years and chairman of its executive committee six years. She helped to earn thousands of dollars for the memorial building of E. K. Wilcox Post, and is held in grateful remembrance by the post and corps, her work for the Grand Army being well known throughout the State. She participated as a delegate in several conventions of the Department of Massachusetts, Woman's Relief Corps. At the time of the Spanish-American War she was one of the organizers, and was corresponding secretary and a director, of the Springfield Auxiliary to the Massachusetts Volunteer Aid Association. Her two elder sons enlisted for service in Cuba, and Arthur fell on the firing line at El Caney, July 1, 189S, pierced by a Mauser bullet. The death of this young patriot, only eighteen years of age, and the frantic grief of the elder brother over his dead body was a fruitful theme for the newspaper correspondents in Cuba, from Richard Harding Davis down to the humblest wielder of the pen; and the tragic circumstance was the original of the statue at the Buffalo Exposition entitled "l'll Caney."
Her eldest son, Walter, returned from Cuba broken in health from yellow fever, and was obliged to leave the bleak climate of New England for the Far West. For this reason Mrs. Packard in 1901 resigned her position as literary editor of the Springfield Daily News, and moved to Portland, Ore.
In her new home she is still actively engaged in public work She has been patriotic instructor and also press correspondent of George Wright Relief Corps of Portland, Ore., and in 190;i was elected a national delegate to the Woman's Relief Corps convention in San Francisco. Her interest in the old soldiers is as strong as ever. She is correspondent for several Eastern papers. After the close of the National Encampment at Buffalo the Times of that city said, "Of all the hundreds of press correspondents who sent out letters describing the encampment, none equalled in graphic description those sent by 'H. N. P.' to the Springfield Republican." Mrs. Packard represented the same paper in 1903 at the Frisco encampment, where she received a cordial greeting from a host of Grand Army comrades. Mrs. Packard has held several offices in the United Order of the Pilgrim Fathers, including that of Governor of the Colony in Springfield. She is also a member of Mercy Warren Chapter, of Springfield, of the Daughters of the American Revolution. When a resident of Massachusetts she was identified with the New England Woman's Press Association. As her works testify, she is a woman of talent and of much executive ability.
Mrs. Packard has had rather more than the ordinary share of troubles which fall to the lot of mortals, but has borne all her many trials with fortitude and cheerfulness, always holding the faith that some good purpose underlies all the worries of humanity. Her New Eng- land birth and training, and inheritance of courage from a long line of ancestors, have doubtless upheld her where others would have failed.
Mrs. Packard now receives the pension of a Lieutenant's widow, secured to her by special act of Congress through the efforts of the Hon. Malcolm A. Moody, Representative from the Second Congressional District of Oregon.
MARY E. ALLEN.— At the time of the French Revolution it is related that two young brothers were sent away from France, and sailed from their native town of Brest, in two different vessels, for America. One of them was never heard from more. The other, as he told the story, was shipwrecked off the coast of Massachusetts, reached the shore with some difficulty, in scanty clothing, and sought refuge at the nearest farmhouse, where he was taken in and given work. He could speak no English, and, as the people he came among were equally ignorant of his language, the farmer sought the nearest equivalent in sound to the name given by the stranger, and called him Cornelius Allen. This name he afterward bore, remaining a resilient of Massachusetts, where he married and had a large family. His son Joseph married Mary Nowell, of York, Me. She was of Scotch and English descent. The youngest of their six children was Mary E. Allen, the subject of this sketch, who was born
