Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/330

Rh ing eloquence of Theodore Parker, Mrs. Walton devoted herself to benevolent and philanthropic enterprises in her spare time, and was a leader in church and charitable work. During the Civil War, turning the sympathies of the Lawrence people toward the Sanitary Commission, she aided in organizing the whole community into a body of co-laborers with the army in the field.

Having received thorough instruction in vocal culture from Professors James E. Murdock and William Russell, she was for years employed as a teacher of reading and vocal training in the teachers' institutes of Massachusetts. She also taught in the State Normal Institutes of Virginia, and for five successive years, by invitation of General Armstrong, conducted a teachers' institute of the graduating class in Hampton. Her belief in the right of woman to be rated equally with man at her own worth and be credited with her own work was intensified by the decision of the publishers that her name should not appear with her husband's on the title-page as co-author of the arithmetics which were their joint production, and led at length to earnest advocacy of equal rights for the sexes. She was always zealous in the temperance cause, and during a residence in Westfield was president of the local branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Since the removal of Mr. and Mrs. Walton to West Newton, where they now reside, Mrs. Walton has been active in promoting woman suffrage, believing that this will best advance the interests of temperance and kindred reforms, and tend to the purification of politics. She was for many years an officer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, is a valued member and vice-president of the New England Women's Club of Boston, for twenty years was president of the West Newton Women's Educational Club, organized in 18S0, and is now on the Board of Directors of the Woman's Club House Corporation. Although not a prolific writer, she sometimes contributes to the press. She is an interesting speaker and an occasional lecturer upon literary and philanthropic subjects.

Mr. and Mrs. Walton are the parents of five children, of whom three are living: Harriet Peirce, wife of ex-Judge James R. Dunbar, of the Massachusetts Superior Court; Dr. George Lincoln Walton (Harv. Univ., A.B. 1S75, M.D. 1880), neurologist, of Boston; and Alice Walton (Smith Coll., A.B. 1887; Cornell, Ph.D. 1892), now (1903) associate professor of Latin and archa-ology at Wellesley College. Mr. and Mrs. Dunbar have five children — namely, Ralph Walton, Philip Richards, Ruth, Helen Lincoln, and Henry Fowler.

UCY MARIA JAMES, of New Bedford, first Regent of the Captain Thomas J Kempton Chapter, Daughters of the Revolution, was born in Fairhaven, Mass., March 1, 1841, daughter of William and Maria Hartson (Caswell) James. She was married August 10, 1865, to Henry B. James, of New Bedford, son of John, .Ir., and Sylvia (Kempton) James.

John James, Sr., father of John and William, came as a sailor boy from England in 1805 or 1806. He married April 24, 1808, Sally Dunham, of Dartmouth, Mass., where he bought land and became a resident, but continued for some time to follow the sea. During the War of 1812 the vessel he was in was captured by the English, officers and crew being held as prisoners. On reaching Ireland he escaped, but was recaptured and imprisoned in Cork. The date of his release is not given in the family record. His son William was born in Dartmouth in March, 1816.

Mrs. James's mother was the daughter of Daniel Caswell, a soldier in the War of 1812, and his wife, Sally Elliot, and grand-daughter of John and Betsey (Cain) Elliot. John Elliot was a Revolutionary soldier, who was wounded at the battle of Saratoga. He was born in East Taunton, Mass., where he died in 1843 at the age of ninety-six years.

The parents of Mrs. James moved to New Bedford, Mass., when she was an infant, and she received her education in the public schools of that city. At the age of ten years she was in great demand as a correspondent for those who could not write.

Mrs. James has acted on the principle that study should be a part of the every-day home