February, 1830, in her eighty-second year, going but little into society for some time previous.

Besides the Quincy family, the most distinguished in Boston society were those of Otis, Winthrop, Apthorp, Amory, Emery, &c. The Bradfords-of whom Alden Bradford was for many years Secretary of State in Massachusetts-belonged to the same class.

A lady noted in society in New England was Catherine, the daughter of John Littlefield, born on Block Island, in 1753. Her girlhood was chiefly passed in the house of Governor Greene, a few miles from Providence, commanding a view of Narraganset Bay. Mrs. Greene was her aunt. Catherine was a belle-gay, joyous, and full of frolicsome humor; her form was light and graceful, and she possessed extraordinary quickness of apprebension and activity of mind. Her conversation was enriched with knowledge gained, almost by intuition, from every source. She had a lively imagination and great fluency of speech, with a ready tact that gave her irresistible fascination. This bright, volatile, coquettish young creature took captive the heart of her kinsman, Nathaniel Greene, and lost her own in return. They were married in 1774. Little did the bride dream that her husband's broad-brimmed hat covered brows which would one day be wreathed with living laurels won by genius and patriotism. When General Greene took his part in the great drama of the Revolution, his wife gave

him aid and encouragement. The papers of the day notice her presence at head-quarters; but her home was at Coventry, a Rhode Island village,-a princely mansion, on the banks of one of those small streams that form so beautiful a feature in Rhode Island scenery. She gave up this house for hospital uses when the army before Boston was inoculated for the small-pox.

General Greene's letters show how much he prized the society of his wife. While in winter quarters with him, she was very intimate with Mrs. Washington. Following her husband south, they established their home at Mulberry Grove, a plantation presented to Greene by the State of Georgia. Her lively letters give a picture of the times. After the General's death she removed to Cumberland Island, where she lived much in society, exercising extensive hospitality. It was Mrs. Greene who introduced to the world the invention of the cottongin, by her patronage of Eli Whitney.

The incident of her quitting her own house when Aaron Burr claimed her hospitality, after his duel with Hamilton, leaving the house for his use, and only returning to it after his departure, illustrates her generous and impulsive character. In her later years she retained her singular power of fascination, and would hold a company in breathless attention with her winning tones and brilliant sketches of character or tales of adventure. She had, in truth, a faculty of charming all who ap proached her.

Mary Wooster was the widow of General David

Wooster, killed in Connecticut in the war of the Revolution. She was the daughter of Dr. Clapp, at one time President of Yale College, and was married at sixteen years of age. Gifted with beauty and noble intellectual powers, well educated, and with a mind stored with a great variety of knowledge, she was very prominent in society and much sought by admiring friends. In conversation she was uncommonly brilliant. Her piety was exemplary, from youth to advanced years; and when she was bereaved of husband and children, and lost her fortune, she found in religion a consolation trials could not impair.

Sarah Thompson-the Countess Rumford-who died at Concord, New Hampshire, in December, 1852, is mentioned by Curwen as a woman who exercised much social influence. She was the grand-daughter of Rev. Timothy Walker, the first clergyman in Concord, and the only daughter of Benjamin Thompson-born in 1774. Her father left the United States suspected of loyalism, and entered into the employ of the Elector of Bavaria at Munich, where he received the title of Count of the Holy Roman Empire, with a pension for life of nearly two thousand dollars a year. To this title he added Rumford, the name of his residence at Concord. His daughter joined him in London, in 1796, and shared his home and fortune till his death in France, in 1814. She was in Munich when it was about to be bombarded by the Austrians; but her father, being Commander-inChief of the Bavarian forces, succeeded in preventing it.

He was held in much honor among the savans of Europe; and the daughter was received with caressing attentions among the most select circles in Paris. When left an orphan, she inherited the title as well as the estates of her father. She went to England and settled on an estate at Brompton belonging to her, receiving the most marked attentions from many eminent persons among the literati. In 1845 she returned to her native. State. She never married, but passed the remainder of her life in a quiet circle of society, aloof from the stir of city life, with an adopted daughter for her companion. The grounds around her residence were tastefully ornamented with trees and shrubbery. She had considerable property, saved from her father's estates, with a pension of nearly a thousand dollars a year from the Bavarian government for the services rendered by her father. This she bestowed chiefly in charity, and, dying at seventy-eight, left fifteen thousand dollars for an asylum at Concord for widows and female orphans.

V.

THE Society of Philadelphia, about the middle of the last century, appears to have been divided into two classes of families; the first, some of whom had come with Penn, adhering to the Quaker tenets, or bound by hereditary custom, if not religious faith, to deny the world and abjure the pageants of life. Such were the Morrises, the Logans, the Shippens, the Lloyds, the Pembertons, the Rivingtons, and many other families of antiquity in their sect. At a later period came in another class, chiefly from England; they had cultivated the liberal accomplishments; among them were men of extensive learning, both merchants and professional men; and they were noted for a high degree of social refinement. Such were the Hamiltons, the Ashetons, the Lawrences, the Chews, the Conynghams, the Allens, the Inglises, the Bonds, the Plumsteds, and others. This class was strengthened, as wealth and civilization spread, by the return of proprietary descendants to the Established Church. Then was added the element of patriotism, in Revolutionary times, forming another distinct class, of such as Bradford, Biddle, Butler, Reed, Boudinot, Mifflin, McKean, &c., comprising many of the pre