Representative women of New England/Sibylla A. B. Crane
SIBYLLA ADELAIDE BAILEY CRANE was born in East Boston, Mass., July 30, 1851, daughter of Henry Bailey and his wife, Elizabeth Bellamy. Her father was a contractor and builder. His ancestors were residents of Scituate, Mass. Her mother, a native of Kittery, Me., was the daughter of John H. and Fanny (Keen) Bellamy and grand-daughter of John Bellamy, Jr., of Kittery, who married November 21, 1791, Tamsen, daughter of Samuel King and Mary (Orne) Haley.
Sibylla A. Bailey was educated in the public schools of Boston, and for a number of years she followed the profession of teacher in that city. She was a lover of music and the fine arts, and became an accomplished performer on the piano and a pleasing vocalist.
On September 1, 1891, she was married in Boston to the Rev. Dr. Oliver Crane, a native of Montclair, N.J., and a graduate of Yale College, class of 1845. Dr. Crane had been a missionary in Turkey for some years in his early manhood, and later pastor of a Presbyterian church in Carbondale, Pa. before marriage Mrs. Crane had made a brief trip to Euro])e. After that event she accompanied her husband in an extended foreign tour, travelling in the British Isles, on the Continent, and in the East, spending a winter in Cairo and visiting Syria, the scene of Dr. Crane's missionary labors many years before. A large number of photographs and other souvenirs attested the assiduity with which their labors as collectors were pursued, from the Pyramids of Egypt to the Alhambra. On their return from abroad they took up their residence in Boston. Here Dr. Crane died on November 29, ]89(i.
Mrs. Crane was loved l)y a large circle of friends, not only for her talents and social qualities, but also for her amiable disposition, which was a marked trait in her character from childhood. She inherited an admirable physique, and had superior executive ability, which made her a good' presiding officer. She was prominent in musical and social circles and in various patriotic and other organizations, and contributed liberally for the advancement of many worthy objects.
At the time of her death, which occurred in February, 1902, she was president of the Daughters of Massachusetts, vice-president of the Wednesday Morning Club, vice-president of the Castilian Club, and vice-regent of the Boston Tea Party Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution. She was for several years treasurer of the New England Woman's Club and a member of the Executive Council of the Boston Woman's Business League, also a director in the Woman's Club House Corporation, a member of the Woman's Charity Club, of the New England Woman's Press Association, of the Moral Education Association, of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, of the beneficent society connected with the New England Conservatory of the Cercle Francais de l'Alliance, and of the Society for the University Education of Women.
General Henry B. Carrington, of Hyde Park, Mass., who was intimately acquainted with Mrs. Sibylla Crane as the wife and afterward the widow of his beloved classmate, the Rev. Oliver Crane, D.D., pays the following tribute to her memory:—
"I did not know her personally until shortly before their marriage, in the consummation of which my wife and myself greatly rejoiced. His literary and poetical tastes found in her congenial attributes the complement to his most ardent wishes. Living so near my home, they were like brother and sister to me. In his last illness the intimacy became more constant, until, as his last request, I promised to give to her the affection and care of a true brother as long as she should survive his departure. And then, in the examination of the literary and class material left by him, I shared with her the care and disposition of the same. . . . Those years of intimate acquaintance, thus ripened into years of a practical brotherhood, were gilded with ever-growing appreciation of her noble qualities as wife, daughter, and friend. Her dignity and grace as a woman and her refinement in tastes were marked characteristics that any stranger would honor. Her tender sympathies and liberal charities abounded wherever invoked by the sick or the needy, and the serenity and poise of her character harmonized with attributes which distinguished her from almost any other of her sex."