Representative women of New England/Estelle M. H. Merrill
ESTELLE M. H. MERRILL, journalist, was born at Jefferson, Lincoln County, Me., in 1858, daughter of Oilman E. and Celenda S. Hatch. As a child Estelle M. Hatch attended the public schools of her native town. At fourteen years of age she entered Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Mass., and upon her graduation returned to Jefferson to teach. At the end of two years' successful work in that place she again came to Massachusetts, and taught school for three years in Hyde Park. She will always be gratefully remembered as a strong factor in establishing in the public schools of Hyde Park an additional course, giving practical business training, opportunities for which previously could be obtained only at private schools.
A lover of nature from her girlhood, when she used to wander through the Maine woods, during her period of teaching in the grammar and high school grades at Hyde Park .she was fitting herself at the Harvard Annex and with private teachers to take a professorship in botany, her favorite study. She also furnished at intervals articles for the Boston Transcript, written under the signature of "Jean Kincaid."
A break in health, the result of overwork, necessitated rest and change. During her long convalescence she used her pen more and more, her first regular work as a journalist being on the Boston Globe. From furnishing special articles she progressed to a salaried position. Journalism became such a fascinating occupation that, though she was offered a lucrative professorship in botany in a Southern college at this juncture, she chose to remain in the newspaper field.
On October 1, 1887, she was married to Mr. Samuel Merrill, a native of Charlestown, N.H., a member of the Suffolk County bar and of the editorial staff of the Boston Globe.
Mrs. Merrill is well-known as a leader and speaker in the club world. She is the founder of the Cantabrigia Club, of which she is now honorary vice-president; was one of the charter members of the New England Woman's Press Association and its first secretary: is president of the Wheaton Seminary Club and an active member of the Fathers' and Mothers' Club. Interested in many philanthropical movements, she is vice-president of the Woman's Charity Club and an officer in the Associated Charities of Cambridge. She is a pleasing and instructive lecturer on a vari(>ty of subjects, especially on educational and sociological questions.
She has recently become co-editor, with Dr. Mary Wood Allen, of American Motherhood, a Boston magazine devoted to the interests of mothers and home-makers.