Representative women of New England/Stella E. P. Drake

by Mary H. Graves

STELLA EDWARDS PIERPONT DRAKE, now in the ranks of successful New England business women, was born in Sturgis, Mich., December 1, 1855. Daughter of Addison Tuttle and Catherine (McKinney) Drake and the eldest of a family of five children, on the paternal side she is a descendant of Robert Drake, an early settler of Hampton, N.H., and through her mother is a grand-daughter of Mary Edwards, who was a great-grand-daughter of Jonathan Edwards, theologian and metaphysician, characterized by John Fiske as "probably the greatest intelligence that the western hemisphere has yet seen."

Robert Drake came from Colchester, Essex County, England, to New England before 1643, lived for a time in Exeter, N.H., and in 1651 settled in Hampton, N.H. His descendants in colonial times were prominent in public affairs, several of them serving with distinction in the French and Indian War and in the Revolution. The next four ancestors in this line, successively named Abraham, were among the wealthy men of Hampton, N.H., and very active in the affairs of that town and vicinity, where the original Drake farms and homestead may still be seen.

Among the representatives of the family in later days in this vicinity were Samuel Gardner Drake, the antiquary, an early president of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, and his son, Samuel Adams Drake, the well-known author.

The fourth Abraham Drake in direct line, Colonel Abraham,⁵ born in 1715, married for his first wife Abigail Weare, daughter of Nathaniel Weare, of Hampton, Justice of the Superior Court, and was father of Weare⁶ Drake, born in 1738, who married Anne Taylor and settled in Effingham, N.H. John⁷ Drake, son of Weare⁶ and his wife Anne, was father of Weare⁸ Drake, who married Lydia Tuttle, and grandfather of Addison Tuttle Drake, who was born in Effingham, N.H., in 1822, and died in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1890.

Catherine McKinney, born in Binghamton, N.Y., in 1834, daughter of James and Mary (Edwards) McKinney, was married to Addison T. Drake in February, 1855. She is now residing in California. Her Edwards ancestry in America began with William¹ Edwards (son of the Rev. Richard Edwards, a Welsh clergyman), who came over about 1640, and in 1646 was a landholder in Hartford, Conn. The line continued through Richard,² born in 1647, and his first wife, Elizabeth Tuttle; the Rev. Timothy,³ born in 1669 (Harvard Coll., A.B. and A.M., July 4, 1691), who married Esther Stoddard, and was pastor of the church at East Windsor, Conn.; Jonathan,⁴ above named, born in 1703 (Yale, A.B. 1720), who married Sarah Pierpont, was for twenty-five years minister at Northampton, later had charge of a missionary church in Stockbridge, and at the time of his death in 1758 was President of Princeton College; Timothy,⁵ born in 1738, who married Rhoda Ogden; to Edward⁶ Edwards, born in Stockbridge, Mass., in 1763, who married Mary Ballard, of Hadley, and was the father of Mary Edwards, born in 1792, who became the wife of James McKinney and mother of Catherine, as noted above.

Sarah Pierpont, a woman of great personal STELLA E. P. DRAKE beauty and loveliness of character, the wife of Jonathan Edwards, was the daughter of the Rev. James Pierpont, of New Haven. Her mother, Mrs. Mary Hooker Pierpont, was daughter of the Rev. Samuel² and Mary (Willett) Hooker and grand-daughter of the Rev. Thomas¹ Hooker, of Hartford, and of Captain Thomas Willett, sometime of Plymouth Colony and later the first Mayor of New York City.

Addison Tuttle Drake for many years was interested in the iron and foundry business in Sturgis, Mich. He served as Quartermaster of the Eleventh Michigan volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, and at its close was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. He was an earnest advocate of temperance and an active member and trustee of the Methodist Episcopal church. For about eight years and till within a few months of his death he held a position in the War Department in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Drake is survived by his wife Catherine and five children, namely: Stella E. P., the subject of this sketch; Edward Edwards, manager for the Pacific coast territory of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company of New York; Caroline E. Bailey, a widow, of San Francisco, who has two sons, Edwards and Leonard; Katherine M., wife of W. R. Herbert, of San Francisco, who has a son, Claude Drake, and a daughter, Stella Marguerite; and Jeanne Ogden, wife of Edwin M. Miller, of Salt Lake City, Utah, who has two daughters, Elizabeth and Golda.

Stella E. P. Drake was educated in the public schools of Sturgis, Mich. At the age of twenty-three she removed to Kalamazoo, where she improved her opportunities for intellectual culture by joining study classes in history, art, and literature, conducted by James and Lucinda H. Stone, teachers of rare gifts and attainments, also receiving private instruction from Mrs. Stone, whom at one time she served as secretary. The intimacy thus fostered yielded to the eager student large returns in the way of liberal education. Socially she was a welcome and helpful presence, often assisting with her fine elocutionary powers at local public entertainments, acting for one year as secretary of the Ladies' Library Club, and also serving for some time as chairman of its Miscellaneous Committee. After a few years of married life it became necessary for her to support herself, an entirely new experience. This led her to resume her maiden name, by which she has ever since been known. In 1896 Mrs. Drake came East to join the army of self-supporting and self-respecting women. She was equipped for the battle with courage, a firm will, and both natural and acquired ability. Numbering among her personal friends, besides Lucinda H. Stone, above mentioned (now deceased), such women as Frances Willard, Mary A. Livermore, the Rev. Anna Shaw, the Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane, and Alice Ives Breed, she did not lack sagacious counsel and kindly intercession.

