Large Print Edition This book is presented as an evidence of appreciation and as a token of regard to the history-making women of our race. One chief object of these introductory sentences is to secure for this book the interest of our youth that they may have instructive light on the struggles endured and the obstacles overcome by our pioneer women. It has been prepared with the hope that they will read it and derive fresh strength and courage from its records to stimulate and cause them to cleave more tenaciously to the truth and to battle more heroically for the right.The characters and facts herein set forth are veritable history. In presenting this volume to the public, it is proper to remark that it has been prepared from a settled conviction that something of the kind is needed. It is our anxious desire to preserve for future reference an account of these women, their life and character and what they accomplished under the most trying and adverse circumstances, --some of whom passed scatheless through fires of tribulation, only to emerge the purer and stronger, --some who received their commission even at the furnace door, the one moment thinking their all was lost forever, the next in secure consciousness of the Everlasting Arms. We lack a complete record of these self-sacrificing heroines, but such as we have been permitted to gather we present through this medium to the public, hoping that it may find as much pleasure in its perusal as the writer had in its making.