ezer Adams, whose wife was Anne Boylston,
sister to Susanna.
The wife of Joseph' Adams and mother of Captain Ebenezer* and Deacon John* afore- said was Hannah Bass, daughter of John and Ruth (Alden) Bass and grand-daughter of John Alden and his wife Priscilla. Sure enough, then, is Annie Fields, poet and friend of poets, a "Mayflower" descendant.
Mrs. Fields^s maternal grandparents were Captain John and Sarah (May) Holland, the grandfather a Boston merchant and ship- owner. The grandmother was a daughter of Samuel^ and Abigail (Williams) May. She W{us sister of Joseph* May, whose daughter AbigaiP married Amos Bronson Alcott and was the mother of Louise May Alcott; and sister to Joseph" May's brother Samuel, who married Mary Goddard and was the father of Abby W. May of honored memory.
For years Mrs. James T. Fields has been one of the leading workers in the Associated Char- ities of Boston, in which organization she has served as vice-president and director, and as corresponding secretary of District No. 7, giving much time and energy to the study of social and economic questions and the practical work of befriending the poor.
The writings of Mrs. Fields betray a cul- tivated mind, a wide accjuaintance and loving intimacy with books and their producers, and possess a literary and personal flavor of un- failing charm. It may be noted in pjussing that one of the teachers by whose instructions she profited in her youth was George B. Emerson, who for a number of years kept an excellent private school in Boston. Mrs. Fields has been a contributor to the Atlnniic, Harpersj the Centuryj and other magazines. Her first book of poems, "Under the Olive," was followed by a memoir of her husband, entitled "James T. P'ields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches, with Unpublished Fragments and Tributes of Men and W^omen of Letters," 1881 ; "How to help the Poor, 1883; "Whittier: Notes of his Life and Friendships, 1893; "A Shelf of Okl Books," 1894; "The Singing Shepherd, and Other Poems," 1895; "Authors and Friends," 1896; "Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe," 1897; "Hawthorne," in the Beacon Biographies, 1899; "Orpheus, a Masque," 1899.
Early in the present year, 1904, after an interim of impaired health and cessation of literary activity, ap|x»ared from the {xjn of Mrs. Fields a little volume on Charles Dudley Warner, in the Contemporary Men of Letters Series. What was said by a competent critic of her "Authors and Friends" may here be cited as applicable to this attractive monograph of later date: —
"It is because Mrs. Fields herself was bom just early and just late enough, and through circumstance and native endowment came into the closest intimacy and sympathy with the men and women whose names shine forth most clearly in our century's record of letters, that her book has an uncommon charm and value." M. H. G.
GEORGIA ABBIE RUSSELL, Agent for the Massachusetts State Board of Prison Connnissioners, has for the past . six years had charge of the work of Hiding discharged female prisoners. She is a daughter of George Woodbury and Abigail (Bunker) Russell. When she was two weeks old, her mother died, and her father, a few months later, went to California, leav- ing her in charge of Benjamin Bunker, an uncle, whose wife, Elizabeth Ober Bumham, was her mother's cousin.
George Woodbury Russell, her father, who was born in Salem, Mass., and was for many years a sea captain, died in California when she was seven years old. His ancestors were men of prominence in the army and navy, and the family was noted for its charitable deeds. ^Miss Russell remembers accompanying her aunt and grandmother to homes of the sick and afflicted, and she was often sent on errands of mercy. Mrs. Abigail Bunker Russell, the mother above named, was born in Beverly, Mass. She also was descended from a family interested in charitable works. Miss Russell's grandfather Bunker was a gunner in the navy during the Revolution, and her great-grandfather was the owner of the farm in Charlestown on which Bunker-
