{{linkless-date|July 2006}} Image:Cynthia_Leonard.jpg '''Cynthia Leonard''', (b. 1828, d. 1908) was born '''Cynthia Hicks Van Name''' on February_28 1828, in Buffalo,_New_York. Cynthia married Charles E. Leonard in 1852. They had eight children, the most famous of whom was Helen_Louise_Leonard, who went on to establish her own reputation as a Singer and Entertainer by the name of Lillian_Russell. While a young woman in Buffalo, Cynthia set out to establish herself as a liberated individual, being the first woman to stand behind a counter as a salesperson, and becoming a member of Buffalo's first Woman's Social and Literary Club. Four years after her marriage, the couple moved from Detroit,_Michigan, to Clinton,_Iowa, where Charles Leonard founded the ''Clinton_Herald'', that community's newspaper, still in existence today. 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 1863, Charlie Leonard sold the ''Herald'' and the couple moved to Chicago. There Cynthia organized a fair to benefit the Freedman's_Aid_Society, helped found the Chicago branch of Sorosis and was its editor for a time, and was a member of the Chicago_Philosophical_Society. In 1869, she led the spiritualist faction of the woman's suffrage movement at the Music Hall, one of the first woman's suffrage meetings ever held in Chicago. Susan_B._Anthony was a frequent visitor in the Leonard home. Cynthia organized the Good_Samaritan_Society, and after the great Chicago fire, she established a homeless shelter for the "unfortunate" women of the city. She was instrumental in the decision to place matrons in Chicago prisons, and she authored two novels: ''Lena Rouden, or the Rebel Spy'' and ''Fading Footprints, or the Last of the Iroquois''. After she separated from Charlie, Cynthia took their two youngest daughters, "Nellie" (Helen, aka Lillian_Russell) and Suzanne, to New_York_City to launch their musical careers and to broaden her own political horizons. There she organized the Science_of_Life_Club and in 1880 managed a benefit for starving women and children in Ireland. In 1884 she became the first woman to run for Mayor of New York City. She died in New Jersey in 1908. In a May 3, 1914 interview with Djuna_Barnes, Lillian_Russell said: "To be a great woman, a great person, one must have suffered, even... 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." Cynthia Leonard deserves her place in the history of remarkable American women for her fearless pioneering efforts toward social reform of the 19th Century status quo. Leonard, Cynthia Leonard, Cynthia Leonard, Cynthia