Bottome, Margaret McDonald

▪ American religious leader and writer

née  Margaret McDonald 

born Dec. 29, 1827, New York, N.Y., U.S.

died Nov. 14, 1906, New York City

      American columnist and religious organizer, founder of the Christian spiritual development and service organization now known as the International Order of the King's Daughters and Sons. She attended school in Brooklyn and in 1850 married the Reverend Frank Bottome. Her long-standing practice of giving informal talks on the Bible culminated in January 1886 when she and nine other women organized themselves into a permanent study group for self-improvement and Christian service to others, taking the name King's Daughters. Each of the 10 women organized a group of 10, as did those, and so on. (The idea for this pattern stemmed from Edward Everett Hale (Hale, Edward Everett)'s novel Ten Times One Is Ten.) In 1887 men were admitted to the organization, which accordingly became the Order of the King's Daughters and Sons, and within 20 years membership had grown to an estimated half million in the United States and Canada; by that time the word international had been added to the name. Bottome was annually elected president of the order. From 1888 she contributed regularly to the order's magazine, Silver Cross, and from 1889 to 1905 she wrote a column in the Ladies' Home Journal for members. In 1896 she was chosen president of the Medical Missionary Society. Among her published works were Our Lord's Seven Questions After Easter (1889), Crumbs from the King's Table (1894), A Sunshine Trip: Glimpses of the Orient (1897), and Death and Life (1897).

* * *