Carla Occaso
Some formerly well-known figures from Montpelier are unknown today. One such figure is Angelia Louise French Thurston Newman, born in Montpelier on Dec. 4, 1837, the eldest of four girls.
Newman’s mother died when she was about seven, according to encyclopedia.com. Angelia attended Montpelier Academy and became a Montpelier school teacher while still in her teens. Her father Daniel Thurston, a farmer, tanner, and currier, remarried and moved the family to Wisconsin.
Angelia attended college, married, and continued working as a teacher. She also got deeply involved in the Methodist Foreign Missionary Society, for which she wrote numerous articles in its magazine “The Heathen Women’s Friend.”
She also became a lecturer and was known to be forceful in her presentations. She mainly lectured on temperance and “social purity.” At one point, a severe pulmonary illness caused her to move to Salt Lake City, Utah, for her health, which also led to her becoming involved in helping Mormon women seeking to flee their polygamist lifestyles, according to “The Woman of the Century,” by Frances Willard and Marie Livermore in 1893.
Newman became chairman of a committee to help Mormon women, and she also founded a home in which escaped Mormon wives and children could live. In 1878 she wrote “Heathen at Home,” calling the polygamist lifestyle a “harem at home.” She also got involved in the corrections movement, and became the superintendent of a jail. Additionally, she served as an annual delegate to the National Congress of Charities and Corrections. She was well known and admired at the time, and continued working into her late 60s. She died in 1910.
