others, and for what she has tried to be to all. With his family there was no kinship of blood, but there grew up in those years of association with them in that home a higher relationship of reciprocal affection, appreciation, and trust.
"Her thoughtfulness, her gentleness, her dignity, and her playfulness showed the strong contrasts in her nature, which so singularly combined the child and the woman. She was charitable in judgment, ready to forgive those whose lips had questioned her fidelity or the purity of her motives, and equally ready to confess her faults. She often said, true affection does not make us blind; but, although keenly alive to the errors of those we love, we can the more readily pardon. With confidence in her ability to work in responsible positions, she was humble, and did not desire notoriety, declining always to furnish for publication any history of her army life.
"Her faculty in arranging a hospital, her tact in managing the patients and the soldier nurses, her ability to pray and sing with dying men, to conduct religious and funeral ceremonies, her adaptation to circumstances, her courage in hours of danger — all fitted her for the service she performed. ... In her presence the profane lip was silent, and she won the respect and love alike of friend and stranger, of the aged, of whom she was so thoughtful, and of the young, whom she so readily instructed and amused.
"Loving her Saviour, she loved the divinity in our humanity, and believed that all good thoughts, words, deeds, are divine; that we are but the channel through which they flow, and that the divine current is sure to deposit in our hearts the seeds of constant joy. This was the only reward she sought." ...—f. b. f.
The monument erected over her grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, Chelsea, bears this inscription:—
HELEN L. GILSON
A TRIBUTE FROM SOLDIERS
OF THE WAR OF 1861 TO 1865
FOR SELF-SACRIFICING LABORS
IN THE ARMY HOSPITALS
On each Memorial Day the monument is decked with flowers, and an appropriate service is conducted by the Woman's Relief Corps of East Boston. Truly a martyr to the Union cause, it is meet that she should be held in grateful, loving remembrance.
MARY SEARS McHENRY, past National President of the Woman's Relief Corps, while a resident of Denison, la., is a native of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and comes of old colonial stock. She was born in New Boston village, in the town of Sandisfield, December 30, 1834, daughter of David G. and Olive (Deming)
Sears. Her father was son of Paul" and Rachel (Granger) Sears, of Sandisfield, and a descendant in the seventh generation of Richard Sears (or Sares, as formerly spelled), of Yarmouth, Mass., the line being: Richard,1 Paul,2 3 Joshua,4 Paul,5 6 David G.7 The name of Richard Sares was on the tux list of Plymouth Colony in March, 1633. In 1639 he settled with others at a place
on Cape Cod which they named Yarmouth.
His grandson, Paul3 Sears, of Yarmouth, married in 1693 Mercy Freeman, daughter of Thomas3 Freeman and grand-daughter of John and Mercy (Prence) Freeman, Mercy Prence being a daughter of Governor Thomas Prence, of Plymouth Colony, by his wife Patience, who was a daughter of William Brewster, Elder of the church of Scrooby, Leyden, and Plymouth. Patriots, scholars, and philanthropists have been numbered among the posterity of Richard Sears of Yarmouth. The late Barnas Sears, D.D., LL.D., sometime President of Brown University and afterward superintendent of the Peabody Educational Fund, was a son of Paul6 Sears and an uncle of Mrs. McHenry.
David G. Sears, after the birth of his daughter Mary, resided successively in Hartford, Conn., and in New York City, engaged in mercantile business, and subsequently settled in Ogle County, Illinois, where he purchased a section of land and applied himself to farming. Mary Sears completed her school studies at the seminary (now college for women) in Rockford, Ill. On the 28th of January, 1864, she was married to William A. McHenry,
