Woman of the Century/Mary R. P. Hatch

HATCH, Mrs. Mary R. P., poet and story writer, born in the town of Stratford, N. H., 19th MARY R. P. HATCH. June, 1848. She is the daughter of Charles G. , and Mary Blake Platt. Her ancestors were English. The Blakes settled in Dorchester, Mass., in 1620, and the Platts in Stratford. Conn., the families presenting a long line of illustrious names, from Admiral Blake, the naval hero, to Senator Platt, who managed the Copyright Bill in Congress. The list includes the Blakes, Judsons and McLellans, of literary fame. Mrs. Hatch's life has been spent in the Connecticut valley. In childhood she possessed a quiet manner and a sensitive disposition, was a close observer, and a student of nature. She early developed scholarly and literary tastes. At the age of fifteen she left the common schools and attended the academy in Lancaster, eighteen miles from her home. There she studied the higher mathematics, rhetoric, Latin and French, and there her ability as a writer was discovered and recognized. From that time she contributed sketches on various subjects for the county papers, and articles under her pen-name, "Mabel Percy," from time to time appeared in the Portland "Transcript." "Peterson's Magazine." "Saturday Evening Post" and other papers and periodicals. Since then, under her true name, she has written for " Zion's Herald," Springfield "Republican," Chicago "Inter-Ocean," the "Writer," the "Epoch," "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper" and others. After leaving school she became the wife of Antipas M. Hatch. Their family consists of two sons, and as the wife of an extensive farmer she has been a busy woman. Her management of her home has left her some time to devote to literature, and her versatility has enabled her to do creditable work in the wide realm of short stories, dialect sketches, essays and poems, grave and gay, society verses and verses in dialect "The Bank Tragedy," published serially in the Portland "Transcript" and issued in book form, was a great success. Other stories from her pen are "Quicksands," "The Missing Man" and "A Psychical Study."