Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/605

454 It is said that one of the progenitors of the family in the Middle Ages was knighted on the field of battle for his valiant deeds; and because of his owning great tracts of land, including mines of value, his name became Sir Thomas the Miner. It is also interesting to note that his descendants to-day are possessors of mines in the coal district of Central Pennsylvania, left to them by Charles Miner, whose legal papers read that coal should be granted to his heirs and their descendants free of cost forever.

Indirectly, Nina K. Darlingtone is related to Priscilla Mullins and John Alden, this fact em- phasizing the New England connection.

Ancestors of hers noted for sterling worth, brave in the discharge of duty, and suffering persecution for conscience' sake, are found in the Lewis family, the direct line of the ma- ternal grandfather, which originated in Wales. Henry Lewis, a member of the Society of Friends, came to this country in 1682, his father, Evan Lewis, accompanying him, and settled in Philadelphia. The interests of Welsh immigrants were committed to his care by William Penn, his personal friend, who ap- pointed him one of three to decide all questions in place of the court. He purchased vast tracts of land, and owned both a town house and a country manor. In the seventh generation, in direct line, was Nina K. Darlingtone's maternal grandfather, the Hon. Joseph J. Lewis, an emi- nent lawyer, interested in all educational mat- ters, who was Commissioner of Internal Revenue under Abraham Lincoln and a valued personal friend of the President, by whom important questions were often referred to his clear, un- biassed judgment. His grand-daughter treas- ures, among other recollections of him, this, that was told to her in her girlhood: He had been invited to join the family party to attend the theatre on the night of the President's assassination, but, unable to be present, was spared the shock of witnessing the fatal deetl, to be of service to the family in their hour of need. His son, the late Charlton T. Lewis, LL.D. (recently deceased), editor of Harper's "Book of Facts" and author of the Latin dictionary said officially to be used as the standard in Oxford and Cambridge Universities, England, was poet of his class in graduating from Yale College; and later two sons of Charlton T. Lewis each received the same compliment at graduation. Graceanna Lewis, a well-known scientist, an authority on ornithology, is a member of this branch of the family."

Joseph J. Lewis's mother, Alice Jackson, was a noted mathematician of her day. Still in the possession of a descendant of the family is the estate in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which it is said was seen in a vision by the original owner, the Jackson immigrant, before he left his old home in Ireland to found a new one in a land where he could worship God, unmolested, in the way that he felt was right and true.

Nina K. Darlingtone's father, Charles Thornton Murphy, a resident of Philadelphia, is a great lover of music and art, a composer of ability, and a natural artist. His setting of Oliver Wendell Holmes's battle hymn, " God bless our Flag," fitly illustrates his musical quality. His father, John H. Murphy, fearing, with old-time prejudice, that he would devote his life to music, sent him to sea for five years; but, though separated from his beloved instrument, his musical nature held its own. The father's influence, however, was great enough afterward to induce him to adopt a business career. In his wife, Alice C. Lewis, he found a willing sym- pathizer and ready listener, and thus was woven into the home life their own interpretation of music for the very love of it.

Mr. Murphy's mother, whose maiden name was Saunderson, was a descendant of Robert Carter, of "Corotoman," I^ancaster County, Va., known as "King Carter," who was born about 1663, son of John and Sarah (Ludlow) Carter; the royal descent of "King Carter," and there- fore of his posterity, with a long list of illus- trious progenitors, among them Charlemagne and the Emperor -Frederick Barbarossa, is of undisputed authenticity (see "Ancestry of Ben- jamin Harrison, President of the United States, 1889-93," with included chart, by Charles P. Keith).

Into this musical and intellectual atmosphere came the first-born of eight children, the child Nina, named for a song and destined to bless all good inclination and help others to trust holy heart impulses. As usual with those whose abilities are of an unusual order and