Representative women of New England/Mary A. W. Chapman
MARY ANN WRIGHT CHAPMAN, Past State Regent of the Daughters of the Revolution, is a native of Phillipston, Mass., and the daughter of Sylvester Carpenter and Susan D. (Burbank) Wright. Her father was for many years a manufacturer of iron-working machinery in Fitchburg, where the greater part of her life has been passed.
Her grandparents on the paternal side were William Kendall and Relief (Bowker) Wright, and on the maternal, Arthur and Sarah (Bates) Burbank. One line of her grandfather Bur- bank's ancestry goes back to John Webster, who was Governor of Connecticut in 1656; and one line of her grandmother Burbank's (born Bates), to Stephen Hopkins, of the "Mayflower" company of Pilgrims, 1620. Descent from Governor Webster is through his daughter Mary, who married a Mr. Hunt; Jonathan Hunt; Jonathan Hunt, Jr., and his wife, Martha Williams; Mary Hunt, who married Seth Pomeroy; Sarah Pomeroy, born in 1744, who married Abraham Burbank, and was the mother of Arthur Burbank, grandfather of Mrs. Chapman.
Descent from Stephen Hopkins Mrs. Chapman traces through his daughter Constance, who married Nicholas Snow; Mary Snow, wife of Thomas Paine; Mary Paine Cole; Hannah Cole Higgins; Israel Higgins; Ruth Higgins, wife of Captain Abner Stocking; Hannah Stocking, wife of Eleazer Bates; Sarah Bates, wife of Arthur Burbank and mother of Susan Doolittle Burbank, who (as indicated above) married Sylvester Carpenter Wright.
Among the ancestors of Mrs. Chapman who, as military men or as civilians, engaged in the public service in colonial times, may be mentioned Deacon Medad Pomeroy, of Northampton, who was a soldier at Turner's Falls in King Philip's War, 1676, and who served as Town Clerk and Treasurer, Register of Deeds, Associate County Judge, and Deputy to General Court; Ebenezer Pomeroy, Captain and then Major in the militia and high sheriff of the county; also General Seth Pomeroy and four other Revolutionary soldiers — namely. Captain Abner Stocking, John Bowker, Eleazer Bates, and Nehemiah Wright.
Seth Pomeroy served with distinction in the French and Indian wars. He was Major in the Massachusetts forces at the capture of Louisburg in 1745, was Lieutenant Colonel in the expedition against Crown Point in 1755, and at the death of Colonel Williams in the battle of Lake George, September 8, 1755, he took command of the regiment and ably assisted in winning the victory. In 1774-75 he was a delegate to the Provincial Congress. He was elected a Brigadier-general in February, 1775. He fought at Bunker Hill as a private, and was soon after appointed a senior Brigadier- general by the Continental Congress, but declined the honor in consequence of disputes about military rank, and retired to his farm. In the autumn of 1776, when New Jersey was invaded by the British, at the earnest solicitation of Washington, he again took the field, and, at the head of the military force he had raised, marched as far as the Hudson River at Peekskill, where he was taken ill with pleurisy, and died in February, 1777, in the seventy-first year of his age.
On June 17, 1898, it may be mentioned, Mrs. Chapman attended the unveiling of the monument in the old churchyard at Peekskill, erected by the Sons of the Revolution and his descendants. One of the inscriptions reads as follows: —
Abraham Burbank, of West Springfield, great-grandfather of Mrs. Chapman, was graduated at Yale College in 1759. A prominent lawyer and a judge, he served a number of years as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and in 1777 was a commissary for forwarding stores. His fine old colonial man- sion is still standing at Feeding Hills, Mass. His mother was sister to Colonel Timothy Dwight, grandfather of President Timotiiy Dwight, of Yale College.
Mrs. Chapman, under her maiden name, Mary A. Wright, was graduated from the Fitchburg High School at an early age, afterward attending the Maplewood Institute in Pittstieid, Mass.
On September 13, 1864, she married James L. Chapman, son of Daniel Chapman, who was then engaged in manufacturing in Fitchburg in company with Mr. Wright, her father. He is now retired.
The children of Mr. and Mrs. Chapman are: Walter Butler (who died in infancy), Josephine Wright, (ieorge Daiuel (deceased), and Louis Raymond. Josephine AV right Chapman is an architect. Inheriting from her maternal grand- father a talent for designing and for using tools, after receiving her education in the Fitchburg public schools, she came to Boston, and, en- tering the office of Mr. C. H. Blackall, fitted herself for her profession, in which she is now engaged. She resides in Boston. She de- signed the Worcester Woman's Club House; "The Craigie," a students' dormitory at Cam- bridge; the New England States Building at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo; the Episcopal church in Leominster; and many other public buildings and private resi- dences.
George D. Chapman was connected for a number of years with the Massachusetts In- stitute of Technology, being an instructor after his graduation. Later ami at the time of his death he was supervising engineer of the New York Ship Building Company at Cam- den, N.J. He was a young man of great prom- ise. Louis Raymond ('hapman, a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College, and Boston LTniversity, is a practising lawyer in Boston.
Mrs. Chapman was one of the first meml)ers of the Fitchburg Woman's Club, was a direc- tor and chairman of the science section and superintendent of the household school for three years, when that work brought the club into prominence. She contributed to the Fitchburg Evening Mail an article u])on the svibject of town impi'ovement, an e(lition of which was published Ijy the clul) for charitable work.
Mrs. ('hapman was treasurer for two years of the Children's Home in Fitchburg. She is a charter member of the George Washmgton Memorial Association. At two of the annual meetings held in Washington, D.C., she was a delegate fi-om this State, and was one of the vice-chairmen representing Ma.ssachusetts. She was the third State Regent of the Daugh- ters of the Revolution of Massachusetts, and is ex-'ice-President -general of the National Society of the D. R. She was chairman of its patriotic work at the time they erected a mon- vunent at Valley Forge, and she was ])resent at the dedication and unveiling of this monu- ment, which took i)lace October 19, 1901 (Coi'iiwallis day). She went to Washington, D.C., with tiie other general officers, and ad- dressed the Senate and House committee on military affairs in behalf of tiie'^biil to make Valley Forge a National Park.
On June 17, 1901, the Massachusetts State Society, Daughters of the Revolution, held its celebration of the battle of Bunker Hill with exercises in the New England States Building at the Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. Mrs. Chapman presiiled and made the address on that occasion.
Mrs. Chapman is a member of Dorothy Q. Chapter of Boston. In 1902 she was the nominee of the State Society for the office of President-general of the National Society. She is an honorary member of the Martha Washington Chapter, D. R., of Boston, and Honorary Regent of the Betsy Ross Chapter, I). R., of Fitchburg. She is a, member of the Woman's Charity Club of Boston and its Second Vice-President, a member of the Peter Faneuil Chapter, D. R., of Allston, and of the Floral Emblem Society, Boston, and has also just become a memlier of the Boston Women's Educational and Industrial Union.