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McKinney, Jane (Amy) 1832 - 1905

MCKINNEY, AMY, STRONG, WEISER, WILLIAMS

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 4/6/2019 at 15:06:28

Source: Decorah Republican Dec. 14, 1905 P4 C2

It was supposed that the death of Mrs. Jane Amy McKinney ended the family record of Capt. John Amy, her father. This is a mistake. Mrs. John M. Williams, an elder sister, is still living at Syracuse, Neb., and in good health at last reports. Her other sisters—Mrs. J. C. Strong and Mrs. H. S. Weiser, sleep in Phelps’ cemetery, Decorah. So, also, does her brother, Chauncey W. Amy, and her parents, Captain and Mrs. John Amy. Her father earned his title by service rendered in the War of 1812.

Source: Decorah Republican Dec. 14, 1905 P4 C4, 5

JANE AMY McKINNEY AT REST.
Last Thursday at Cleveland, Ohio, Jane Amy McKinney passed to her long rest, after a brief illness which terminated suddenly. The funeral was held Sunday afternoon at the Chapel of the Cleveland crematory, and the remains were cremated. Rev. Margaret Olmstead of Unity church of Decorah officiated at the funeral, thus fulfilling one of the last requests of the deceased.
Jane Amy McKinney was born in Rochester, Vt., Oct. 25, 1832. She grew up in Kirkland, Ohio, and was married to James P. McKinney in 1856 in Cleveland, O., her father at that time being a professor of mathematics in the old Cleveland university. In 1857 Mr. and Mrs. McKinney came to Iowa and during that year taught the second term of school held at Fort Atkinson, with an attendance of nearly one hundred. When the War of the Rebellion broke out Mr. McKinney joined the army, and during his absence Mrs. McKinney came to Decorah. Here the family residence was established and for over forty years this was their home. When the first graded school was built Mrs. McKinney was chosen as one of the instructors and her service was one covering many years of efficiency in every respect.
During the seventies Dr. H. C. Bulis, then State Senator, secured an appointment for Mrs. McKinney as a member of the Board of Visitor at the Independence hospital for the insane, and as in all undertakings she gave the duties her best thought and attention.
No one who knew Mrs. McKinney ever slightly could fail to be impressed by her deep and never failing interest in all lines of progress and reform. Heredity and early environment no doubt contributed much to this element of her character. Her maternal grandfather was a man of great force of character. Her father was a pronounced abolitionist. At the age of 16 she went with her father to attend an Equal Suffrage convention in Cleveland. She was born and grew up in an atmosphere of reform, of sturdy adherence to great principles, of independent thinking, of enthusiasm for freedom. So by inheritance and early education were her tastes formed and her aspirations directed.
She was the first woman to take a business course in the city of Cleveland. She also took a course in pharmacy. It is quite the thing for young women to do such things in these days. At that time it required no little courage. She was also a student at Oberlin.
While their daughter Mabel was in Chicago preparing for her life work as a kindergartner, Mr. and Mrs. McKinney made their home in that city, and kept boarders. Her own personal interest in the kindergarten work was soon so manifest that she was asked to become supervisor of the kindergartens established by the kindergarten college through the city. Through her ability to direct her household affairs by means of a corps of helpers she could accept this important and congenial position. She became also a member of the Illinois Press Ass’n and president of Cook county Suffrage association. At various times and places she spoke in public on reform questions. She was an ardent advocate of temperance and while questioning the wisdom of some of the W. C. T. U. methods she was in such hearty sympathy with the aims and spirit of the organization that she worked with it. She never missed an opportunity to extol peace and denounce war. Her heart went out to every struggling and oppressed people in every part of the world, especially to the negro in our own country who with nominal freedom is still deprived of his rightful opportunities by unreasonable race prejudice. If she seemed to care more for the Suffrage cause than for other good works in which women engage, it was not really because she cared less for the others, but because she considered political equality fundamental in that it would give woman a leverage without which most of her effort must always be ineffective.
It was impossible for her to narrow her interests and sympathies to the bounds of her own home and community. She saw things always in their widest relations. And she proved in her own case that a woman can take part in the upbuilding of life outside her home and yet not neglect her own or be disloyal to the highest needs of her family. She chose for her children a stainless fatherhood. She has reared a daughter who is consecrated to high ideals and equipped with the education, ability and courage to carry them out. The little son, whose early death brought a life-long sense of loss, but opened her heart the wider to feel the needs of children everywhere. It was her cherished hope that her daughter would choose to enter the kindergarten work, and to this end she planned. And it was through her influence and encouragement chiefly that Miss Georgia Allison developed such remarkable ability that the foremost kindergartners consider her work in Pittsburg a marvel not only in its tangible accomplishment but more in its spiritual quality.
In her religious life as in other things, Mrs. McKinney believed freedom to be essential to full development, and that the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life. As the Unitarian church seemed to her the best exponent of these principles she placed her membership there. While she did not care for some phases of Christian Science, Theosophy and Spiritualism, yet the underlying spiritual philosophy of all these appealed to her strongly. To some Mrs. McKinney seemed too aggressive with her ideas, but there the moral earnestness of this woman, her brave outspoken championship of unpopular causes for justice and humanity, put to shame the indifference, the fear of being unconventional, the shallow social ambitions, that too much dominate the lives of women capable of better things. There is urgent call to-day for women, and men too, of this broad-minded heroic type, people who have cosmopolitan sympathies, who care most for the essential and permanent things, and who dare stand by their convictions regardless of personal consequences. Like Frances Willard she decreed that her body be cremated because she wished in death as in life to help forward progressive movements.
Like all of us Mrs. McKinney being human had her limitations, her elements of weakness, but her elements of strength were a wholesome and invigorating influence in this community, an influence destined to be still more helpful than it has yet been.

Phelps Cemetery
 

Winneshiek Obituaries maintained by Bruce Kuennen.
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