Nellie Blessing Eyster

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Nellie Blessing Eyster (December 7, 1836 – February 21, 1922) was an American journalist, writer, lecturer, and social reformer. Born Penelope Ann Margaret Blessing in Frederick, Maryland, she grew up as the eldest of five children. Her father died when she was ten. At 16 she married her private tutor, David A. S. Eyster, a young lawyer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They had two children, Mary and a son who died young. The family later moved to California.

Key achievements
- Civil War era: She helped with the purchase of Mount Vernon for the United States and served as an officer of the Great Sanitary Commission. She wrote about the war for Harper’s Magazine.
- Education and writing: She taught music, rhetoric, and belles lettres in several seminaries and educated California’s Chinese immigrants. She wrote for California journals and edited Wood’s Magazine with Gail Hamilton, and she edited the Pacific Ensign.
- Temperance and suffrage: She was active in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), serving as California State President of Juvenile Work and giving temperance lectures. She supported women’s suffrage.
- Leadership roles: First president of the Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association; president of the California Women’s Indian Association; president emeritus of the League of American Pen Women.
- Notable works: Sunny Hours of the Child Life of Tom and Mary (endorsed by Oliver Wendell Holmes); A Dame of the Quakers; How the Star Spangled Banner Found Its Tune; The Colonial Boy (1890); A Chinese Quaker (1902); Chincapin Charlie; On the Wing; Tom Harding and His Friends.

Later life
After her husband’s death in 1900, she moved to San Francisco to live with her daughter. She died in Berkeley, California, in 1922. Her grandson Paul Elder became a noted publisher.