▐PARA ╓PAR@ ` ªTEXT ` ÿSewall, May Eliza Wright1844╨1920educator and reformerBorn in Greenfield, Wisconsin, on May 27, 1844, May Wright attended schools in Wauwautosa and Bloomington. She taught school in Waukesha for a time and then entered Northwestern Female College (later absorbed by Northwestern University), from which she graduated in 1866. (She received an M.A. degree in 1871.) Over the next several years she taught school in Corinth, Mississippi, was principal of the high school in Plainwell, Michigan, and from 1872 to 1880 was a teacher at a high school in Indianapolis. Widowed in 1875, she was married a second time in October 1880 to Theodore L. Sewall, also a teacher. In 1882 they founded the Girls╒ Classical School of Indianapolis, with which Sewall was associated for a quarter-century. After her husband╒s death in 1895 she served as principal until 1907. During that period she also became widely known for her efforts in the women╒s-rights movement. She had helped found the Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society in 1878, and in 1881╨1883 she led a campaign that narrowly failed to secure woman suffrage in Indiana. From 1882 to 1890 she was chairman of the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association. She was an early member of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, founded in 1882, and the next year she helped organize the Western Association of Collegiate Alumnae, of which she was president in 1886 and 1888╨1889 (both groups later were absorbed into the American Association of University Women). In 1888 she and Frances Willard took charge of a convention of women held in Washington, D.C., to mark the 40th anniversary of the Seneca Falls women╒s-rights convention. From the Washington meeting emerged the National Council of Women, of which Sewall was first recording secretary and later, in 1897╨1899, president. The International Council of Women, formally organized in 1889 also grew out of the Washington meeting, and she served as its president from 1899 to 1904. In 1889 she joined in organizing and was elected first vice-president of the General Federation of Women╒s Clubs. During 1891╨1892 she traveled extensively in Europe to build support for the World╒s Congress of Representative Women, of which she was chairman, to be held in conjunction with the World╒s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. In 1900 President William McKinley appointed her U.S. representative at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Sewall╒s last years were devoted principally to the cause of peace. In 1915 she called and presided over the International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace, held in San Francisco in conjunction with the Panama╨Pacific Exposition. In December 1915 she was a member of the delegation aboard Henry Ford╒s peace ship Oscar II, managed by Rosika Schwimmer. At home in Indianapolis she had been a member of the Indianapolis Woman╒s Club since its founding in 1875 and had planned its clubhouse, the Propylaeum, opened in 1891. She had also been a founder in 1883 of the Indianapolis Art Association and its school (from 1902 the John Herron Art Institute) and in 1890 of the Contemporary Club. Among Sewall╒s written works were Women, World War, and Permanent Peace, 1915, and Neither Dead Nor Sleeping, an account of her experiences in spiritualism, 1920; she edited The World╒s Congress of Representative Women, 1894, and other reports. She died in Indianapolis on July 23, 1920. εstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ # 5¬ : !I ú 5¬ ñ !I 5¬ !I !I ▐ & !I ⌐ 5¬ ¬ !I
