The death of this lady, widely known and beloved, will be sincerely deplored by many persons scattered in distant parts of the country, who have known her rare accomplishments and the singular loveliness of her character.

A lineal descendant of the first governor of Plymouth Colony, she was happily born and bred.
Her father, Gamaliel Bradford, was a sea-captain of marked ability, with heroic traits which old men will still remember, and though a man of action yet adding a taste for letters.
Her brothers, younger than herself, were scholars, but her own taste for study was even more decided.

At a time when perhaps no other young woman read Greek, she acquired the language with ease and read Plato,--adding soon the advantage of German commentators.
"After her marriage, when her husband, the well-known clergyman of Waltham, received boys in his house to be fitted for college, she assumed the advanced instruction in Greek and Latin, and did not fail to turn it to account by extending her studies in both languages.

It soon happened that students from Cambridge were put under her private instruction and oversight.

If the young men shared her delight in the book, she was interested at once to lead them to higher steps and more difficult but not less engaging authors, and they soon learned to prize the new world of thought and history thus opened.