Sarah Hull Chapter, D. R., of which she was elected Regent, March, 1902, and again in March 1904, is the largest chapter in the General Society of the Daughters of the . Revolution. Mrs. Stanley is also one of the Board of Managers of the General Society. She is a vice-president of the Social Science Club of Newton, and was one of the founders and for a time vice-president of the Katahdin Club, composed of residents of Newton who were born in Maine. Mrs. Stanley for some years was president of the Newton District Nursing Association. On account of severe illness not long ago she declined re-election. This useful society comprises four hundred members. Both Mr. and Mrs. Stanley are regular attendants of the Unitarian church in Newton, in which she is an active worker.
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, successful author in prose and verse, was born in Calais, Me., April 3, 1835, the eldest child of Joseph N. and Sarah (Bridges) Prescott. Her father, Joseph N. Prescott, was a son of William Pepperell Prescott and his wife, Harriet de Les Dernier, whose father, Peter F. C. de Les Dernier, was born in Halifax, N.S., of Swiss parents.
Henry Prescott, father of William P. Prescott, was a lineal descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Prescott, an early settler of Lancaster, Mass. Mary Newmarch Prescott, wife of Henry, was a daughter of Joseph and Dorothy (Pepperell) Newmarch, a grand-daughter of William* Pepperell, of Kitt^ry, and niece of Sir William^ Pepperell, the victor of Louisburg.
The second Prescott ancestor, Captain Jonathan,^ father of the Rev. Benjamin Prescott and grandfather of his son Henry, named above, married Elizabeth Hoar, sister of Daniel Hoar, remote ancestor of Senator George F. Hoar. Mrs. Spofford's mother was a daughter of John Bridges, of Calais, Me.
Mi-s. Rose Terry Cooke, in bygone years a fellow-worker with the pen, thus wrote of Harriet Prescott in her girlhood in Maine: A "lithe, active child, full of quaint wit and keen questioning, she ran wild through her earlier years in the pure air and fragrant breath of pine forests and sea breezes, laying the foundation of her exceptional health and. strength." At the age of fourteen Harriet Prescott went to Newburyport to live with an aunt and attend the Putnam Free School, "a remarkably good school," as it has been described, "kepi by William G. Wells, a celebrated teacher." Her native talent soon manifested itself: she received the first prize, in a series instituted by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Professor Alpheus Crosby, "for a very daring and original essay on Hamlet, written at sixteen." She further attained an enviable distinction and popularity among her classmates by writing several dramas, which were enacted in the school exhibitions. After her graduation from the Putnam School she continued her studies for a time at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H., where her widowed mother and the younger children were then living. Before long the family returned to Newburyport.
Not admiring friends and schoolmates alone, but judicious counsellors, among them Colonel Higginson, encouraged her literary aspirations. Sketches, stories, and verses from her pen found their way into print, and probably brought money into her purse.
Her first contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, "In a Cellar," appearing in February, 1859, is remembered by one whose opinion is of value as "an ingenious and amusing story, well told." The same early reader and critic adds: "Her tale of *The Amber Gods,' published soon afterward in the same magazine, was of a higher and larger scope, full of power and passion. Scarcely less powerful was a sketch named ’Circumstance.' These stories at once gained for the author a high place among writers of fiction."
She continued to use her pen. To quote again from Mrs. Cooke: "Under her quiet aspect, wistful regard, and shy manner, lay a soul full of imagination and passion and a nature that revelled in the use of words to express this fire and force. In her hands the English language became sonorous, gorgeous, burning."
In 1865 Harriet Prescott was married to Richard S. Spofford, of Newburyport. Joy in the birth of a child in the ensuing year was
