Emarel Freshel

Maud Russell Lorraine Freshel (; other married name Sharpe; 1867–1949) was an American socialite, designer, and animal rights and vegetarianism activist. She also went by her initials, M. R. L., which she later spelled Emarel.

Life

Maud Russell Lorraine Carpenter was born in 1867 in West Virginia the daughter of Mary Amaryllis "Emma" Bower and Russell Carpenter. She grew up in Chicago and graduated from Organtz College. She married Ernest R. Sharpe of Boston. In 1917, she married Curtis P. Freshel.

Freshel was an anti-vivisectionist, Christian Science practitioner, and vegetarian. She authored the vegetarian cookbook The Golden Rule Cookbook. Her dog was also vegetarian. In 1917, she resigned from the Christian Science church because it supported the entry of the United States into World War I.

Millennium Guild

Freshel founded the Millennium Guild in 1912, the first animal rights organization in the United States. The Guild promoted faux fur as an alternative to fur fabrics and recommended a vegetarian diet for ethical reasons. It hosted Thanksgiving dinners at the Copley Plaza hotel in Boston. The Guild's most notable supporter was stage actress Minnie Maddern Fiske. By 1913, the Guild reported 200 members. The goal of the organization was to "teach the foremost among the unnecessary evils of the world, and one which underlies most of the other evils, is the mutilation and slaughter of our fellow creatures for food and other selfish ends."

Selected publications

and subsequent editions through 1926. Some Reasons Against the Carnivorous Diet as Given in the Preface to the "Golden Rule Cook Book". Vegetarian Society of New York, 1926. Selections From Three Essays By Richard Wagner. Record Press, 1933.