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Tributes to Anna Wait
From Mrs. A.G. Lord
And Dr. Sarah Cole

Lincoln Republican, 18 May 1916

A tribute from Mrs. A.G. Lord, who is now ill at her home in Washington, D.C.
I regret more than language can express my inability to attend the services commemorating the life of one of the Kansas pioneers, whose every line of work was calculated to conduce to holy living, oftentimes demand sacrifices and privation; but there was never a moment of shrinking from duty, however unpopular that duty might be, as so many of the Kansas people can testify truthfully. Ever a power of righteousness in the home life, and school life, the editorial life and the suffrage campaigns, when these subjects were not so popular as they are in the 20th century, she was laying the foundation for a future and better civilization.
No one could meet with her for an hour without inevitably becoming impressed with the fact that they had seen one of God’s angels of sweetness and purity, kindliness and truth.
No person with whom I have ever been associated has been more a part of my innermost being than has Anna C. Wait through the long years of pioneer life in Lincoln county, in the uplift of humanity. Then in the succeeding years of Kansas life in Topeka, where I was making a home for college boys, while at the same time I was talking the gospel of Christ to the prisoners behind the bars, and then still later as superintendent of a Kansas Florence Crittenton mission work, was traveling through the state, often speaking in every church in the entire counties visited.
Mrs. Wait was ever following my work with earnest, prayerful Godspeed every step of the way. But all these words Anna C. Wait yet speaketh and will through all eternal years.

Lincoln Republican, 25 May 1916

I wish to take this opportunity to add a word of tribute to the memory of my dear friend, Mrs. Anna C. Wait. Years ago, when I first came to Kansas as a teacher, a stranger and at a distance of halfway across the continent from home, Mrs. Wait was one of the first to make it pleasant for me, not only by entertaining me in her home but by making me feel at home at all times when at her house. When I first came to Kansas, I was rather a frail young woman. I took the Kansas fever which impaired, rather than improved my otherwise delicate health. When Dr. Salllie Goff returned after graduating as a doctor, Mrs. Wait advised me to take treatment of her, took me into her home and gave me board at a price that I could afford to pay. When I was cured I thought that there was a work that I could do for other women and girls if I would study medicine and Mrs. Wait encouraged me, when others said “it is a man’s work.” Mrs. Wait said “there is work for women among women and girls.” Thus I was encouraged. I was fortunate in attending a school, The State University of Iowa, where all the professors of the department were favorable to women and gave women equal opportunity with men. There I had the opportunity and served an internship in the Homeopathic hospital which gave me an insight into hospital work that fitted me for the work that came to me here in Lincoln. After practicing eight years and the schools had raised their requirements, I went to Chicago and took another year and received a full degree from the Hanneman Medical College. After I graduated I visited my people in the east and then came to Kansas landing in Lincoln on the 8th day of July 1898 with my good sister Hannah who has helped me and others so much. Before I came I had written to Mrs. Wait asking her advice. She advised me to come and when we arrived found she had made arrangements for a place close in where we could live and begin the practice of my profession. When we decided to build a home the Waits had not yet decided to sell any part of the Wait block so we leased the lot for 20 years with satisfactory agreements. When two lives had been saved by bringing those patients to us we thought that a place for the care of the sick was needed here. Thus the sanitarium idea was developed. I had leased a 50 foot lot from her but to build a sanitarium we needed more ground and Mrs. Wait said “go ahead and use what you need.” Thus she encouraged me by allowing me to build on land not covered by lease. Later I bought the lot from Mrs. Wait, paying her full value.
Mrs. Wait did more than any other person, yes, more than all other friend combined, to help me do what I have done. She did it by her words of encouragement, by speaking a good word for the work at all times when opportunity offered and by her good advice. Only once did I fail to follow her advice and the people of the community know what a mistake that was. Mrs. Wait knew what I did not, but she was so faithful to the principle not to tell anything unfavorable about any one even though it was true, that she did not give me any reason for her advice [can’t read one line] mistake had been made, Mrs. Wait took me in her arms and comforted me as a mother comforts her child, giving me that which money could not buy: her full sympathy, which was wide and deep, the helping hand that any of us could give to those who need our kindness. Surely she was a friend to the friendless and a mother to the motherless. I shall miss her greatly. – Sarah A. Cole
 
 

Anna Wait Honored Among
'A Hundred Kansas Women'

