been a member of the Helping Hand Society in aid of the Working Girls' Home in Boston. She is a member of Park Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. She assisted in organizing the Woman's Auxiliary to the Young Men's Christian Association, of Somerville, and was for many years one of its most active members, having served as a member of committees and in other helpful capacities.
The Daughters of Maine, a large and prosperous club in Somerville, selected her for its president the second year of its organization. Being thoroughly patriotic and the wife of a soldier of the Civil War, she is active in the Woman's Relief Corps and other organizations formed to assist the Grand Army of the Republic. In 1887 Mrs. Chamberlin joined Willard C. Kinsley Relief Corps, No. 21, of Somerville, and immediately entered with earnestness into its work. After serving in .several official positions she was elected president in 1891, and re-elected in 1892 for a second year. Again in membership and interest was the result to the corps, which, from the date of her administration, was recognized as one of the best in the State. She attended .several department conventions as a delegate, serving on committees and as department aide. Mrs. Chamberlin has also participated as a delegate in national conventions, and has travelled extensively in an official capacity. For the last eighteen years she has been a member of the Ladies' Aid Association of the Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts.
Her name is on the charter list of Ramona Lodge, Daughters of Rebekah, of Somerville, and she was its first Noble Grand, taking an interest in the charitable and .social work of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. For two years she was president of the Ladies' Aid Association that was formed to assist the Somerville Hospital. Mrs. Chamberlin is also a member of the Somerville Historical Society. Her brother. Major William Z. Clayton, of Bangor, is a Past Department Connnander of the Grand Army of the Republic of Maine. Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlin are respected, not only for the efficiency of their work in organizations, but for those social qualities that gain friends in public and private life.
ESTELLE M. H. MERRILL, journalist, was born at Jefferson, Lincoln County,
Me., in 1858, daughter of Oilman E. and Celenda S. Hatch. As a child Estelle M. Hatch attended the public schools of her native town. At fourteen years of age she entered Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Mass., and upon her graduation returned to Jefferson to teach. At the end of two years' successful work in that place she again came to Massachusetts, and taught school for three years in Hyde Park. She will always be gratefully remembered as a strong factor in establishing in the public schools of Hyde Park an additional course, giving practical business training, opportunities for which previously could be obtained only at private schools.
A lover of nature from her girlhood, when she used to wander through the Maine woods, during her period of teaching in the grammar and high school grades at Hyde Park .she was fitting herself at the Harvard Annex and with private teachers to take a professorship in botany, her favorite study. She also furnished at intervals articles for the Boston Transcript, written under the signature of "Jean Kincaid."
A break in health, the result of overwork, necessitated rest and change. During her long convalescence she used her pen more and more, her first regular work as a journalist being on the Boston Globe. From furnishing special articles she progressed to a salaried position. Journalism became such a fascinating occupation that, though she was offered a lucrative professorship in botany in a Southern college at this juncture, she chose to remain in the newspaper field.
On October 1, 1887, she was married to Mr. Samuel Merrill, a native of Charlestown, N.H., a member of the Suffolk County bar and of the editorial staff of the Boston Globe.
Mrs. Merrill is well-known as a leader and speaker in the club world. She is the founder of the Cantabrigia Club, of which she is now honorary vice-president; was one of the charter members of the New England Woman's Press Association and its first secretary: is president of the Wheaton Seminary Club and
