Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/329

248 Obadiali^ Lincoln, son of Jacob^ and Mary (Holl)rook) Lincoln, was the father of Jacob,^ born in 1762, who married Chloe^ Lincoln, daughter of Deacon Isaac^ and Sarah (Hobart) Lincoln. .Licob^ and his wife Chloe'* were the parents of Martin Lincoln, above named, father of Mrs. Walton.

Through her grandmother, Chloe" Lincoln, Mrs. Walton is descended from the Rev. Peter Hobart, who settled at Hingham, Mass., in September, 1635, and from his father, Edmund' Hobart. Chloe Lincoln's mother, Mrs. Sarah Hobart Lincoln, born in 1727, was a daughter of the Rev. Nehemiah' Hobart fHarv. Coll., 1714), minister of the Second Parish of Hingham, now Cohasset. Her father's father, Davi(P Hobart, of Hingham, was son of the Rev. Peter" Hobart and one of a family of fifteen children. The Rev. Peter Hobart, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England (A.M. 1629), died in 1679, in the fifty-third year of his min- istry, nine years in Hingham, England, and nearly forty-four in Hingham, Mass.

Mrs. Walton's father, Martin Lincoln, was born in Cohasset in 1795. A teacher by pro- fession, he tavight in the public schools of Lan- caster, Mass., also in the Lancaster Academy, and afterward for some years kept a private school in Boston.

Mrs. AValton's mother, whose maiden name was Susan Miite Freeman, was the daughter of Adam and Margaret (White) Freeman. Adam Freeman, grandfather of Mrs. Walton, emigrated with a party from Frankfort-on-the- Main about 1780, and settled in the locality then known as the "German Flats," afterward named Frankfort, N.Y. His wife, Margaret ^'hile Freeman, Mrs. Walton's maternal grand- mother, was from Windsor, Vt. Archibald 'hite, Jr., and William ^^'hite, who ^are on record as tax-paying inhabitants of the town in 1786, w(>re her brothers.

When Electa Not^les Lincoln was two years old, her parents removed to Lancaster, Mass., the family afterward living in Roxbury and Boston. Her first teacher and the chief in- structor of her early years was her father. Li the autumn of 1841 she entered the State Nor- mal School in Lexington, Mass., of which the Rev. Cyrus Peirce ("Father Peirce," of revered memory) was tw principal. About a year anil a half later, or in 1843, having completed the normal course of study and received her diploma, she became an assistant in the Franklin Gram- mar School, Boston. After teaching there for a few weeks, she was appointed assistant in the Normal School, her Alma Mater, where sh(> began to teach on May 7, 1843, when she lacketl five days of being nineteen years old. She retained her position as assistant at the State Normal School for seven years, one at Lexington antl six at West Newton (whither the school was removed in 1844), and served under three principals — the Rev. Cyrus Peirce, the Rev. Sanuiel .1. May, and Eben S. Stearns. In the interregnum between the resignation of Mr. Peirce and the accession of Mr. Stearns, Miss Lincoln served as principal of the school; and it was the expressed wish of Mr. Peirce that she should succeed him as permanent principal. Miss Lincoln was thus the first woman in the country to act as principal of a State Normal School, but to make her the permanent principal was too great an innova- tion to be seriously thought of by those in authority at that early day.

She was married to George Augustus Walton on August 27, 1850. Mr. Walton at that time and for a number of years after was principal of the Oliver Grammar School in Lawrence, Mass. Subsequently, as a teacher in teachers' institutes in New England, also in New York and 'irginia, he became widely known and in- Huential. For twenty-five years from 1871 he was agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Education. Mr. Walton is a graduate of the liridgewater Normal School. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Williams College. Born in South Reading (now Wakefiekl), Mass., February 18, 1822, son of James and Elizabeth (Bryant) ^^^lton, he is a lineal descendant of the Rev. William Walton, whose services as minister of the gospel at Marblehead covered a period of thirty years, 1638-68.

For eighteen years after marriage Mr. and Mrs. A'alton r(sided in Lawrence. A Unitarian in religious faith, brought up under the pulpit teachings of the Rev. Nathaniel Thayer, of Lancaster, and the Rev. Dr. George Putnam, of Roxbury, and later influencetl by the inspir-