After working for some months for various publishing houses, she became connected with the Boston agency of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, and in 1900 succeeded Mrs. M. A. F. Potts as manager of its women's department, the first to be organized in connection with any life insurance company in Boston. Under her management this department has grown to be a factor in life insurance recognized by the different companies as well as by the insuring public at large. In training women for the profession of life insurance, to the the work intelligently and conscientiously, and thus with a success gratifying to all concerned, Mrs. Drake has shown herself an adept. As shown from the unanimous testimony of her associates, she possesses in a marked degree tact, dignity of character, a keen sense of honor, and exceptional qualifications for directing the work of others, being one of the few to whom authority means nothing more or less than the courteous and appreciative recognition of the rights and interests of those who act under her instructions.

Mrs. Drake is a member of the Church of the Disciples, and has been a worker along charitable lines. She belongs to the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, and she retains her membership in the above mentioned Ladies' Library Society and also in the Twentieth Century Club of Kalamazoo, of which she was one of the founders.

Of the Aaron Burr Legion, founded by Charles Felton Pklgin, author of "Blennerhassett," for the purpose of historical research, she is an active member, holding the office of vice-councillor. Her interest in the work of the legion is thus explained:—

As is well known, Aaron Burr, third Vice-President of the United States, was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, theologian, President of Princeton College. His mother was Estlicr Edwards, daughter of the Rev. Jonathan and wife of the Rev. Aaron Burr, Sr. Her son, Aaron Burr, was cousin to Edward⁶ Edwards; and Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston, and Mary Edwards McKinney, Mrs. Drake's grandmother, were second cousins.

From her girlhood the story of Theodosia Burr, with its mysterious tragical ending, has had for Mrs. Drake a strong fascination. The brief verdict, "Lost at sea," was supplemented in 1850, some years before the birth of Stella Drake, by the confession of an aged pauper in the Cassopolis (Mich.) poorhouse, that he had been one of the pirates by whom the "Patriot," the vessel in which Mrs. Alston had taken passage at Charleston, S.C., on December 30, 1812, for New York, had been captured, and that he himself had been set to tip the plank on which she walked to her death off the stormy shore of Cape Hatteras. He remembered her for her marvellous beauty and her unshrinking fortitude.

This grewsome tale was told to Mrs. Drake's grandmother McKinney by a Mrs. Parks, who heard the confession.

One of Mrs. Drake's sisters, Mrs. Jeanne Ogden Miller, of Salt Lake City, bears a striking resemblance in the general outline of her features to Vanderlyn's portrait, a profile view, of Theodosia Burr, as reproduced in James Barton's "Life of Aaron Burr."

A comparison of the photograph of another sister, Mrs. Katherine McKinney Herbert, with the photograph of a painted portrait, supposed to be that of Theodosia Burr, reveals a marked likeness between the two. Of this more below.

It was from an article in a Chicago newspaper that Mrs. Drake, while living at her father's home in Sturgis, Mich., first heard of the existence in Elizabeth City, N.C., of a portrait which was thought to represent the daughter of Aaron Burr. It was owned by a Dr. Pool. In the summer of 1888 Mrs. Drake, then staying with her parents at Virginia Beach, N.C., visited the home of the Pool family, only a few miles distant. On the parlor wall, over the mantle-piece, hung the portrait of a young woman of great beauty, dressed in white. She knew it at once as the picture she had come to see, and she felt confirmed in her belief that it was a portrait of Theodosia Burr because it resembled her sister, Katherine McKinney Herbert. Miss Pool (now Mrs. Overman), daughter of the deceased doctor, told her how it came into her father's possession, as the gift of a patient, a Mrs. Mann, to whom it had been given by a sailor lover many years before. The portrait and two silk dresses that accompanied it as presents had been taken from an abandoned pilot boat off Cape Hatteras, these articles being found in the cabin. The sailors who boarded the boat found, or professed to have found, nothing to identify either the vessel or the owner of the dresses and the original of the portrait. After the picture came into the possession of Dr. Pool and its story became' known, it was surmised that the pilot boat was the missing "Patriot," and the dresses a part of the wardrobe of Theodosia Burr Alston, of whom the picture is considered by Mrs. Drake to be an undoubted likeness.

Mrs. Drake's story of the picture will be retold by Mr. Pidgin in his forthcoming book, whose object is to throw light on the mystery that enshrouds the fate of the beautiful and accomplished Theodosia Burr.