Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/19

10 witnessed the birth of a daughter, Margaret Swan, in September, 1855, and the death of Mr. Cheney in April, 1856, in South Manchester, Conn., his native place. He was one of the earliest crayon artists in America. Mrs. Howe thus speaks of him: "Seth Cheney's crayon portraits w^re among the delights of his time. The foremost women of Boston were glad to sit to him, and his rendering of their features has now for us

Among his portraits of men, I especially remember one of Theodore Parker which was highly prized. An exhibition of a number of these works was arranged some years since by Mr. S. R. Koehler, curator of engravings. Art Museum, at the Boston Art Museum. It was an occasion of much interest, recalling many lovely and distinguished personalities, interpreted by Mr. Cheney with a grace and simplicity all his own."

Mrs. Cheney was one of the subscribers toward the establishment in 1856, under the leadership of Dr. Zakrzewska, of the first women's hospital, the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. A few years later she was interested with others in the addition of a clinical department to the medical school for women in Boston, now merged in Boston University. In 1863 she was one of the three women corporators of the New England Hospital, which they had started in 1862 in a house on Pleasant Street. "Accepting the position of secretary, Mrs. Cheney, to quote the words of Dr. Zakrzewska, "devoted herself to the work, and became one of the most powerful advocates and supporters of this institution — an institution now firmly established and professionally recognized, and which by its efficiency and conscientious work has not only educated women as physicians and nurses, but has opened the way for the former to a professional equality with medical men, as the Massachusetts Medical Society was the first to admit women as members."

Succeeding Miss Lucy Goddard as president of the hospital in 1887, Mrs. Cheney continued in office, discharging the duties thereof with zeal and efficiency for fifteen years, or until her resignation on account of failing health in October, 1902. She is now Honorary President. Early interested in the work of the Freed- man's Aid Society, and becoming the secretary of the teachers' committee on the resignation of Miss Stevenson, Mrs. Cheney made several visits to the South in the years directly following the close of the war for the Union, the first time going with Abby M. May as a delegate to a convention in Baltimore. Unexpectedly called upon there to address a meeting composed largely of colored people, she had her first experience in public speaking. During her absence on one of these Southern trips a society was formed in Boston, of which she was appointed a director, being now Honorary President, and in which she has continued to work — the Free Religious Association, "the freedom and inspiration of whose first meetings" she finds it "impossible to report."

In 1868 Mrs. Cheney was one of the founders of the New England Women's Club, which soon came to be recognized as a forceful influence for good in the community; and about the same time she identified herself with the woman suffrage movement. For some years she was Vice-president of the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association. Joining the Association for the Advancement of Women early in the seventies, a year or two after its organization, she became one of its most valued workers and speakers. Mrs. Cheney also assisted in the founding of a horticultural school for women, of which Abby W. May became president. It was given up when Bussey College opened, and admitted women to its classes.

Mrs. Cheney's second visit to Europe in 1877, in company with her sisters and her daughter, was saddened in Rome by the death of her sister Helen. Returning to Boston in 1878, she responded to an invitation to give a course of lectures on art at the Concord School of Philosophy the following summer, and continued to lecture throughout the session.

In 1882 Mrs. Cheney was bereft of her daughter. She had been a student of great promise at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and, after she laid down her books and her young life, a room in the Technology building