Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/17

8 who happily still live to grace by their presence and help by their wise counsels the deliberative assemblies and budding activities of the twentieth century. She has recently given to the public an interesting volume of "Reminiscences." Born in Boston, June 27, 1824, daughter of Sargent Smith and Ednah Parker (Dow) Littlehale, she was named for her mother, and until her marriage, May 19, 1853, to the artist, Seth AVells Cheney, was known as Ednah Dow Littlehale.

Her father was for thirty years a Boston merchant. His native place was Gloucester, Mass. Born in 1787, he died in 1851. He was of the fifth generation of the Essex Coufity family founded by Richard Littlehale, who took the "oath of supremacy and allegiance to pass for New England in the Mary & John of London, Robert Sayres, Master, 24th March, 1633," joined the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Ipswich, and, eventually settling in Haverhill, was Town Clerk for twenty years, serving also as Clerk of the Writs. Richard Littlehale, of Gloucester (Joseph; Isaac, Richard), Mrs. Cheney's grandfather, was a Captain of militia. He married a widow, Mrs. Sarah Byles Edgar, daughter of Captain Charles Byles, who commanded a company at the siege of Louis- burg, and who also fought at Quebec under Wolfe.

Mrs. Cheney's mother, Mrs. Ednah P. Littlehale, a native of Exeter, N.H., born in 1799, died in Boston in 1876. She was the daughter of Jeremiah and Ednah (Parker) Dow and on the paternal side a descendant in the seventh generation of Thomas Dow, one of the early settlers of Newbury, Mass., freeman in 1642. The Dow ancestral line is Thomas, Stephen, Nathaniel, Captain Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Ednah Parker (Mrs. Littlehale).

Thomas' Dow removed from Newbury to Haveihill, where he died in 1654. Stephen, son of Thomas and his wife Phebe, was born in Newlniry in 1642. Stephen, born in Haverhill in 1670, married Mary Hutchins. Their son Nathaniel, born in 199, married Mary Hendricks, and lived in Haverhill and Methuen, Mass., and Salem, N.IL, formerly a part of Haverhill, Mass.

Captain Jeremiah, born in Haverhill, Mass., in 1738, married Lydia Kimball, of Bradford, daughter of Isaac* Kimball, a lineal descendant of Richard' Kimball, of Ipswich. Captain Jeremiah Dow died in Salem, N.H., in 1826. His name is in the Revolutionary Rolls of New Hampshire under different dates. He commanded a company in Lieutenant Colonel Welch's regiment, which marched from Salem, N.H., to join the Northern army in September, 1777. He was probably the Jeremiah Dow of New Hampshire who was private in Captain Marston's company in the expeflition to Crown Point in 1762. Retire H. Parker marched to Cambridge as a minute-man of the Second Bradford Foot Company on the alarm of April 19, 1775.

Mrs. Littlehale's maternal grandparents were Lieutenant Retire H. and Ednah (Hardy) Parker, of East Bradford, now Groveland, Mass. The Parker line of ancestry began with Abraham' Parker, who married at Woburn in 1644 Rose Whitlock, and about the year 1653 removed to Chelmsford. It continued through Abraham,^ who married Martha Liver- more and settled in East Bradford; Abraham and wife, Elizabeth Bradstreet (a descendant of Humphrey Bradstreet, of Rowley); Abraham and his second wife, Hannah Beckett, daughter of Retire Beckett, of Salem, belonging to a noted family of ship-builders; to Lieutenant Retire H. Parker and his wife, Ednah Hardy, above named.

Martha Livermore, wife of Abraham Parker, of East Bradford, was a daughter of John Livermore, of Watertown (the founder of the family of this name in New England), and his wife Grace (born Sherman), whom he married in England, and who was closely related to the immigrant progenitors of the most prominent Sherman families of America. Mrs. Grace Sherman Livermore was a useful member of the colony, being an obstetrician. She survived her husband, and died in Chelmsford in 1690, aged seventy-five years (gravestone). Judging from printed records, the name Ednah has come down to Mrs. Cheney not only from her mother, her grandmother Dow, and her great-grandmother Parker, but from a more remote ancestress, Mrs. Ednah Bailey, wife of Richard' Bailey, of Rowley, Mass. Tracing