Elizabeth W. Greenwood

As the temperance enthusiasm spread from Ohio eastward, Greenwood became interested in the movement in her own city. When the Women's Crusade opened, she enlisted at once. She was conspicuous in the white-ribbon movement throughout New York and the nation. When scientific temperance instruction in the New York City schools was being provided for, Greenwood did important work with the legislature, as State superintendent of that department. She served as national superintendent of juvenile work.^[3]

Beginning in the WCTU, and many of the churches of Brooklyn, her work extended to nearly all the conservative churches of the large cities and towns in the Eastern seaboard. She was equally at home in jails, asylums, factories, and saloons.^[4] For years, served as president of the WCTU on the Hill in Brooklyn, as superintendent of its juvenile work, and as lecturer and evangelist. She spent her summers in the Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts, where she preached on Sundays to large audiences. In 1888, she was made superintendent of the evangelistic department of the National WCTU.^[3]

"She was but 24 years old," wrote Frances E. Willard in 1889, "when the woman's crusade began. Her remarkable quickness and versatility, her culture and her consecration admirably adapted her to the variety of methods in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Beginning as an evangelist in her own city and a lecturer upon literary and other themes, her work extended through its own success, throughout the Nation."^[5]

As superintendent of the New York State Department of Temperance Instructions in Schools and Colleges, a position she was instrumental in creating through her tireless efforts to bring about the law warranting it, Greenwood made a strenuous campaign in favor of the bill, which carried her all over the State of New York, and worked for it unceasingly. The measure was signed by President Grover Cleveland.^[5]

In 1889, she visited Europe, and there she continued her reform efforts. She did frequent work abroad as a lecturer and evangelist.^[3] Greenwood was also keenly interested in woman's suffrage and was one of its early champions in the United States.^[5]

For eighteen years, she was a preacher of the Gospel at Collinsville, Connecticut, and for an even longer period at Sheffield, Massachusetts, where, at the request of neighbors, she commenced a summer Sunday service in the old Ward School House near her home. These services eventually became so crowded that a regular church was opened for her nearby. It was attended by a congregation drawn from a dozen different towns. For seven years, Greenwood occupied the pulpit of the Mayflower Mission of Henry Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn.^[5]

In 1914, she suffered a breakdown which made her a semi-Invalid and forced her virtual retirement from active work in the field. For the last eight or nine years, she was forced to curtail her active interests in the varied crusades to which she gave her life, but to the last, she read magazines of current events.

She died on November 28, 1922, at her Brooklyn home after a lingering illness. She was buried Greenwood Cemetery. Greenwood was survived by a sister, Mrs. William C. Hitter; a brother, William Greenwood; and two nieces.^[5]

• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Bailey, M. (1898). The Chautauquan. Vol. 27 (Public domain ed.). M. Bailey, Publisher.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Chapin, Clara Christiana Morgan (1895). Thumb Nail Sketches of White Ribbon Women (Public domain ed.). Woman's temperance publishing association. p. 9.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth (1888). Woman and Temperance: Or, The Work and Workers of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (Public domain ed.). Park Publishing Company.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Moulton. p. 340.