropist to Washington to represent the interests of the Utah Gentiles in the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth and Fifty-first Congresses, and delivered an elaborate argument before the congressional committees. Two other arguments which she had prepared were introduced by Senator Edmonds in the United States Senate, and thousands of copies of these were issued Mrs. Newman secured appropriations of $80,000 for this association, and a splendid structure in Salt Lake City was the result of her efforts. She has spoken from pulpits and platforms on temperance, Mormonism and social purity; has long been a contributor to the religious and secular journals; has been commissioned by several governors as delegate to the National Conference of Charities and Corrections.

In 1888 she was elected a delegate to the quadrennial General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the first woman ever elected to a seat in that august body.

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.