Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/528

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND
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Phineas Warren, Jr., was a kinsman of the late Hon. Lot M. Morrell, their common ancestors being the early Morrells of Kittery, Me. Printed antl family records and remembrances show that Phineas Warren, St., father of Phineas, Jr., was Phineas,5 born in Berwick, Me., in 1763, son of Gideon4 and Hannah (Morrell) Warren and a descendant in the fifth generation of James Warren; who came to Kittery, Me., about two hundred and fifty years ago, and in 1656 had land laid out to him in the parish of Unity, now South Berwick. From James1 and his wife Margaret the line continued through James2 and Gilbert3 to Gideon,4 who married in 1748 Hannah, daughter of John3 and Ruth (Dow) Morrell, and was the father of Phineas,5 above named, born April 22, 1763. Phineas,5 Warren, or Phineas Warren, Sr., was a birthright Quaker, or member of the Society of Friends, but, marrying out of meeting, he was disowned. He settled in Freedom. His wife Betsy was daughter of Samuel and Betsy (Stein) Collier.

John3 Morrell, maternal grandfather of Phineas Warren, Sr., was brother to Peter3 Morrell, a lineal ancestor of Lot M. Morrell, both John3 and Peter3 being sons of John2 and grandsons of John1 Morrell, who had a grant of land in Kittery in 1668. (See "Old Kittery and her Families," by Rev. E. S. Stackpole, and "Genealogy of Descendants of James Warren, of Kittery," by Orin Warren, M.D.)

Four of Mrs. Atkinson's ancestors above mentioned—namely. Lieutenant John Clark, of Nobleboro, Me.; Benjamin Spalding, of Chelmsford, Mass.; Lieutenant Solomon Young, of Rochester, Mass.; and his son Henry—served in the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Atkinson is a member of ' Dorothy Q." Chapter, D. R.


ELLA MAUDE MOORE, author of "Songs of Sunshine and Shadow," is the wife of Joseph E. Moore, of Thomaston, Me., and the chief representative of that flourishing seaboard town in literature to-day. Daughter of Samuel Emerson Smith (Bowdoin College, 1839), she was born in 1849 in the town of Warren, Me. Her paternal grandfather, the Hon. Edwin Smith, of Warren (Harvard College, 1811), was son of Manasseh Smith (Harvard College, 1773) and his wife Hannah, daughter of the Rev. Daniel and Hannah (Emerson) Emerson, of Hollis, N.H. Hannah Emerson, wife of the Rev. Daniel and grandmother of Edwin Smith, was a daughter of the Rev. Joseph* and Mary (Moody) Emerson and sister to the Rev. William' Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Samuel E. Smith, father of Mrs. Moore, removed with his family to Thomaston when his daughter was three years old. Here she grew up and was educated in the public schools. In early life her literary tastes began to assert themselves in poetic effusions, humorous, satirical, or pathetic, according to her mood or the nature of the subject that had awakened her interest. When but a school-girl, she composed the verses now so widely known, and at the time so much discussed, known as "Rock of Ages," a poem spoken of by the Lewiston Journal as "the most celebrated written by a Maine woman." It was the result of no prolonged or studied effort: it was spontaneous—in the phraseology of the poem, "sung as sing the birds in June." It was written, without a thought of its survival, on the inside of an old envelope, which she had torn open at the ends and spread apart, crossing and recrossing the lines to find room. After she had thrown it away, one of the family picked it up, deciphered the verses, and was astonished at their merit. Urged to do so, she reproduced the verses, and they appeared in the Maine Standard.

The poem has subjected the author to considerable amusing annoyance, for, some years after it was written, it appeared in The Christian at Work as the production of a man in Ohio, who sought to establish his claim by setting forth some personal details connected with its origin. It also apjjearetl in a published collection of poems in the West and credited to a Western woman. Later on a London literary journal published a strongly satirical article in regard to its pretended American authorship, strangely confounding the poem with the familiar hynm of "Toplady." The poem by Mrs. Moore describes the various emotions awakened by singing "Rock of Ages"