or go down cellar among the cobwebs to make 'grounds,' set up batteries, and all the rest incidental to the business."
Miss Higginbotham is intensely fond of children and animals, and in all she writes there is a wholesome, happy flavor. Bright and vivacious in manner and of a gracious personality, she makes an instant and favorable impression upon those with whom she comes into contact, who preserve pleasing recollections of her apt and interesting conversation.
FANNY TITUS HAZEN, President of the Massachusetts Army Nurse Association, is a native of Vershire, Vt. She was born May 9, 1840, being the eldest of eleven children of Simeon Bacon and Eliza Jane (Morris) Titus. Her parents are now living at her home in Cambridge, Mass., her father being eighty-five years old and her mother eighty-four. Mrs. Hazen's paternal grandfather was Joseph Titus, born in Royalston, Mass., son of Lenox Titus, of Royalston, who marched to the relief of Bennington during the Revolution. Her maternal grandfather, William Morris, was clerk of the military company which marched from the town of Woodstock, Conn., on the Lexington alarm, April, 1775. He served in this capacity only ten days. Appointed on March 7, 1778, Second Lieutenant in Captain Daniel Tilden's company, he served as Quartermaster in Colonel Samuel McLellan's regiment, which enlisted for one year's service from March, 1778. The official record says: this regiment "appears to have enlisted in Tyler's brigade
under Sullivan in Rhode Island, August—September, 1778."
Fanny Titus attended school when three years of age, walking a mile to the school- house and never missing a session during the term. She had already been taught the alphabet by her grandmother Titus, and could spell words with two syllables. When five years old she studied with great interest Peter Parley's geography. She frequently accompanied her father in his journeyings of many miles through the Vermont hills. At the age of seven she often drove seven miles to the mill with a load of wheat, waited until it was ground, and then took it home. In the spelling matches which were popular in those days she "spelled down" the entire school, although the youngest contestant. Before she was seven she was taught to spin, and was well drilled in all branches of domestic work. Just before she was thirteen she travelled alone to the home of her grandmother Morris in Lawrence, Mass., going by stage.
While living at her grandmother's in Lawrence she attended the Oliver Grammar School, always, before starting for school at eight o'clock, washing the breakfast dishes for forty boarders. This task she performed daily for more than a year. By invitation of the school committee of her native town she then returned thither and taught until she was eighteen. As a teacher she was very successful, introducing the advanced methods she had learned in Lawrence. Going again to Lawrence in 1858, she found employment in one of the large mills, reserving one evening each week for herself and one for the church. She was interested in the Free Baptist church of that city, of which she became a member at the age of seventeen, being baptized in the Merrimack River. The work in the mill was not so congenial to her as teaching, but its financial results were better. Leaving the mill on account of an accident, she remained in Lawrence and took up dressmaking, being thus engaged at the beginning of the Civil War.
Her eldest brother, James M. Titus, enlisted in 1861 in the Fourth Vermont Regiment, was wounded at Gettysburg, July, 1863, and in the same year died of disease at Warren Station, Va. In November, 1863, two younger brothers, Morris P., eighteen years old, and Joseph L., seventeen, having enlisted in the Fourth Vermont, Fanny returned to the old home in Vershire to spend Thanksgiving with them and to say farewell. They left the next day for the front. Morris was taken prisoner at Cold Harbor and sent to Andersonville, and was exchanged in the fall of 1864. He died in December, 1900. Joseph was
