Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/280

Rh ity, she was a prolific writer. Several of her poems and short stories were published in the local papers. Many of her sterling qualities were transmitted to her daughter.

Emma M. Woolley entered the Auburn High School in the fall of 1875, and was graduated in June, 1879. Her ambition at this time was to study medicine, but women doctors were •not popular with her friends and kinsfolk. Their opposition and the fact that her financial resources were limited caused her to adopt the more popular profession of teacher. After a service of six years in the country and village schools of Cayuga County she accepted a position in Americus, Kan., where she taught two years. She then continued her work as a teacher in Kansas City. Although a successful teacher, faithful in the performance of her duties, she never accepted this occupation as her life work, but with unwavering trust looked forward to the time when she could add to her name the title of M.D.

In the summer of 1888 she returned to her native town and spent her vacation with parents and friends. In 1890, having decided, after due deliberation, to carry out her long- cherished plan of study, she matriculated at the Boston University School of Medicine. With only a few hundred dollars, which she had saved from her salary as a teacher, her means were limited; and, to eke them out during the four years necessary to complete the course, she worked as a nurse many nights and in vacation. The money thus earned, with the small sums furnished by a self-sacrificing mother, enabled her to meet her necessary expenses. In 1894 she was graduated, and received from the Boston University the coveted medical diploma.

She at once located herself as physician at No. 1 Columbus Square, Boston, renting the house she occupied and doing whatever came to her hands to do. Although a career of starvation was predicted for her by some of her classmates, she set forth bravely, equipped with a sound physical, mental, and moral nature and an indomitable will. Unbounded energy and perseverance are the character- istics by which she has achieved her well-merited success.

In 1901 she purchased the house at No. 867 Beacon Street, Boston, removing her office to this new home, where she gives the best of her life to the relief of suffering humanity.

DNA A. FOSTER, who is editorially connected with the Youth’s Companion, being associate editor of the children's page, was born at Sullivan Harbor, Me., opposite Mount Desert hills. She is the daughter of Charles W. and Sarah (Dyer) Foster. Her father is an architect and draftsman, and has been expert estimator for leading granite companies.

Her paternal grandfather was Jabez Simpson Foster, of Sullivan Harbor; and her great-grandfather in that line was James Foster, who married Lydia, daughter of Deacon Jonathan6 and Mary (Tracy) Stevens, early settlers of Steuben, Me. Nancy Stevens, a younger sister of Lydia, it may be mentioned, married William Nickels Shaw, of Steuben, brother of Robert Gould Shaw, of Gouldsboro, Me. {Bangor Historical Magazine, vol. viii.).

Miss Foster's paternal grandmother, the wife of Jabez S. Foster, married in 1827, was Emma Ingalls, daughter of Samuel* and Abigail (Wooster) Ingalls, of Sullivan, Me., and a descendant in the seventh generation of Edmund Ingalls, an early settler of Lynn, Mass., who was the founder of the family of this name in New England. The line from Edmund1 continued through his son Robert,2 Nathaniel,3 William,4 5 to Samuel,6 father of Mrs. Emma Ingalls Foster. Miss Foster has in her possession some silver spoons that were part of the wedding outfit of her great-great-grandmother Ingalls, whose maiden name was Deborah Goss. She was the wife of William5 Ingalls.

Captain Ezekiel Dyer, Miss Foster's maternal grandfather, was a large ship-builder of Millbridge, Me., five miles from Steuben, at the head of Dyer's Bay. The bay was named for his ancestor, Henry Dyer, Jr., who came hither from Cape Elizabeth, it is stated, with his brother Reuben in 1768-69. Henry Dyer, Jr., was a Captain in the Revolution, stationed at Machias, Me., and St. John, N.B. (Bangor Historical Magazine).