Representative women of New England/Elizabeth Orr Williams

by Mary H. Graves

ELIZABETH ORR WILLIAMS, journalist and lecturer, resides in Brookline, Mass. She is the wife of Melvin Brooks Williams, grandson of Captain John Williams, of happy memory, of Portland, Me. Mrs. Williams was born in Alfred, Me., being the daughter of the Rev. John and Mary (Moore) Orr. The original home of the Orr family was in Scotland, whence some of their number removed, doubtless in the latter part of the seventeenth century, to Ireland.

John Orr, great-great-grandfather of Mrs. Williams, came to this country from the north of Ireland in 1726, in quest of civil and religious liberty, and resided for a time in Londonderry, N.H. In 1750 he was one of the petitioners for the incorporation of the town of Bedford, N.H. It is not known whether he wslh born in Scotland or born in Ireland of Scottish parents. Both he and his brother Daniel, who came with him, are believed to have been teachers by profession. John Orr, it is said, was remarkable for his Scotch wit, and was highly respected as a "fine specimen of a shrewd, pious, plainhearted Scotchman, nmch like the one portrayed bv Scott in the father of Jeanie Deans, in the ’Heart of Midlothian.'"

Mrs. Williams's great-grandfather, the Hon. John Orr, was for many years an Elder in the Presbyterian church in Bedford, serving also as Justice of the Peace and the Quorum, as ELIZABETH ORR WILLIAMS Senator from the Third District, as Counsellor of Hillsborough County, and for several years as Representative at the General Court of the State of New Hampshire. He performed military service in the French War in 1756, and in 1777 he was appointed by the Provincial Council a member of the Committee of Safety. In this latter vear also he was commissioned as a Lieutenant, and with his company served under the command of General Stark at the battle of Bennington, where, after exhibiting cool judgment and great personal bravery, he was wounded and rendered a cripple for life. The verdict of one who knew him well was thus tersely expressed: "He was one of Nature^s nobility."

His son, the Hon. Benjamin Orr, grandfather of Mrs. Williams, was boni in Bedford, N.H., in 1772, and was graduated at Dartmouth Col- lege with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1798. He became a lawyer and settled in Maine, his home, with the exception of a few years that he resided in Topsham, being in Bnmswick. He was eminent as a practitioner in the Su- preme Judicial Court both before and after the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. He represented the old Cumberland District in Congress during the Presidency of James Monroe.

At the time of his death, in 1828, Chief Jus- tice Mellen spoke of him " as one who had long stood, confessedly, at the head of the profession of our State; who had distinguished himself by the depth and solidity of his understanding, by his legal acumen and research, by the power of his intellect, the commanding energy of his reasoning, the uncompromising firmness of his principles, and the dignity and lofty sense of honor, truth, and justice which he uniformly displayed in his professional career and in the walks of private life."

He held the positions of overseer, trustee, and treasurer of Bowdoin College in its earlier days. It was while he was a trustee of the col- lege, and when he attended the annual exami- nations of the classes in the classics, that he was the leading influence in placing the poet Longfellow in the chair of modern languages. Mr. Orr, being an accomplished classical scholar, and the Latin poet Horace being his pocket companion, was charmed with young Long- fellow's translation of the odes of that poet, and at the meeting of the executive board settled the question as follows: "Why, Mr. Longfellow is your man : he is an admirable classical scholar. Seldom have I heard anything more beautiful than his version of one of the most difficult odes of Horace."

Mr. Orr was in politics a Federalist of the old school which maintained the sentiments of "the men who formed and administered for the first twelve yeara the institutions of the United States." His wife, Elizabeth Toppan, a woman of strong character, refined tastes and manners, and domestic virtues, was well fitted to dispense the generous hospitality of his home in Brunswick, Me.

Mrs. Williams's father, the Rev. John Orr, was a graduate (summa cum laude) of Bowdoin College in the large and brilliant class of 1834. The Rev. Mr. Orr was a man of intellectual force and scholastic culture, of great refinement of na- ture, an independent, clear thinker, a man illus- trating in his daily life high moral excellence, a writer of decided merit, able in theological discussion, a student and a Christian gentleman always, as well as a brilliant preacher.

