Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney Popular Books

Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney Biography & Facts

Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney (June 27, 1824 – November 19, 1904) was an American writer, reformer, and philanthropist. She was born on Beacon Hill, Boston, June 27, 1824; and was educated in private schools in Boston. Cheney served as secretary of the School of Design for Women in Boston from 1851 till 1854. She married portrait artist Seth Wells Cheney on May 19, 1853. His ill-health limited his volume of work and after a winter trip abroad (1854-1855) he died in 1856. They had one child, Margaret. Cheney's life was devoted to philosophic and literary research and work. She was one of the marked personalities of Boston in her day, prominent in reform movements. Naturally averse to personal publicity, she did not shun it where her name and word could add weight to the advocacy of a just cause. In the education and health of the community, she showed the most interest. She was a strenuous champion of the claims of African Americans to political and social justice. She advocated for religious toleration and the enfranchisement of women. She took an interest in social concerns such as the Freedman's Aid Society (secretary of the committee on aid for colored regiments and of the teachers' committee, 1863), Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (vice president), New England Women's Club (vice president) and the New England Hospital for Women and Children (secretary, 1862). She lectured at the Concord School of Philosophy on the history of art, and wrote about art in several books and articles. She was an active member of the Margaret Fuller conversation class. She went south to visit the Freedmen's schools in 1866, 1868, and 1869. Cheney was one of the founders in 1862 of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, its secretary for twenty-seven years and president fifteen years. Numbered among the veterans of the forward movements in education, philanthropy, and reform of the nineteenth century, she continued to grace by her presence and help by her wise counsels the deliberative assemblies and budding activities of the dawn of the twentieth century. She was the author of Reminiscences. Cheney visited Europe several times, and spoke before lyceums west of New England in 1873, 1875, and 1876. The location where her home stood in Jamaica Plain is a site on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Early years and education Ednah Dow Littlehale was born in Boston, June 27, 1824. She was the daughter of Sargent Smith and Ednah Parker (Dow) Littlehale, and was named for her mother. Cheney's birthplace was on Belknap Street, now Joy, about half-way up Beacon Hill from Cambridge Street. She was the third child born to her parents. Five children came after her, one a little brother; but only four —Ednah and three sisters, one a lifelong invalid— lived to adult age. When she was two years old, the family removed to Hayward Place, and six years later they took up their abode in a new house on Bowdoin Street. Her parents gave Cheney every educational advantage. At the first school she attended, kept by the Misses Pemberton, daughter of Ebenezer Pemberton who founded the school, she had good training in reading, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, and geography. The second was Mr. William B. Fowle's Monitorial School, which she entered with her elder sister, Mary Frances. Here, she distinguished herself by her knowledge of grammar, as shown by her skill in "parsing," and her ready recitations in other studies that interested her, one of these being French, which was especially well taught. The attraction of a new and friendly acquaintance, Miss Caroline Healey, drew her to the school on Mount Vernon Street of Mr. Joseph H. Abbot. For a few terms, she continued to advance in various ways of learning, more or less pleasurable, in the meantime successfully cultivating independence of thought, till, feeling herself not in harmony with the constituted authorities, she was as anxious to leave the Abbot school as she had been to enter it. This was the end of her school-days. Ancestry Her father was for thirty years a Boston merchant. His native place was Gloucester, Massachusetts. Born in 1787, he died in 1851. He was of the fifth generation of the Essex County, Massachusetts family founded by Richard Littlehale, who took the "oath of supremacy and allegiance to pass for New England in the Mary & John of London, Robert Sayres, Master, 24th March, 1633," joined the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Ipswich, Massachusetts, and, eventually settling in Haverhill, Massachusetts, was Town Clerk for twenty years, serving also as Clerk of the Writs. Richard Littlehale, of Gloucester (Joseph; Isaac, Richard), Mrs. Cheney's grandfather, was a Captain of militia. He married a widow, Mrs. Sarah Byles Edgar, daughter of Captain Charles Byles, who commanded a company at the siege of Louisburg, and who also fought at Quebec under Wolfe. Mrs. Cheney's mother, Mrs. Ednah P. Littlehale, a native of Exeter, New Hampshire, born in 1799, died in Boston in 1876. She was the daughter of Jeremiah and Ednah (Parker) Dow and on the paternal side a descendant in the seventh generation of Thomas Dow, one of the early settlers of Newbury, Massachusetts, freeman in 1642. The Dow ancestral line is Thomas, Stephen, Nathaniel, Captain Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Ednah Parker (Mrs. Littlehale). Thomas' Dow removed from Newbury to Haverhill, where he died in 1654. Stephen, son of Thomas and his wife Phebe, was born in Newbury in 1642. Stephen, born in Haverhill in 1670, married Mary Hutchins. Their son Nathaniel, born in 1699, married Mary Hendricks, and lived in Haverhill and Methuen, Massachusetts, and Salem, New Hampshire, formerly a part of Haverhill. Captain Jeremiah, born in Haverhill, in 1738, married Lydia Kimball, of Bradford, Massachusetts, daughter of Isaac Kimball, a lineal descendant of Richard Kimball, of Ipswich. Captain Jeremiah Dow died in Salem, in 1826. His name is in the Revolutionary Rolls of New Hampshire under different dates. He commanded a company in Lieutenant Colonel Welch's regiment, which marched from Salem, N.H., to join the Northern army in September, 1777. He was probably the Jeremiah Dow of New Hampshire who was private in Captain Marston's company in the expedition to Crown Point in 1762. Retire H. Parker marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts as a Minuteman of the Second Bradford Foot Company on the alarm of April 19, 1775. Mrs. Littlehale's maternal grandparents were Lieutenant Retire H. and Ednah (Hardy) Parker, of East Bradford, now Groveland, Massachusetts. The Parker line of ancestry began with Abraham' Parker, who married at Woburn, Massachusetts in 1644 Rose Whitlock, and about the year 1653, removed to Chelmsford, Massachusetts. It continued through Abraham, who married Martha Livermore and settled in East Bradford; Abraham and wife, Elizabeth Bradstreet (a descendant of Humphrey Bradstreet, of Rowley, Massachusetts); Abraham and his second wife, Hannah Beckett, daughter of Retire Beckett, of .... Discover the Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney books.