An Exceptional Woman.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 272, 18 February 1881, Page 2

An Exceptional Woman.

An exceptional woman received a well-won appointment lately in New York, when Mrs. Annie E. Wilson was made inspectress of the New York Custom House. Born in the Bay of

Bengal, and reared on shipboard, she married a Boston captain when fourteen years of age. For seven years this child of the ocean continued to sail the seas by her husband’s side without accident; but in 1872 their vessel was struck by a storm on the banks of Newfoundland. The captain, her husband, had his shoulder-blade broken by the fall of a mast, and the first mate and part of the crew were also disabled. The second mate gave way to panic. No sooner, however, had the captain been carried down, lashed on a door, to the cabin, than his wife, then a woman of one-and-twenty, hurried on deck. “ Boys,” she said, “ our lives are in danger. Let us stick together, and all of us work with a will. I will take my husband’s place, and take you to some port.” They set to work, cleared off the wreckage, manned the pumps, and succeeded in weathering the gale. After it subsided, they rigged up a jury mast, put the ship before the wind, and went to St. Thomas, which they reached in twenty-one days. After repairs, the indomitable woman, finding her husband was still helpless, navigated the ship to Liverpool, making the voyage, without accident, in thirty days. Her husband was never able to resume work, and for seven years she kept him and her child by working as a clerk in a dry goods store. Eight months ago her husband died, and recently Secretary Sherman appointed Mrs. Wilson, who is not yet thirty, to an inspectorship of the New York Custom House.