From these thoughtful men, in turn, and from her grandmother Orr and her mother, the late Mary Moore Orr, a woman of active intellect and progressive thought, Mrs. Williams inherited her love for letters, her studious habit, and her power of application. These characteristics evinced themselves early, and the literary turn of her mind found expression in original stories, poems, and essays. She sometimes wrote plays, in which she took the leading parts herself, as in a church festival held in the opera house in South Bend, Ind., and in these dramatic skits she disclosed histrionic talent.

Her original humorous sketches possess the "convulsive element" which is so vital in successful comedy, anjl in this line she is a born impersonator. A natural wit, skilled in repartee, she is sympathetic and benevolent in spirit. The intellectual bias of her mind has always been toward the classics and the highest order of literature, sacred as well as secular.

Mrs. Williams was educated at the Alfred Academy, the Alfred High School, and Maplewood Institute, Pittsfield, Mass. She is a member of the Maplewood Alumnæ Association, and at its first reunion she contributed an original poem, which appealed with especial interest to the members of her class who were present.

Mrs. Williams has musical ability of no mean order. She played in public before she was out of her teens, and taught instrumental music for several years with excellent success. When cooking-schools were first opened for instruction, she wrote on culinary education and the philosophy of good living, from the Boston and New York cooking-schools, for Southern, Western, and Eastern papers, often receiving in reference to them complimentary and appreciative letters from utter strangers.

Mrs. Williams was a newspaper correspondent at Mount Desert Island, Maine, for twelve summers, and was acknowletlged as an active force in bringing into notice a section of that country which is now widely known. Her correspondence from Saratoga, at one time the queen of Spas, was considered worthy of being placed on file. It may well be said that, wherever Mrs. Williams set the impress of her facile, graceful pen, it exhibited that subtle quality recognized as "style."

At one time Mrs. Williams was a paid contributor to eleven newspapers. She has been a contributor since 1881 to the Boston Transcript. She has also contributed to the Youth's Companion, Arts for America, the Houaehold, and other publications. A series of lectures on literary, historical, and art topics she has presented in many States with gratifying success. In her ceramic art lectures, which are fully illustrated by specimens, she was a pioneer, and, having visited the leading potteries and art museums in this country in pursuing this fascinating branch of study, she is an acknowledged authority on the subject.

Mrs. Williams has treated with consummate skill the mystery of Mary Stuart. Her strong rendering of the Queen's plea, on trial for her life before the English bar, often shakes the belief of those who have always thought the Queen was guilty. More than that cannot be done for a great historic doubt. Mrs. Williams's essay on the subject of Mary Stuart is pronounced by Mrs. Livermore to be a "gem of literary condensation." A professional and prolific writer thus expresses his appreciation: "Mrs. Williams is one of the most alive anti immediate students, not only in the Stuart chronicles, the great masters of art, the literature of the. early civilizations, but in the lore of the Queen who 'launched a thousand ships, and burned the topless towers of Ilium,'—Helen of Troy."

Mrs. Williams has given some of her choice entertainments before several notable charities: the Jackson Park Sanitarium for sick babies and the Model Lodging House in Chicago, through the auspices of the famous Archie (Arkay) Club of that city; the Bethel Social Settlement, Aged Couples' Home, and the Saint Barnabas Cuild of Nurses, Minneapolis; the Berkshire County Home for Aged Women, Pittsfield, Mass. ; and the Educational and Industrial Union, Buffalo, N.Y.

At a moot court, convened in Boston a few years ago, for the trial of the cause célèbre, Sir Francis Bacon vs. William Shakespeare, Mrs. Williams, after repeatedly declining, consented to espouse the Baconian side, and, as the junior barrister, opened the case in a most eloquent and finished manner. So lawyer-like were her arguments that she was highly praised by the late Judge Nathaniel Holmes (formerly Dean of the Harvard Law School, and ex- Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Missouri), the late Professor Smith, of the Dorchester Latin School, and even by the noted Shakespearean commentator, Dr. Rolfe. And yet Mrs. Williams is not a Baconian. Personally she is rather retiring, and the bulk of her work has been done in a quiet way. She is a member of the New England Woman's Press Association.