Alice Lee Moqué

Mrs. Walter Comonfort Snelling Alice's first marriage occurred "while in her teens and still a school girl." They had three sons, chemist Walter Otheman Snelling, Henry H. Snelling, and Charles Hornor Snelling.

Alice apparently took university classes, including two years of law and three years of medicine. She was interested in chemistry, and became a skilled photographer, doing her own developing and platemaking. By 1890 she was publishing articles on the technique of photography in major photography magazines such as Wilson's Photographic Magazine and The International Annual of Anthony's Photographic Bulletin, as A. Lee Snelling and Alice Lee Snelling. These interests were shared by her son Walter, a chemist who later developed a light-sensitive coating for photographic paper using TNT.

Her first husband, Walter Comonfort Snelling, died on July 1, 1893 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. John Oliver Moqué was born March 26, 1868, to Catherine Araminta Joyce (1837 - 1918) and James E. Moqué. Alice and John Oliver Moqué had a daughter, Voleta Alice Moqué.

Alice became increasingly publicly active after her first husband's death. She joined the American Authors Guild in 1893. and suffrage reports to bicycling and travel.

Bicycling Alice Lee Moqué was an avid sportswoman. "An enthusiastic follower of all out door sports, Mrs. Moqué not only skates, rows and cycles, but is an expert swimmer and a fair shot with a rifle." She describes the awkwardness of early bicycling costumes for women, which required long skirts.

Health and eugenics Alice Lee Moqué was a founding member of the National Congress of Mothers and at one time its vice president. The congress was attended by over 2,000 people: "mothers, but also fathers, teachers, laborers and legislators".

Alice spoke on "Reproduction and Natural Law."

At the second convocation of the National Congress of Mothers in Washington, DC, held May 2–7, 1898, she spoke on "The Mistakes of Mothers".

Alice was the first woman to be invited to address the American Medical Association,

In her article "An educated maternity", published in The Westminster Review of 1900, it is clear that she looks to science as a means of progressive change and remediation of society's ills.

The true spirit of philanthropic effort recognises the necessity of not only alleviating the evils we have, but the urgent obligation to seek for and discover their cause, that ultimately a cure may be effected, whereby the whole race will be benefited. Alice Lee Moqué, 1900.

Moqué's articles describe in detail a 1914 "Melting Pot" campaign in which the women of Washington donated gold and silver items to be melted down to raise money for the national suffrage campaign. The Washington Herald of March 7, 1917, reports Alice as being "at home" at her new residence at 1641 Harvard Terrace, Washington, D.C., in between suffrage activities including the Mi-Careme Suffrage Ball and Bazaar and a reception at the National American Woman's Suffrage Headquarters at 1626 Rhode Island Avenue.

Women in wartime In 1897, Alice was elected the adjutant-general of the newly formed Woman's Cuban League. She felt strongly about the Spanish–American War, wrote patriotic poetry and was quoted in the newspapers.

Her position, then and during World War I, was that a "physically fit, patriotic woman" was capable of serving in the same positions as a man. She noted that nurses had already demonstrated their "nerve, heroism, and fearlessness" in battlefield conditions facing the same risks as men. She exhorted "Columbia's splendid daughters" to take jobs at home as "aeroplane scouts, ambulance drivers, observers, machine gun corps" and others, to enable more men to go to the front. She set an example by serving in the Women's Volunteer Aid of the Motor Corps during World War I.

Books

In addition to numerous articles, Alice published two books under the name Alice Lee Moqué. The Body Master's Daughter (1897) was referred to in The New York Times as a "brilliant and thrilling" novel.

More popular was Delightful Dalmatia (1914), an account of traveling with John Oliver Moqué in Dalmatia before World War I. It "had a great success as one of the war books of the year".

A member of the American Authors Guild since 1893, She was awarded a medal by the Société Académique d'Histoire Internationale.

Death

Alice died on July 16, 1919 of complications following a broken leg. A funeral service was held on July 18, 1919. She had planned her own funeral rites and requested cremation. To her sons Walter and Henry, who were already independent adults, she left $100 each. The balance of her estate went to her second husband, John Oliver Moqué.

John Oliver Moqué later married Mary Ida Cole. He died on January 13, 1942. Although his name and birth year were listed on Alice Lee Moqué's headstone, he was buried with Mary Ida Cole in Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Brentwood, Maryland.