Mary Augusta Wood-Allen (October 19, 1841 – January 21, 1908) was an American doctor, social reformer, lecturer, and writer of books on health and self-improvement for women and children. Through her lectures and writings she was a voice for the social purity movement.[1]
Mary Augusta Wood was born in Delta, Ohio, the daughter of George Wood and Sarah (Seely) Wood.[2] She attended Ohio Wesleyan Female College, graduating in 1862.[3]
After teaching for a time at the Battleground Collegiate Institute in Battle Ground, Indiana, she married Chillon Brown Allen, a lawyer, and took the surname Wood-Allen.[3]
After three years studying in Vienna, Austria,[4] Wood-Allen earned a medical degree from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1875.[2] She went into practice in Newark, New Jersey.[3] In 1883 she was appointed "Lecturer of Heredity and Hygiene" for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) at the suggestion of Frances Willard and lectured widely on these subjects.[2][3] In 1892, she became superintendent of the WCTU's Purity Department, and in 1897, she became Superintendent of Purity for the World WCTU.[3][4]
In 1895, through her family's Wood-Allen Publishing Company in Ann Arbor, Wood-Allen started a series of monthly leaflets titled Mother's Friend, which was co-edited by Estelle M. H. Merrill.[5] It later became a monthly magazine titled The New Crusade and was edited by Wood-Allen alone with her daughter as assistant editor. [6] Later, this became The American Mother and then American Motherhood and continued publication until 1919. Wood-Allen published the magazine herself with the assistance of her son and daughter. She also published a number of books.[7] Her poem "Motherhood" was well known in its day.[8]
The Wood-Allen Publishing Company also published at least one book by Delos Franklin Wilcox (Ethical Marriage (1900)).
Wood-Allen and Chillon Brown Allen married on April 15, 1863, and had separated by 1880. Wood-Allen's children were Mario Chillon Wood-Allen (1870–1936) and Rose Wood-Allen Chapman (1875–1923). Rose wrote articles and books of advice on child-rearing and in 1907, took her mother's place as the National Superintendent of Purity for the WCTU.[7]
Wood-Allen died in Washington, D.C., in 1908.