Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/20

Rh was fitted up and named for her the "Margaret Swan Cheney Reading Room."

Since 1863 Mrs. Cheney has made her home in Jamaica Plain. Her interest in things that make for human welfare and progress continues unabated. Her voice in these later days is yet occasionally heard in public, and her pen is still that of a ready if not constant writer.

Mrs. Howe, speaking from the standpoint of long and intimate acquaintance, says: "Mrs. Ednah Dow Cheney is one of the marked personalities of the last fifty years in her native town of Boston. In all this period of time she has been prominent in movements of sound and needed reform. Naturally averse to personal publicity, she has not shunned it where her name and word could add weight to the advocacy of a just cause. In the education and health of the community she has shown the most lively interest. She has been a strenuous champion of the claims of the colored race to political and social justice. She has had much at heart the spread of religious toleration and the enfranchisement of her own sex. One who has been proud and glad to work with her may say that she has always found her a woman of good counsel and of reliable judgment. Motives of personal advancement are foreign to her nature. Her life has been enriched by true culture, by the love of all that is beautiful in art, literature, and character. The good work which she has contributed to the tasks of her day and generation will surely endure, and should be held, with her name, in loving and lasting remembrance."

Among the books that Mrs. Cheney has written or edited may be named the following: "Handbook for American Citizens (written for the freedmen of the South), 1864; "Faith- ful to the Light, 1872; "Sally Williams," 1872; "Child of the Tide," 1874; "Gleanings in the Fields of Art," 1881; Life, Letters, and Journals of Louisa M. Alcott, 1889; Memoirs of her husband, Seth V. Cheney, of her daughter, Margaret S. Cheney, and of the distinguished engraver, John Cheney; "Stories of the Olden Time," 1890; "Life of Ranch, the Sculptor"; "Reminiscences," December, 1902. M. H. G. LIZABETH PORTER GOULD, author and lecturer of wide reputation, now a resident of Boston, is a native of Essex County, Massachusetts. The eldest daughter of John Averell and Elizabeth Cheever (Leach) Gould, she comes of substantial New England stock, numbering among her ancestors two colonial governors, the first woman poet of New England, eight or more ministers of the gospel, and several Revolutionary patriots. She can trace her descent from over thirty early settlers of Essex County. Through the public services of nine of her forbears she is eligible to membership in the Society of Colonial Dames. The Gould ancestral line is: Zaccheus,1 John,2 3 Solomon,4 John,5 6 John Averel7—showing Elizabeth P. to be of the eighth generation in New England. Zaccheus Gould came to the Bay Colony about the year 1638, and somewhat later settled in Topsfield.

The line of descent from Governor Thomas Dudley and his wife, Dorothy Yorke, is through his daughter Anne, wife of Governor Simon Bradstreet; their son, John Bradstreet, born in Andover, Mass., in 1652, who married Sarah Perkins and lived in Topsfield; his son, Simon Bradstreet, who married Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Joseph Capen, of Topsfield; Elizabeth Bradstreet, who married Joseph Peabody; Priscilla Peabody, married Isaac Averell; Elijah Averell, married Mary Gould; and their daughter, Mary Averell, who, marrying Johnn Gould, named above, became the mother of John Averell Gould and grandmother of Elizabeth Porter Gould.

Mary Gould, wife of Elijah Averell and maternal grandmother of John Averell Gould, was a daughter of Captain Joseph Gould, of Topsfield, and his wife lOlizabeth, daughter of the Rev. John Emerson, of Maiden. Her maternal grandfather, the Rev. John Emerson, was a son of Edward and Rebecca (Waldo) Emerson, grandson of the Rev. Joseph and Elizabeth (Bulkeley) Emerson, Elizabeth Bulkeley being the daughter of the Rev. Edward Bulkeley and grand-daughter of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, the first minister of Concord, Mass. (Edward Emerson and his wife, Rebecca Waldo, were great-grandparents of Ralph Waldo Emerson.) Miss Gould's mother was a daughter of