Calista E. (Blanchard) Larned was born at Whitingham, Vermont. In 1850, she married Charles G. Larned. For a number of years, the family lived in Illinois, where Calista was Champaign County's Superintendent of Schools from 1877 to 1881. In 1879, her husband relocated to Kansas to extend his merchandising enterprises, founding the C. G. Larned & Company hardware business at Wellington, which he operated with their son-in-law Ferdinand A. Parsons. Mrs. Larned later joined her husband in Kansas, living on their ranch in the Valley Township of Kingman County, Kansas. She served as State Superintendent of Juvenile Work with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of Kansas, continuing her active involvement in education, women's rights, and the Universalist Church. The Larned hardware company at Wellington was lost to fire in 1881, but was rebuilt.
Elizabeth (Boynton) Harbert was born in 1845 at Crawfordsville, Indiana. By the time of her marriage to William S. Harbert in 1870, she was a published novelist and active in Indiana's Women's Suffrage Association. By 1876, Mrs. Harbert had become a leader in the National Woman Suffrage Association and was a co-signer of the "Declaration of Rights for Women" of July 4, 1876. She served three terms as president of the Illinois Woman's Suffrage Association--the first from 1876 to 1884, and worked in close association with fellow leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In 1885, Mrs. Harbert founded and served as editor of The New Era, a monthly pro-suffrage periodical. She died on January 19, 1925.
From the guide to the Letter to Mrs. Harbert, July 13, 1885, (University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library Kansas Collection)
