Cynthia S. Burnett

Cynthia S. Burnett (after marriage, Cynthia Burnett-Haney; May 1, 1840 - July 24, 1932) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and newspaper editor. She passed her early life in Ohio, but her first temperance movement work was done in Illinois, in 1879, later answering calls for help in Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. In 1885, she was made state organizer of Ohio, and the first year of this appointment, she lectured 165 times, besides holding meetings in the daytime and organizing over 40 unions. Her voice failing, she accepted a call to Utah as teacher in the Methodist Episcopal College, in Salt Lake City. While living there, she was made territorial president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and eight unions and 15 legions were organized by her. Each month, one or more meetings were held by her and the work was further endorsed in a column of a Mormon paper which she edited. Later, she spent a year as state organizer in California and Nevada, and for these efficient services in the West she was made a national organizer in 1889. She spent later years as preceptress of her alma mater, which has become Farmington College. In 1929, she was recognized by the Florida Newspaper News as Florida's oldest active newspaper woman. Burnett died in 1932.