Stoddard, Cora Frances (1872–1936)

American temperance advocate who wrote educational materials on the physiological and social effects of alcohol. Born on September 17, 1872, in Irvington, Nebraska; died of cancer on May 13, 1936, in Oxford, Connecticut; daughter of Emerson Hathaway Stoddard (a farmer) and Julia Frances (Miller) Stoddard; Wellesley College, A.B., 1896.

Selected writings:

Alcohol's Ledger in Industry (pamphlet, 1914); Handbook of Modern Facts about Alcohol (1914); Wet and Dry Years in a Decade of Massachusetts Public Records (1922); History of Scientific Temperance Instruction (n.d.).

Shortly after her birth in Nebraska in 1872, where her father Emerson Hathaway Stoddard had been working as a farmer, Cora Stoddard's family moved to their native New England. They settled in East Brookline, Massachusetts, where her parents became active in the temperance movement. Her mother Julia Miller Stoddard was president of the local Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

After earning an A.B. degree from Wellesley College in 1896, Stoddard taught high school for a year, then worked in business for two years. She later moved to Boston, where she worked as secretary to Mary Hanchett Hunt , director of the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction of the national WCTU. Stoddard helped Hunt write and review temperance teaching materials, which were required in public schools.

Stoddard left the WCTU in 1904 and took an administrative post in a normal school in Cortland, New York. Two years later, Hunt died and Stoddard returned to Boston where she cofounded the Scientific Temperance Federation to continue Hunt's work. She served as the organization's executive secretary for 30 years, compiling statistics, writing pamphlets and articles on the effects of alcohol, and editing the quarterly Scientific Temperance Journal. The journal was later published by the Anti-Saloon League, and Stoddard became active in that organization, which campaigned for Prohibition. In 1918, Stoddard returned to the WCTU as director of its Bureau of Scientific Temperance Investigation and later its Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction. After Prohibition was put in force in 1920, she wrote about its effects and the correlation between Prohibition and drug addiction. Stoddard, who was crippled by arthritis, resigned all her positions in 1933 (the year Prohibition was repealed), except her post with the Scientific Temperance Federation, which she held until her death from cancer in 1936. She was 63.

sources:

Edgerly, Lois Stiles, ed. and comp. Give Her This Day: A Daybook of Women's Words. Gardiner, ME: Tilbury House, 1990.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971.

Barbara Koch , freelance writer, Farmington Hills, Michigan