Career
They had eight children, the most famous of whom was the entertainer Helen Louise Leonard (later known as Lillian Russell). Cynthia was on the executive committee of the Soldiers" Relief Association which established the first soldiers" home in the State of Iowa, attending to the housing needs of Union soldiers recently released from the 18th Regimental Hospital, then quartered in Clinton. In 1869, she led the spiritualist faction of the women"s suffrage movement at the Music Hall, one of the first women"s suffrage meetings ever held in Chicago.
Susan B. Anthony was a frequent visitor in the Leonard home.
She was instrumental in the decision to place matrons in Chicago prisons, and she authored two novels: Adventures of Lena Rouden, or the Rebel Spy and Fading Footprints, or the Last of the Iroquois. In 1888, she became the first woman to run for mayor of New York City.
She died in New Jersey in 1908. suffered in great crises. What have I done that I should be famous--nothing but powdered a bit gently the cheeks that God gave me and smoothed the hair that I was born with, laughed and proven a faultless set of teeth.
Any grinning idol, well painted, can do as well, but the real women, the big women, are those who toil and never write of it, those who labor and never cry of it, those who forfeit all and never seek reward.
Begin this article with the name Lillian Russell, but end it with the name of such as was Cynthia Leonard.".