Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/201

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND

the jmrpose indicated by its name. She is a director in the Benevolent Union (the Associated Charities organization in Fitchburg), and is a most active working member of the Baldwinsville Hospital Cottage Auxiliary, a society formed to aid the partially State-supported hospital for epileptic children at Baldwinsville, Mass. She is also a warm frieml and helper to the Children's Home, another of the charitable and practically helpful institutions of her city.

Mrs. Hartwell has always been an earnest Unitarian in her religious belief and affiliation, and has been among the foremost in the First Parish Church of Fitchburg in all its activities, giving unstintedly of her time and means to promote its best welfare, and filling for more or less extended time the various church appointments usually enjoyed by women.

In sinnming up, we may .say that conspicuous executive ability, indomitable energy and persistend a clear and broad vision, great tact, loyalty to friends and to purpose, and painstaking fidelity to any matter in hand are Mrs. Hartwell 's characteristics, and give the key to the success she has attained in good works. Such women mean more to their surroundings than can be told in words or measured perhaps by and of our common standards. Their number is increasing among us, and in large degree owing to examples like that of Mrs. Hartwell, which are a steady inspiration both for the present and the future.


CALISTA ROBINSON JONES, Past National President of the Woman's Relief Corps, was born March 22, 1839, in Chelsea, Vt., and during the greater part of her life has been a resident of that State, her home for the past twenty years and more having been in the town of Bradford.

Her parents were Cornelius and Mary A. (Pike) Robinson. Her maternal grandmother, Sophia Lyman, wife of James Pike, was a daughter of Richard Lyman, of Lebanon, Conn., who marched with others from Connecticut "for the relief of Boston in the Lexington alarm, April, 1775," and in April, 1777, enlisted for three years under Captain Benjamin Throop, having the rank of Sergeant in the First Regiment, Connecticut line, under Colonel Jedediah Huntington. Solomon Robinson, great-grandfather of Cornelius Robinson, was in the battle of Bennington.

Calista Robinson, as she was known in girlhood, was educated in the public schools and academy of Chelsea and at Rutgers Female Institute, New York City. For three years she was a teacher in the Washington School in Chicago. A few days after the attack on Fort Sumter, with the assistance of three other teachers she made a regulation fifteen-foot bunting flag, every star of which was sewed on by hand. This was the first flag to float over a school-house in Chicago. She assisted in distributing supplies to the thousands of troops who passed through that city en route for Washington. Returning to Vermont in 1864, she was married in Chelsea, September 8 of that year, to Charles .Jones, a native of Tunbridge, Vt., and a graduate of Chelsea Academy. He was born .July 18, 1837.

When a Relief Corps auxiliary to Washburn Post, G. A. R., was formed in Bradford, 't., Mrs. Jones became a charter member, serving as President two years and holding some office ever since. The Department Convention of Vermont elected her successively Junior Vice-President, Senior Vice-President, and President. She has served on important committees in the State and national organizations, and has been active as a member of the Andersonville Prison Board of the National W. R. C. After doing effective work as Department Patriotic Instructor, she was appointed a member of the first National Committee on Patriotic Instruction. She was National Junior Vice-President in 1899, and at the convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, in September, 1901, she was elected National President, receiving a unanimous vote. She performed the duties of this office in an admirable manner, and her address delivered in Washington, October 9, at the session of the Twentieth National Convention, was received with approval. A few extracts are here given: "The Twentieth National Convention marks the close of the second decade in the history of the Woman's Relief Corps. The history of the first decade