Biographical Sketch of Electa Noble Lincoln Walton

Biographical Database of NAWSA Suffragists, 1890-1920

Biography of Electa Noble Lincoln Walton, 1824-

 

WALTON, Mrs. Electa Noble Lincoln, educator, lecturer and woman suffragist, born in Watertown, N. Y., 12th May, 1824. She was the youngest daughter of Martin and Susan Freeman Lincoln, with whom at the age of two she removed to Lancaster, Mass. She resided afterwards in Roxbury, and later in Boston. Under the pastoral care of Dr. Nathaniel Thayer, of Lancaster, and Dr. George Putnam, of Roxbury, she early assented to the doctrines of Unitarianism. During the ministration of Rev. J. T. Sargent and under the impulse occasioned by the preaching of Rev. Theodore Parker, she devoted herself to religious work. Her first and principal teacher was her father, In her seventeenth year she entered the State Normal School in Lexington, Mass., and was graduated. She was immediately elected assistant in the Franklin school, Boston. After teaching there a few weeks, she was appointed assistant in her alma mater, to which she returned and taught successively under Mr. May, Mr. Peirce and Mr. Eben S. Stearns. In the interregnum between the resignation of Mr. Peirce and the accession of Mr. Stearns, she served as principal of the school. It was the expressed wish of Mr. Peirce that Miss Lincoln should be his successor, but such a radical innovation was not entertained with favor by the authorities, and she continued as assistant until she became the wife of George A. Walton, of Lawrence, Mass., in August, 1850. She has had five children, of whom three are living, Harriet Peirce, wife of Judge James R. Dunbar, of the Massachusetts superior court, Dr. George L. Walton, neurologist, Boston, and Alice Walton, Ph.D., at present, 1892, a student in Germany. After her marriage Mrs. Walton devoted her spare time to benevolent and philanthropic enterprises, and was always a leader in church and charitable work. She defended the Sanitary Commission when it was aspersed, turning the sympathies of the Lawrence people towards it and organizing the whole community into a body of co-laborers with the army in the field. She received thorough instruction in vocal culture from Professor James E. Murdock and William Russell. She was employed for years as a teacher of reading and vocal training in the teachers' institutes of Massachusetts. She has taught in the State Normal Institute of Virginia, and for five successive years, by invitation of Gen. Armstrong, conducted a teachers' institute of the graduating class in Hampton. She was, co-author with her husband of a series of arithmetics. Her belief in the equal right of woman with man to be rated at her worth and to be credited with her work was intensified by the decision of the publishers, that her name should be withheld as co-author of the arithmetics. From being simply a believer in the right of woman suffrage, she became an earnest advocate for the complete enfranchisement of woman. She was always a zealous advocate of temperance and during a residence in Westfield held the office of president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of that town. Since her removal to West Newton, Mass., where she now resides, she has been most actively interested in promoting woman suffrage, believing that through woman suffrage the cause of temperance and kindred reforms may be best advanced. She is an officer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, an active member and director in the New England Women's Educational Club of Boston, and has been president of the West Newton Woman's Educational Club since its organization in 1880. Though not a prolific writer, she sometimes contributes to the press. She is an interesting speaker and an occasional lecturer upon literary and philanthropic subjects.