[3] She took an interest in social concerns such as the Freedman's Aid Society (secretary of the committee on aid for colored regiments and of the teachers' committee, 1863), Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (vice president), New England Women's Club (vice president) and the New England Hospital for Women and Children (secretary, 1862).

Here, she distinguished herself by her knowledge of grammar, as shown by her skill in "parsing," and her ready recitations in other studies that interested her, one of these being French, which was especially well taught.

The attraction of a new and friendly acquaintance, Miss Caroline Healey, drew her to the school on Mount Vernon Street of Mr. Joseph H. Abbot.

For a few terms, she continued to advance in various ways of learning, more or less pleasurable, in the meantime successfully cultivating independence of thought, till, feeling herself not in harmony with the constituted authorities, she was as anxious to leave the Abbot school as she had been to enter it.

He commanded a company in Lieutenant Colonel Welch's regiment, which marched from Salem, N.H., to join the Northern army in September, 1777.

Retire H. Parker marched to Cambridge, Massachusetts as a Minuteman of the Second Bradford Foot Company on the alarm of April 19, 1775.

[8] Mrs. Littlehale's maternal grandparents were Lieutenant Retire H. and Ednah (Hardy) Parker, of East Bradford, now Groveland, Massachusetts.

[8] Martha Livermore, wife of Abraham Parker, of East Bradford, was a daughter of John Livermore, of Watertown, Massachusetts (the founder of the family of this name in New England), and his wife Grace (born Sherman), whom he married in England, and who was closely related to the immigrant progenitors of the most prominent Sherman families of America.

Tracing backward, Mrs. Ednah Hardy Parker, born in 1745, was the daughter of Captain Eliphalet and Hannah (Platts) Hardy, granddaughter of Jonas Platts and his wife, Anne Bailey, and great-grand-daughter of Deacon Joseph Bailey, of East Bradford, who was son of Richard and his wife Ednah.

[8] Her early womanhood was passed under stimulating influences, being a member of one of those famous conversation classes which Margaret Fuller instituted in the decade of 1830-40.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Abby May, James Freeman Clarke, and Theodore Parker were among those who strongly influenced her thought.

A great awakening and a new sense of the surpassing riches of life was the result to Cheney of attending for three successive seasons the conversations of Margaret Fuller.

Cheney wrote:— "I absorbed her life and her thoughts, and to this day I am astonished to find how large a part of what I am when I am most myself I have derived from her.

It is significant that Cheney and her elder sister, Mary Frances, were among the first parishioners of Theodore Parker when he came from West Roxbury, Massachusetts to Boston, 1846.

Short-lived, the school yet served to show the existence of talent among American women, and is remembered as "one of the failures that enriched the ground for success.

The year following their return (in June, 1855) witnessed the birth of a daughter, Margaret Swan, in September, 1855, and the death of Mr. Cheney in April, 1856, in South Manchester, Connecticut, his native place.

An exhibition of a number of these works was arranged some years after by Sylvester Rosa Koehler, curator of engravings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

"Accepting the position of secretary, Cheney, to quote the words of Dr. Zakrzewska, "devoted herself to the work, and became one of the most powerful advocates and supporters of this institution — an institution now firmly established and professionally recognized, and which by its efficiency and conscientious work has not only educated women as physicians and nurses, but has opened the way for the former to a professional equality with medical men, as the Massachusetts Medical Society was the first to admit women as members."

[3] Early interested in the work of the Freedmen's Aid Society (founded in 1861), she became the secretary of the teachers' committee on the resignation of Hannah E. Stevenson.

[2] Cheney made several visits to the South in the years directly following the close of the Civil War for the Union, the first time going with Abby May as a delegate to a convention in Baltimore.

Unexpectedly called upon there to address a meeting composed largely of African Americans, she had her first experience in public speaking.

During her absence on one of these Southern trips, a society was formed in Boston in 1867, of which she was appointed a director, and later Honorary President, and in which she continued to work — the Free Religious Association, "the freedom and inspiration of whose first meetings" she finds it "impossible to report.

[9][2] Her works, all published in Boston, include: Hand-Book for American Citizens (1864); Patience (1870), Social Games (1871), Faithful to the Light (1872), Child of the Tide (1874), Life of Susan Dimoch (1875), Gleanings in Fields of Art (1881), Selected Poems of Michael Angelo (1885), Children's Friend, a sketch of Louisa M. Alcott (1888), Biography of L. M. Alcott (1889), Nora's Return (1890), Stories of Olden Time (1890), and a number of articles in hooks.