Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/222

Rh one year, and on her resignation was made honorary life regent.

The chapter early appointed a committee to seek out the neglected and forgotten graves of the Revolutionary soldiers of Springfield, and ever since that time they have been marked. Sixteen "real" daughters have been accepted members of the chapter, and their lives made brighter and in needed cases more comfortable by the kindly offices of a standing committee appointed for the purpose. The chapter has contributed to various patriotic objects, including fifty dollars for the relief of the Cuban reconcentrados; but in no direction has its work been more gratifying than in the local reawakening of a general interest in colonial and Revolutionary history.

At the call of Governor Wolcott, May 3, 1898, upon the breaking out of the Spanish War, for the formation of a State soldiers' relief association, the chapter at once took the lead in organizing a Springfield auxiliary, and kept energetically to the work until the receiving of the soldiers on their return home, August 27. A memorial tablet to the Springfield soldiers, to be placed in the city library, was the last act of the Springfield auxiliary, whose foremost officers were members of the chapter.

In 1899 the chapter established and furnished at no inconsiderable expense headquarters for its board of officers in connection with an assembly hall. The whole number of members enrolled is four hundred and twenty-three, and the present membership (April, 1904) is two hundred and seventy-five. Mrs. Calkins was one of the board of managers of the Springfield Soldiers' and Sailors' Aid Society at the time of the Spanish War. In 1895 the State primary school, through the policy of the State to place its young wards in families, had become so depleted that it was abolished and the property turned over to a board of trustees appointed by Governor Wolcott for the establishment of a hospital for epileptics. Mrs. Calkins was appointed one of the trustees of the hospital, and is still in its service.

Mrs. Calkins is a member of the Springfield Women's Club, an honorary member of the Teachers' Club, and a member of the Ramapogue Historical Society. Her church membership is with the First Congregational Society.

ORA DAY YOUNG, the matron of the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home in Xenia, and Past National Senior Vice-President of the Woman's Relief Corps, is a New England woman by birth, parentage, and education. She was born in Springvale, Me., March 26, 1847, her parents soon after removing to Boston. She was graduated from the Bowdoin School in this city in July, 1863.

One of her great-great-grandfathers on the maternal side was Colonel Jeremiah Moulton, who was born in 1688 in York, Me. In 1692, when he was four years old, he and his mother were taken prisoners by the Indians, and she was scalped. In 1724 he was commander at the reduction of Norridgewock. Colonel Moulton was rewarded with a silver tankard from King George II. for valiant conduct at the siege of Louisburg in 1745-47. He was afterward High Sheriff of York County, Maine, one of the Governor's Councillors, also Judge of the Courts of Common Pleas and of Probate.

His son Jeremiah, Jr., was a Lieutenant Colonel at L(niisburg; and his grandson, Jotham Moulton, was a Colonel and later Brigadier-general in the war of the Re^olution. He died of camp fever at Ticonderoga.

The father of Mrs. Young was Albert Day, M.D., a native of Wells, Me., and a graduate from the Harvard Medical School. For many years he practised medicine in Boston as a specialist of nervous diseases. He was a lineal descendant of Anthony Day, who settled in Gloucester, Mass., in 1645; and on his mother's side was descended from the Storers of colonial military distinction in Maine. In 1857 Dr. Day was a member of the lower branch of the Massachusetts Legislature. He was always identified with philanthropic and patriotic movements. In Maine he was associated with General Samuel Fessenden in the early anti-slavery reform, and when a young man he was a candidate on that ticket for treasurer