Helen Vickroy Austin

Helen Vickroy was born in Miamisburg, Ohio, on July 19, 1829.{{sfn|Herringshaw|1907|p=59}} She was a daughter of Edwin Augustus and Cornelia Harlan Vickroy. Her mother was a daughter of the Hon. George Harlen, of Warren County, Ohio. Her father was a son of Thomas Vickroy, of Pennsylvania, who was a soldier in the American Revolutionary War under George Washington, and an eminent surveyor and extensive landowner. When Austin was a child, the family removed to Pennsylvania and established a homestead in Ferndale.

In 1850, she married William W. Austin, a native of Philadelphia, at that time residing at Richmond, Indiana, where they lived until 1885, when the family removed to Vineland, New Jersey.{{sfn|Willard|Livermore|1893|p=35}} Of her three children, two sons died in childhood.{{sfn|Willard|Livermore|1893|p=36}}

Austin did considerable writing. Some of her best work was for the agricultural and horticultural press, and her essays at the horticultural meetings and interest in such matters gave her notability in horticultural circles. She was also a writer of sketches and essays and worked as a reporter and correspondent. Much of her work was of a fugitive nature for the local press. She also wrote in aid of philanthropic work. She was for many years identified with the cause of woman suffrage, and various woman's causes.{{sfn|Willard|Livermore|1893|p=35}}

Long before the temperance crusade she was a pronounced advocate of temperance and while in her teens, was a member of "Daughters of Temperance", the women's group of Sons of Temperance. She was a life member of the National Woman's Indian Rights Association,{{sfn|Willard|Livermore|1893|p=36}} and was a member of the American Pomological Society.{{sfn|American Pomological Society|1916|p=237}}

Helen Vickroy Austin died in 1921 and is buried in Earlham Cemetery, Richmond, Indiana.{{cite web |title=Helen Vickroy Austin |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV27-RCXM |website=familysearch.org |access-date=17 July 2022}}

{{reflist|30em}}

• {{Source-attribution| {{cite book|author=American Pomological Society|title=Proceedings of the ... Session of the American Pomological Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CbRKAQAAMAAJ|edition=Public domain|year=1916|publisher=American Pomological Society}} }}
• {{Source-attribution| {{cite book|last=Herringshaw|first=Thomas William|title=Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century: Accurate and Succinct Biographies of Famous Men and Women ... of the United States ... Illustrated with Portraits|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PD9QAQAAIAAJ|edition=Public domain|year=1907|publisher=American Publishers' Association}} }}
• {{Source-attribution| {{cite book|last1=Willard|first1=Frances Elizabeth|last2=Livermore|first2=Mary Ashton Rice|title=A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zXEEAAAAYAAJ|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_zXEEAAAAYAAJ/page/n39 35]|edition=Public domain|year=1893|publisher=Moulton}} }}

• {{wikisource-inline|Woman of the Century/Helen Vickroy Austin}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Helen Vickroy Austin}}

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Category:1829 births

Category:1921 deaths

Category:19th-century American journalists

Category:19th-century American women journalists

Category:People from Miamisburg, Ohio

Category:American horticulturists

Category:Women horticulturists and gardeners

Category:American non-fiction outdoors writers

Category:Suffragists from Indiana

Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from A Woman of the Century