corporator of a charitable organization known as the Ladies' Lyceum Union. Her work has been wide and varied, and she has been an active member of the following named organizations: Keystone Chapter, No. 18, Order of the Eastern Star; Improved Order of Red Men, Degree of Pocahontas; Women's Auxiliary Board to the Scots' Charitable Society; Charles Russell Lowell Relief Corps, No. 28; Ladies' Aid Association of the Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts; Women's Charity Club; the Progressive Fraternity; Mary Washington Lodge, No. 1, Daughters of Rebekah; Garret A. Hobart Assembly, No. 383, R. S. G. F.
At her summer home in Maine numbers of poor, over-worked people have been cheered and helped by all the comforts that a good hostess can furnish, and thus enabled at the close of vacation to resume their work with renewed courage and more faith in human nature. For the past fourteen years she has held annually a May Festival, in which from two hundred to three hundred and fifty children have participated, the proceeds being expended in charity. This festival has come to be one of Boston's yearly attractions, looked forward to by many as a charming entertainment with a worthy cause for its object. For a long time Mrs. Butler's efforts were ably seconded by her husband, William S. Butler, one of the successful merchants of Boston. Mr. Butler died in 1898, and many a poor family felt they had lost a friend.
Mrs. Butler is a Spiritualist, and is one of the most successful clairvoyant physicians in the country, but has not permitted herself to become in any way bigoted or narrow-minded. When her attention has been called to persons needing assistance, she has not considered whether they were Protestant or Catholic, Jew or Gentile, but has ever been ready to help. In her own words, "I don't care whether people are black or white, blameless or blameworthy. If they are cold, I must warm them; if they are hungry, I must feed them. They are all God's children." This sentiment is typical of her. Large of heart, sympathetic in nature, frank, fearless, and outspoken, she is emphatically a type of the "new woman" that will be blessed by the coming generation.
MARIA MITCHELL, Ph.D., LL.D.— Maria Mitchell, astronomer of worldwide fame, discoverer of a comet in 1847, and for more than twenty years a member of the faculty of Vassar College, was a native of Nantucket. Born August 1, 1818, the third child of William and Lydia (Coleman) Mitchell, she grew to womanhood in her island home, where she long remained an iidiabitant, on every clear evening repairing to the observatory on the roof of the house to sweep the heavens with a telescope.
On the paternal side she was grand-daughter of Peleg, Sr., and Lydia (Cartwright) Mitchell, and on the maternal side grand-daughter of Andrew Coleman, who was a great-grandson of John and Joanna (Folger) Coleman. This remote ancestress, Joanna, was a daughter of Peter Folger and sister to Abiah Folger, who married Josiah Franklin and was the mother of the illustrious Benjamin Franklin. Peter Folger emigrated from Norwich, England, in the seventeenth century, and in 1663 settled in Nantucket, where he became a citizen of prominence, being a teacher, surveyor, clerk of the court and recorder, and "the scholar of the conununity."
Of Richard' Mitchell, who came from the Isle of Wight and was the progenitor of the Nantucket family of this name, Maria was a descendant in the sixth generation, the ancestral line being: Richard,' who married Mary Wood; Richard,^ born in 1686, who married Elizabeth Tripj); Richard,^ who married Mary Starbuck; Peleg/ who married Lydia Cartwright; and William,^ the father above men- tioned, who married Lydia Coleman.
Wlliam Mitchell and his wife belonged to the Society of Friends. Mr. Mitchell was a man of scholarly tastes and attainments, a teacher by profession, afterward cashier of a bank. He served as a member of the State Senate, as one of Governor Briggs's Council, and for a long time as one of the overseers of Harvard College. His favorite science was astronomy.
Maria Mitchell in her early years attended schools — first public and then private schools—taught successively by her father and the Rev. Cyrus Peirce, an educator of high repute, best