Lincoln Republican, 1 April 1909

Margaret Hill McCarter, who has been writing a history of “A Hundred Kansas Women,” who have helped to upbuild Kansas, has included Anna C. Wait, of Lincoln. In the Sunday Capital of March 21, she says:
“Whatever you do” a friend said to me, “Don’t forget Mrs. Anna C. Wait of Lincoln.”
Mrs. Wait is in the honor roll of those who are now past 70 years and still alert and interested in living. She was born at Hinckley, Ohio, in the same year that Queen Victoria was crowned. Her maiden name was Anna C. Churchill, and her ancestry is not wanting in blue corpuscles. The Marlboro family are her blood relations. Winston, Spencer and George family names among her relatives. The Churchills came to New England and settled in Connecticut.
Anna received her education at the Richfield academy and the Twinsburg institute. Excepting Oberlin there were no colleges open to women in her day of schooling. Sometimes when my good anti-suffrage friends piously get by on the other hand when the ballot for women is considered I wonder if they ever consider how it was equal political rights for women that opened our college doors and gave to our daughters the right to higher learning or the respectability of teaching college classes.
Miss Churchill was married in 1857. She was only 19 years of age.
Her husband, Walter S. Wait, was a teacher who in ’58 took his wife to Missouri. It is stale to poke fun at Missouri today, but 50 years ago the Waits found there only danger and hardship to such a degree that they were compelled to move to Illinois. Here Mr. and Mrs. Wait engaged in teaching.
When the war between the north and south was on Wait became captain of Company H of the 50th Illinois Volunteers. And when the war was over the west beckoned temptingly to the sturdy pair. In 1871 they went with the emigrant tide to Salina. From there they went to Lincoln, in Lincoln county. Here Mr. Wait died in 1900.
Among the members who did things in Lincoln and the whole country there abouts was Mrs. Anna C. Wait , whom I call the dean of the community. Naturally the beginning was in the schools where she was the teacher. In 1872 in a little one roomed house the first school was opened. The house, by the way, was also Capt. Wait’s law office. Also, too, it was Mrs. Wait’s parlor as well, and her dining room, library, bed room, reception hall and kitchen besides. And it was just 10 by 22 feet from tip to tip. If you had to live in your husband’s law office and make its 10 by 22 feet your entire home, beloved, you can not get along now without the finished attic, would you feel the need of your community enough to open your door (not doors) and take in 30 children and give them – what is their divine right to have an education?
It is said that there are middle aged men and women in Lincoln today, broadminded, capable, scholarly men who will tell you there never was a better school than this little first school taught in Capt. Wait’s law office by this scholarly woman. But Mrs. Wait did more than to instruct. Her influence was used for other teachers. With her husband, in 1877 she organized the first normal institute. And beloved, it is the normal institute that can sow the seed for an everlasting harvest. It can do more to shape and bend the young mind toward teaching spiritually as unto the Lord and not unto man than any college of liberal arts can ever claim to do. In Lincoln county there were only 23 teachers, and unless there were 50 names on the pair enrollment the state could pay no expenses. Yet those 23 teachers and the children they would teach had needs as great as 23,000 teachers might have. So Capt. and Mrs. Wait evolved a saving plan. They secured the paid enrollment of the business men to help out the number deficit and the normal went on with its work. In a wide reach of territory Mrs. Wait became personally known and no bounds can ever be placed on her wholesome uplifting influence as a teacher and a friend of teachers. She it was who gave form to the education thought and established the education ideas of her part of Kansas, who made history no less than Jim Lane and John Brown, albeit, it was a spiritual life record that unfolded after her instead of a record of blood and thunder, and the cheap thing men call political success.
In 1880 Capt .Wait purchased a newspaper, the Beacon, which for 20 years until Mr. Wait’s death, he and his wife, assisted by their son, Alfred H. Wait, educated and published. This Beacon was well named. It was a light to guide the public. It was what it is the high privilege of every newspaper to be, a power to mold the public mind and stay the public conscience. It was fearless to the last limit, so it came to stand where every brave spirit may stand, soon or late, above the danger line of criticism. It began its career as a Republican paper with prohibition, antimonopoly and woman suffrage for its watchwords. Later when it could no longer call itself Republican and adhere to these three principles it let go of the Republican part and for 12 years lived successfully. The Beacon office and contents were destroyed by incendiary fire in 1901. Mrs. Wait was the power behind the press in that printing office, helping to put every issue that strong, fearless defense of the right that is one of the world’s great joys. As a woman editor, Mrs. Wait would have her place in Kansas history.
One more activity, however, must be considered. Not only was Mrs. Wait one of the first and best teachers of Kansas, and one of the able editors; she has been a leading spirit in that greatest of all women’s work, the development of suffrage.
The Lincoln Suffrage Association was organized in 1879, 12 years after the defeat and seeming death of the suffrage cause in the Legislature in 1867. This was said to be the first movement in 12 years for the lost cause, and Mrs. Wait was the prime mover. In seven years woman all over Kansas had municipal suffrage. It was the women of Lincoln backed by the weekly column in the Lincoln Beacon that did more powerfully sway the affairs of stats in those memorable years of real legislation in Kansas.
When the full history shall be written out, among the women who have done most for the state will be found the name of Anna C. Wait, teacher, editor and more yet.
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