to five hundred dollars, was presented to her on the memorable occasion of her farewell-to-Boston appearance in 1900. Among the plays (far too numerous to be given in detail) in which she has sustained important roles may be mentioned "The Lady of Lyons," "Frou Frou," "Captain Letterblair," "She Stoops to Conquer," "The Prisoner of Zenda," "Fedora," "Nathan Hale," "Under Two Flags," "Romeo and Juliet," "The Merchant of Venice."
CORA AGNES BENNESON, counsellor-at-law and special commissioner.—Wherever in history a person is found whose plan of life has been drawn from within, whose course has been mapped out without precedents, that man or woman justly challenges attention. The last third of a century has furnished not a few women of independent thought and action who have vindicated the right of each individual to do that for which he or she is fitted by nature. Younger women too easily forget the debt they owe these women of earnest conviction and liberal spirit.
To find Miss Benneson well established in the heart of a conservative commimity in what is for women a new profession, accorded on every hand professional and scholarly recognition, allows one to judge of her initiative, intellectual power, and gentle persistence. Her youth fell at a period when women were becoming active forces in society. Colleges and universities were being opened to them as well as to men. Girls were beginning to study, not because it was the fashion, but because they were impelled by an awakening self-consciousness.
The circumstances of Miss Benneson's birth and parentage made it quite impossible that she should be provincial or her opinions narrow. The community in which her early years were spent was made up of people from all the older parts of the country. Her father, Robert Smith Benneson, went when a young man from Philadelphia to Quincy, Ill., where he became an influential and wealthy citizen. He was born in Newark, Del., the son of the Rev. Thomas and Jane (Carlyle) Benneson (name originally Benson). He was of a strong, long-lived family, and seemed always to be the embodiment of health and good cheer. Because of his integrity and ability as a financier he was naturally called to positions of trust. He combined the keen insight of a man of affairs with an active interest in matters of public moment, especially education. Through his efforts the original act levying taxes for school purposes in Illinois was passed by the Legislature. For fourteen years he was president of the Board of Education of Quincy, a longer time one of its members. While Mayor he preserved the credit of that city by giving his personal notes for its debts.
Miss Benneson's mother, Electa Ann Park Benneson, was a descendant of Richard Park, who came from England and was a proprietor in Cambridge, Mass., in 1635. His house stood "near the cow common," the land at present bounded by Linmean Street, Garden Street, and Massachusetts Avenue. In 1647 he crossed the Charles River into that part of the town familiarly known as Cambridge Village (the territory since comprised in Brighton and Newton), where he had eleven acres and a house within a few feet of the spot now occupied by the Eliot Church. A little to the north-west of this lay his large tract of six hundred acres, bordering on the Charles River. His only son, Thomas Park, inherited this estate. When divided among his heirs, 1693-94, it comprised seven hundred twenty-two acres and part of a corn-mill on Smelt Brook. (See Jackson's History of Newton, p. 382, and map affixed.) Miss Benneson's grandfather, Daniel Harrington Park, descended in the fourth generation from Richard Park, was born in Massachusetts, but was taken, when in his second year, by his father to Connecticut, In manhood he became a resident of Vermont, where he married Welthy Ladd. In that State, at South Royalton, Miss Benneson's mother was born.
When a young woman, Annie Park, as she was generally called, taught school for a few years near the birthplace of her father in Brighton, Mass. Some of its prominent citizens, once her pupils, still hold her instruction in grateful remembrance. While visiting"
