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Biography
Caroline Brown Buell (1842-1927) was a temperance worker and philanthropist.
Early life
Caroline Brown was born in Massachusetts in 1842. Her ancestry was New England and Puritan. She was the daughter of Rev. Thomas Gibson Brown (died in 1885), of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Caroline M. Daniels (1808-1892).
Her early life was passed in the way common to the children of itinerant ministers. Hard work, earnest study and self-reliance developed her character on rugged and noble lines. She had a thirst for learning that caused her to improve in study all the time that the only daughter of an itinerant minister could find for books.
Career
Caroline Brown Buell became identified with the temperance reform and in 1875 was chosen corresponding secretary of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Connecticut, which had been partially organized the previous winter. She entered heartily into the work, and her sound judgment, her powers of discrimination, her energy, her acquaintance with facts and persons, and her facile pen made her at once a power in the association. She came into office when much was new and experimental, and she gave positive direction to the work and originated many plans of procedure. She was the originator of the plan of quarterly returns in Connecticut, a system that has been quite generally adopted in other States. In 1880, in the Boston convention, Buell was chosen corresponding secretary of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and in that exalted and responsible position she has done good and effective work with pen, hand and tongue for the association. She was re-elected to that office regularly for twelve years.
She was a dignified presiding officer and an accomplished parliamentarian, and in State conventions she had often filled the chair in emergencies.
Personal life
Caroline Brown became the wife of Frederick W. H. Buell (died in 1865), a noble and patriotic young Connecticut man, who had enlisted in the Union army at the beginning of the American Civil War. During the war her father, husband and three brothers served the Union, three in the army and two brothers in the navy. Her father was the chaplain of her husband's regiment, and in war he earned the name of "The Fighting Chaplain." During those dreary years. Buell worked, watched and waited, and in the last year of the conflict her husband died, leaving her alone with her only son. The war record of her family made her a favorite with the veterans of the Civil War.
She died in 1927 and is buried at Lakeview Cemetery, East Hampton, Connecticut.