Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/631

478 published shortly after her death, which occurred in January, 1904: —

She opened her school on January 9, 1867, in a very small building, and within a week had sixty-seven pupils. The condition of some of these was deplorable. Miss Bradley had literally to feet! the hungry and clothe the poor before she could minister to their spiritual and mental necessities, meanwhile establishing a Sunday .service in which .she was teacher, superintendent, and preacher. The school rapidly increased under her fostering care, and was soon placed upon a firm basis. Through the generosity of Mrs. Mary Hemenway, who had been interested in the undertaking from the first, the field of usefulness was greatly enlarged. The corner-stone of a new building was laid in 1871, and in 1872 the large, well-equipped Tileston School was opened to the public, the first free public school in Wilmington. Trained teachers were brought from the North, and so numerous were the applications for admittance to the school that many had to be turned away; but it was never the poor who were rejected. . . . In five years the school had grown from a small roomful of timid, half-suspicious, hungering souls into a large, crowded school of ten or twelve rooms, with all the modern educational appliances, for which Mrs. Hemenway had assumed the financial responsibility.

"Miss Bradley, in spite of delicate health, continued her work until the summer of 1891. Three generations have arisen to call her blessed. She was the friend, adviser, and helper of all, in matters physical as well as spiritual. That she was endowed with the sterling qualities we are wont to claim for our New England ancestors goes without .saying. . . . She was an ardent Unitarian, and welcomed warmly the transient few who strayed into the city. With quaint humor she would say, 'Ah, now you have doubled the number of Unitarians in Wilmington.' Miss Bradley died in the little brown cottage in the school grounds, which had so long been her home. The announcement of her death was received in Wilmington with reverent sorrow. . ..

"The body lay in state all day Sunday, January 17. The editor of the Dispatch, of Wilmington, thus spoke of her: 'She was one of Wilmington's foremost citizens, and the magnitude of her work stands out to-day as an everlasting monument. Miss Bradley was the mother of public school education in Wilmington. . . . Year by year her influence grew, and the aim of her life grailually rounded into success. The seed she planted over a quarter of a century ago grew and developed into one of the finest public school systems in the country. Her name will ever be held in highest reverence in this community.'"

AULINE SAWTELLE JONES, portrait artist, the wife of Charles Willis Jones, lawyer, of Augusta, Me., was born in Old Town, Penob.scot County, that State. Daughter of James Harvey Sawtelle and his wife, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Knowlton Chapman, she is descended on the paternal side from Richard Sawtelle of Groton, Mass. Her great, great grandparents, Jonas and Eunice (Kempt) Sawtelle, served through the Revolutionary War, he as a private, she as a nurse. Her maternal grandfather was Nathaniel Chapman, who served in the Revolutionary army from 1775 to 1780. He was at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and was also with Washington's life-guard at the crossing of the Delaware and the surprise and defeat of the Hessians at Trenton. He married Sally Gott, of Starks, Me.

The subject of this sketch very early showed a decided taste for drawing faces. The white wails of the attic, the covers of her school-books, or any surface that would take a mark, was covered by the chiklish fingers with drawings in lead-pencil, chalk, or charcoal, whichever lay nearest to hand. The old proverb, "Necessity is the mother of invention," proved true in her case when, at the age of eight, she crushed the old-fashioned flowers growing in the garden, that she might thus be enabled to give a semblance of natural coloring to the faces she delighted in. At the age of eighteen it became possible for her to begin the study of art in earnest. Going to Boston, she became a pupil of Mr: George A. Frost (who afterward accompanied Kennan to Siberia to illustrate the latter's articles on that country), and sub-