Emma Lee Benedict

Emma Lee (sometimes recorded as "Lydia")[3][1] Benedict was born in Clifton Park, New York, November 16, 1857. Her parents were Stephen Benedict (1821-1906) and Sarah Crosby (d. 1862). As the daughter of a farmer, she gained a love for nature as well as the foundations of robust health and a good physique. Always fond of books, at the age of twelve years she had read nearly everything in her father's small but well-selected library.[2] She had at least two brothers, Hiram A. Benedict and Luther P. Benedict.[1]

At school, she was able to keep pace with pupils much older than herself, besides finding time for extra studies. Her first introduction to science was through an old schoolbook of her mother's, entitled Familiar Science, and another on natural philosophy, which she carried to school and begged her teacher to hear her recite from. A graduate of the Clifton Park Academy,[1] she began to teach at the age of seventeen, and the following year entered the State Normal College at Albany (now, University at Albany, SUNY), from which she was graduated in 1879.[2]

After a few more years of successful teaching, she began to write for educational papers and was soon called to a position on the editorial staff of the New York School Journal, where she remained for more than three years. A desire for more extended opportunities for study and a broader scope for literary work led her to resign that position and begin to focus on miscellaneous literature. A very successful book by her, Stories of Persons and Places in Europe (New York, 1887), was published in the following year, besides stories, poems and miscellaneous articles which appeared in various standard publications.[2]

Benedict was a member of the first class in pedagogy that entered the pedagogical course in the University of the City of New York.[2]

Through contributions to the daily papers and interviews with leading educational people, she was an active factor in bringing about the general educational awakening in New York City, in 1888, which resulted in the formation of a new society for the advancement of education. Just at that time, she was sent for by Mary H. Hunt, national and international superintendent of the department of scientific temperance instruction of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), to go to Washington, D.C. and assist in the revision of temperance physiologies, which had then been submitted to Hunt for that purpose by several of the leading publishers of temperance textbooks. In Washington, Benedict spent a number of months in the United States Medical Library, occupied in investigating and compiling the testimony of leading medical writers concerning the nature and effects of alcohol upon the human body. The researches there begun were subsequently carried on in Boston and New York libraries and by correspondence with leading medical and chemical authorities. At the time, there was probably no other person more familiar than she with the whole subject of the nature and effects of alcohol upon the human system.

In 1893, Benedict was with Hunt, in the home of the latter in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, assisting in laying out courses of study for institute instructors and preparing manuals for the use of teachers on the subject of physiology and hygiene and the effects of narcotics.[4] Benedict wrote a biography on Mary Hunt for the Scientific Temperance Federation Series.[5]

Benedict co-edited a temperance publication, which, in 1906, became the Scientific Temperance Journal with Benedict as managing editor. She also served as research secretary, Scientific Temperance Federation; director, scientific temperance instruction department, Massachusetts WCTU (1920–27); and director, scientific temperance investigation bureau, national WCTU.[1] When the Scientific Temperance Association was reincorporated in Boston in 1906 as an independent organization, Benedict was a charter member.[6]

In 1895, she married Charles Frederick Transeau, of Pofftown, North Carolina.[1][lower-alpha 1] After marriage, she wrote under the names, "E. L. B. Transeau"[8] or "Emma L. Transeau"[9]

Benedict died at the Pioneer Club of Boston, February 3, 1937. Interment was in New York,[1] at Clifton Park Cemetery.[10]

Illustration from Stories of persons and places in Europe (1887)

Pieces to Speak (1893)

The Gregory Guards (1893)

• Stories of Persons and Places in Europe, (as E. L. Benedict; 1887)
• Pieces to Speak, (as Emma Lee Benedict; 1893)
• How Philip found a job when jobs were scarce, 19--
• They want your money, 191--
• The cost of a wrong opinion, 19--
• Three young Americans in action; stories of a big boy, a little boy and a middle-sized girl, 19--
• The Gregory Guards: A Boys' Club which Made Men, 1905 (illustrated by Frank Thayer Merrill)
• Father's day at the baby show, 1918

• Works related to Woman of the Century/Emma Lee Benedict at Wikisource
• Works by or about Emma Lee Benedict at Internet Archive