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(1833-1926), Organizer of Indian Reform
Born on July 31, 1833, in Jamesville, New York, Amelia Stone grew up in a deeply religious Baptist household. As a young woman, she worked as a teacher and did charitable work at almshouses and prisons. In 1874 she joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and worked as its New York organizer until 1877, when she married the Reverend Richard L. Quinton. The Quintons settled in Philadelphia, and Quinton renewed her friendship with Mary Lucinda Bonney, whom she had met while teaching. Bonney and Quinton shared a concern that the Indian Territory would be opened for white settlement. The two women circulated petitions, eventually collecting the signatures of thousands of Americans who demanded that the government honor its treaties. The signatures were presented to Congress with an appeal personally written by Quinton calling for a new federal Indian policy that would provide Indians with education, equality before the law, and land parcels. By 1883 Quinton and Bonney had formed the Women's National Indian Association (WNIA), which with several other Indian rights associations led a comprehensive campaign for Indian policy reform. In 1887 Congress enacted the Dawes General Allotment Act, which granted Indians citizenship and allotments of reservation land to be used for farming. At a time when the plight of the American Indian was given little thought by most white Americans, Amelia Stone Quinton almost single-handedly made reform of U.S. Indian policy a national issue. A devout Christian who lived during an era in which cultural diversity was yet to be appreciated, Quinton saw assimilation of the Indian into the white Christian world as the ultimate objective of her campaign. Quinton and her colleagues counted the passage of the Dawes Act as a victory, never suspecting that it would contribute in later years to severe cultural and economic decline among Indians. Quinton continued lobbying for improved conditions on Indian reservations as president of the WNIA from 1887 until her retirement in 1905. She died in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, on June 23, 1926.
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