Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/136

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND
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Again application to business until her father and mother needed her personal attention. In 1891 she bought a beautiful home on a high hill in Augusta, which she named "Ben Venue/' Here her parents came from the lonely farm to live with her, and here, when the summons came, they "lay down to pleasant dreams." For the past Urn years, having built green- houses, she has carried on a most successful florist's business. Each year she has done something to improve the land Jind surround- ings, not the least of her enterprises being the drilling of an artesian well, five hundred and sixty feet deep, and the erection of a tower, tank, and windmill, the whole costing not less than three thousand dollars.

Miss Sanborn was a pioneer in the ten-hour system for working women, being the first to run her business on that rule. In all ways she has tried to better the condition of wage- earning women. Busy as she is, she has been active in W. C. T. U. work, has been a club woman since the birth of clubs, and a tower of strength in the Sunday-school and church. She counts it among her greatest privileges that she has been favored with the opportunity of listening to cultivated and eminent preachers, as the Rev. Drs. Webb, and McKenzie, Bing- ham, Ecob, and others.

Looking back upon a long and Busy life, that has been a happy one, she is still actively en- gaged as a florist, and cherishes the hope that her declining years may be useful, helpful to others, and not a burden to herself.

Miss Gulielma P. Sanborn joined Koussinoc Chapter, Daughters of the Ainerican Revolu- tion, in the autumn of 1902, and has since joined the National Society of that patriotic order, her application for membership in the latter having been accepted by the board of manage- ment in Washington, D.C, April 27, 1903, and her name placed on the list of members. Her eligibility in these two instances, as well as her qualifications for uniting with the So- ciety of Colonial Dames, comes from the pub- lic services of some of her maternal ancestors, briefly recorded below. Miss Sanborn's parents, Samuel Sanborn, of Yarmouth (bom May 17, 1806, died February 11, 1893), and Joanna Pierce, of Westbrook, Me., were married in 1828. They had eight children — Elizabeth Dunbar, Joseph Pierce, Albion Irving, Gulielma Penn (the subject of this sketch), Thomas Tristram, Samuel Porter Elwell, Benjamin Franklin, and Cora Frances — the eldest bom in Westbrook in 1830, and the youngest in Augusta in 1855. The four now living are Albion and Porter in California, Gulielma in Augusta, and Cora near Boston. Albion and Thomas served in the Civil War as third assistant engineers on gunboats in the navy.

The mother, Mrs. Joanna Pierce Sanbom, who died October 13, 1895, was born in West- brook, Me., November 29, 1810, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth (Storer) Pierce and a descendant in the seventh generation of Daniel Pierce, of Newbury, Mass. The Pierce line is: Daniel,** Benjamin,' Thomas,* the Rev. Thomas,*^ Thomas,' Joanna.'

Daniel* Pierce, the immigrant progenitor of this branch of the Pierce family, joining the Massachusetts Bay Colony at an early date, resided for three or four years in Watertown, and about the year 1638 removed to Newbury, Mass., where he died in 1677.

DanieP Pierce served as Deputy from New- bury to Massachusetts General Court, 1682-83; member of the Council of Safety, 1689; Rep- resentative to General Court, 1692; Councillor, 1693-1703; Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the county of Essex, 1698-1703. He was made Captain of the Newbury foot com- pany, October 7, 1678, and. appointed Colonel of the Second Essex County Regiment soon after the organization of the Provincial government under the new charter in 1692. He died in 1704.

Benjamin' Pierce, bom in February, 1668-9, son of Colonel. Daniel, resided in Newbury. He married Lydia Frost (bom in 1674), daugh- ter of Major Charles^ Frost, of Kittery, Me., by his wife, Mary Bolles.

Thomas^ Pierce, bom in 1706, son of Benjamin and Lydia, married in February, 1732-3, Abigail Frost, born in 1712, daughter of Lieutenant Charles' Frost (son of Major Frost) and his wife, Sarah Wainwright. The Rev. Thomas* Pierce, born in Newbury in 1737, was ordained in Newbury as a Presbyterian minister in Sep-