Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/611

460 The wife of Shubael Stone was Polly Rogers, of an old New England family. Miss Stone also claims descent, through her maternal grandmother, Lucy Waterman Barker, from the doughty Pilgrim warrior, Captain Myles Standish.

Benjamin Franklin Stone, father of the subject of this sketch, inherited the military tastes of his family. During his early man- hood he was connected with the militia of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, being a member of the Norfolk Guard, afterward known as the Roxbury City Guard, during his residence in that town. The sole surviving niemlKT of the Marlixirougii family of tiiirteen children is Mrs. Julia R. Towne, of Evanston, Ill.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War Miss Stone's two eldest brothers, true to the tra- ditions of their family, enlisted, ami served three years each, the eldest, George Franklin, in the Army of the Potomac, and the second, Edwin Cornelius, in the navy, where he was assigned to the frigate "Minnesota," and was on her when she had her narrow escape from destruction by the enemy's i-am, the " Merri- mac," before the "Monitor" appeared upon the scene. After completing his term of service in the navy, this second brother enlisted in the army, responding to the call for three months' men.

The brave father hardly held his patriotic soul in leash in deference to the importunities of his wife that he remain with her and their three youngest children, until the government issued a call for nine months' men, when he could be held back no longer. He enlisted in Company K, Forty-third Massachusetts Infantry, and saw service at Newbern and Little Washington, N.C. His daughter cherishes as one of her choicest treasures the little volume of the New Testament and Psalms which she saw presented to her father, together with all his comrades of the regiment, by their Chaplain, the Rev. J. M. Manning, D.D., pastor of the Old South Church, Boston, at a farewell service held in the First Congregational Church, Chelsea, before their departure for the seat of war. It was Corporal Stone's custom to carry this book in his breast-pocket, and after he had been honorably discharged from the service, and was once more in the midst of his family, he told the story of his deliverance from deadly peril in battle, and showed his Testament with its cover torn and twisted by the spent minie-ball, which had been arrested by it. A brave, fearless man was he, prompt to respond to every call of duty, and fully persuaded that man is immune from harm as long as God has need of him. The father and his two sons returned home upon the expiration of their term of service, uninjured.

Ellen Maria Stone was educated in the elementary branches in Roxbury schools, and after 1860 in the grammar and high schools of Chelsea. After graduating from the latter, she taught .school for a while in Chelsea (1866-67). From 1867 to 1878 she was on the editorial staff of the Congregationalist. Deeply imbued with religious feeling, she sought earnestly to pro- mote the kingdom of God, taking especial interest in foreign missions, to which work she ultimately felt herself called. This con- viction with her meant action. Making known her desires, and being found well fitted for the work by reason of her earnestness and energy, educational qualifications, and religious de- votion, she was appointed in 1878, by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, as missionary to Bulgaria, for which country she sailed after an affecting leave- taking of her many friends and well-wishers. The circumstances in connection with her capture b' brigands, September 3, 1901, on a mountain road in Macedonia, and her subse- quent detention by them for nearly six months, pending the payment of her ransom, it will be remembered, were given wide newspaper pub- licity, and, as narrated by herself, may be found in MrClure's Magazine, May-October, 1902. The following estimate of her work and character is quoted from an article written by her personal friend, Mrs. Otis Atwood, of Chelsea, while Miss Stone was still a prisoner among the brigands: —

"We met in the early sixties, as schoolmates in the Shurtleff Grammar School, then, and for many years after, under the leadership of Miss Elizabeth G. Hoyt. How large a part this teacher had in the formation of the noble