Woman of the Century/Harriet Newell Ralston

RALSTON, Mrs. Harriet Newell, poet, born in Waverly, N. Y., 21st October, 1828. She is the daughter of Rev. Aaron Jackson. Her youth was passed in New York, Massachusetts and HARRIET NEWELL RALSTON. Illinois, and her education was received in the institutions of learning in the first two named States. Upon her removal to Quincy, 111., she formed the acquaintance of Hon. James H. Ralston, whose wife she became shortly afterward. Judge Ralston was a leading man in Illinois and held various important offices in that State. After serving as an officer in the Mexican War, he turned his attention again to the practice of law, settling in the then new State of California. On their wedding day Judge and Mrs. Ralston set out from New York for the Pacific coast, enjoying on the way the tropical beauties of the Nicaraguan Isthmus. Following the death of Judge Ralston, his widow kit her home in Austin, Nev., for the East, eventually settling in Washington, D. C, where her son is at present a professor of law in the National Law University of that city. Mrs. Ralston has written many fine poems, which, although never collected in the form of a volume, have been published and widely copied by the press. She is the author of "Fatherless Joe," "Decoration Day," "The Spectral Feast," "The Queen's Jewels and "The White Cross of Savoy," for which poem King Humbert of Italy sent her a letter of thanks and appreciation. Her poems are very numerous, among which may be specially mentioned "The Queen's jewels," written for the occasion of a banquet given by the Woman's National Press Association of Washington, D. C, of which she is a member, to the delegates of the Pan-American Congress assembled in that city, and for which poem she has received many acknowledgments from the representatives of Central and South American governments. She still takes an active interest in philanthropic and social movements tending to ameliorate the conditions of individuals and of society at large.