BOOK REVIEWS
In Winter We Flourish. By Anna Shannon McAllister. (New
York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1939. 398p.
$3.50.)
Outstanding in the civic and charitable
enterprises of early
Cincinnati was Sarah Worthington King
Peter, of whom Anna
Shannon McAllister has written in her
new book, In Winter We
Flourish. Daughter of Thomas and Eleanor Swearingen Worth-
ington, the former at one time governor
of Ohio, Sarah was from
childhood accustomed to the assumption
of leadership.
Following what was for that time (the
early nineteenth cen-
tury) a very thorough education for a
woman, she married at
an early age the son of Senator Rufus
King of New York,
Edward King, with whom she made her home
in Cincinnati for
twenty years. Following her husband's death
in 1836 she moved
east to attend to the details of their
children's schooling. In 1844
she married William Peter, British
consul at Philadelphia, and
in that city continued philanthropic
work of the kind she had
been associated with in Cincinnati. She
founded the Philadelphia
School of Design, the first educational
institution for teaching
industrial art in the United States.
After William Peter's death
she returned to Cincinnati where,
following her conversion to
Roman Catholicism, she was responsible
for bringing to that city
many religious orders devoted to
charitable purposes. During
the Civil War she was active in hospital
work, giving generously
of her time and money. She died in
Europe in 1877.
Sarah Peter was an exceptional
individual--in the attributes
of her personality and in the episodes
of her life, and Mrs. Mc-
Allister has dealt fully with her many
faceted character and exist-
ence. While a little less adulation for
her subject might have
resulted in a more definitive portrait,
it is difficult to quarrel with
the author's enthusiasm for the gifted,
energetic, social-minded
woman of whom she wrote.
L. R. H.
(216)