Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/369

276 every one some useful amd desirable present; and, though the number reaches up into the hundreds, more could and would be given, were there more to give. Besides this, hospitals, prisons, and reformatory institutions are remembered with boxes, and on holidays bands of singers and entertainers are sent to bring behind the gates of these places a share of the joy that pervades the outside world. At the Easter season, also, the message of the resurrection, borne by beautiful flowers, is carried into hospitals and homes.

The association, knowing that the affairs of city and State will -some day be in the hands of the boys now being brought up, and some of them under wrong influences, are going out into the highways and hedges to find the neg- lected and those under vicious and unhealthy moral conditions, and are trying by means of pleasant allurements of boyish sports and healthy games to secure their attention and win them to ways of virtue.

A flourishing sewing society is maintained in connection with the association, and hundreds of warm garments are made each year and distributed. Homes have been found in institutions for those having moral or physical needs, and judicious loans have been made to meet pressing demands. All this work, however, has been made subservient to spiritual needs, and the chief aim has been to show that a right use of spiritual gifts will preclude much of the physical suffering of the world. All the officers of the association, it may here be said, are working for the love of doing good, there being no salaries.

No pen portrait of Mrs. Kirby could convey to those unacquainted with her any idea of the personality that wins and keeps her many friends.

The Spanish have a maxim that he who eats fruit, and does not plant the seed, is ungrateful to the generation before him, and deals unjustly toward those who follow. In the great garden of God's world some sow, never expecting to read: and, judged by the standard of the Spanish maxim, a sower like Mrs. Kirby is fulfilling her duty to both the generation before and to those who follow her.

ABEL LOOMIS TODD, author and lecturer, the wife of Professor David P. Todd, of Amherst College, was born in Cambridge, Mass., the only child of Eben Jenks and Mary Alden (Wilder) Loomis.

Her first American ancestor on her father's side was Joseph1 Loomis, who came from Braintree, England, in 1638, and settled at Windsor, Conn., in 1640. The sixth ancestor in that line was her father's grandfather, the Rev. Josiah6 Loomis, of Stafford, Coim., and Ashfield, Mass.

Her maternal grandparents were the Rev. John Wilder, Jr.,7 and his wife, Mary Wales Folies Jones. The Rev. John Wilder, Sr.,6 (Dartmouth College, 1784), her great-grandfather, was for many years minister of the Congregational church in Attleboro, Mass. His wife, Esther Tyler, was daughter of Colonel Sanmel Tyler, of Preston, Conn., a Revolutionary officer of note. The Wilder line is traced back through Jonas,5 4 John,3 2 to Thomas' Wilder, who became a member of the church in Charlestown, Mass., in 1640, and some years later removed to Lancaster, Mass. (See book of the Wilders.)

The Rev. John Wilder, Jr.7 (Brown University, 182.3), was settled in 1833 as pastor of the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Concord, Mass., where he remained six years. Three fine elms still standing in front of the old parsonage in Concord were pl.anted by him, one for each of his three children. He died in 1844. His wife, Mary, the mother of Mrs. Loomis and grandmother of Mrs. Todd, was a daughter of Nehemiah and Polly (Alden) Jones, of Raynham, Mass.

Through the last named ancestor Mrs. Todd is a descendant in the ninth generation of John Alden, who as proxy for Myles Standish wooed Priscilla Mullins, "the Mayflower of Plymouth" in the poet's talk, and won her for himself. The line from John and, Priscilla continued through their son Joseph,2 who married Mary Simmons; John,3 married Hannah White; Joseph,4 married Hannah Hall; Ebenezer,5 married Ruth Fobes; Polly (or Mary),6 married Nehemiah Jones; Mary Wales Fobes,7 married the Rev. John 'ilder, Jr.; Mary Alden Wilder,8