of Gloucester, and as a Past Senior representative is entitled to membership in the State body. This order is entirely independent, and not connected with the I. O. of O. F., although its objects are similar. It is one of the oldest women's societies in New England, having been instituted at East Boston, July 14, 1845. Mrs. Parkhurst also has membership in the Order of Pocahontas and in the Ladies of the G. A. R. in Salem, Mass. She is also a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and is in full accord and sympathy with the work of this organization.
She has a numerous circle of friends, and entertains many guests at her home, a spacious dwelling on Middle Street, in a most hospitable manner.
She is a member of the Congregational church in Gloucester and of the Abbot Academv Club, which holds its meetings in Boston. Kind-hearted, liberal, and public-spirited, Mrs. Parkhurst is a worthy representative of loyal New England womanhood.
HELEN LOUISE GILSON, one of the noble band of army nurses who ministered to the soldiers of the Civil War in the hospitals and on the battlefields of the South, was born in Beston, November 22, 1835, and was educated in the public schools. Her parents were Asa, Jr., and Lydia (Cutter) Gilsori; her paternal grandparents, Asa, Sr., and Susan (Gragg) Gilson. Her
grandfather Gilson was a native of Groton and a lineal descendant of Joseph^ Gilson, who was one of the original proprietors of that town.
Miss Gilson's mother died, a widow, in 1851, aged fifty-three. She was a daughter of Jonathan5 and Lydia (Trask) Cutter, of West Cambridge (now Arlington), who were married m Lexington, September 15, 1788. Jonathan^ Cutter was a descendant of Richard1 Cutter, of Cambridge (through William,2 William,3 and Jonathan4). He died in 1813. He was probably the Jonathan Cutter of Charlestown who was registered as a private in Captain Harris's company at different dates in 1775. He died in 1813, and his widow in 1818 became the wife of one of his kinsmen, William Cutter, a Revolutionary soldier and pensioner.
Helen Louise Gilson was graduated from the Wells School on Blossom Street in 1852. In September of that year she entered the Girls' High and Normal School, one of the first pupils. She there continued her studies till her appointment as head assistant to Master James Hovey of the Phillips School. After teaching five years she resigned her position on account of ill health. Subsequently she was engaged as a private teacher for the children of the Hon. Frank B. Fay, then Mayor of Chelsea. She was of a deeply religious nature, imbued with the cheerful faith of Universalism, and was a member of the church in Chelsea, then under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Charles H. Leonard, now Dean of Tufts Divinity School.
The breaking out of the Civil War enkindled her patriotism, and it was through conversation with Dr. Leonard that she was led to form the purpose of becoming an army nurse. Her application to be allowed to serve in this capacity did not at once meet a favorable response, Miss Dorothea L. Dix, superintendent of army nurses, considering her too young to go to the front. She waited for a time, and directly after the evacuation of Yorktown Mr. Fay was prominently connected with the Sanitary Commission; and, realizing that she would be a valuable assistant in that service, he secured her a position on one of the hospital boats. She went from his house in Chelsea to the war, and was with Mr. Fay at all the principal battles. For several months her duties were confined to these boats, stationed at different points.
On September 18, 1862, a few hours after the battle of Antietam, she reached the field, remaining on duty there and at Pleasant Valley until the wounded had been taken to the general hospitals. November and December of the same year found her at work in the camps and hospitals near Fredericksburg, Va., during the campaign of General Burnside. In the spring of 1863 she was there again, being also at the battle of Chancellorsville and in the Potomac Creek hospital.
As stated in "Our Army Nurses," a volume compiled by Mary A. Holland, "when the army moved, she joined it at Manassas; but,
