Representative women of New England/Emily J. Elliot
EMILY JANE ELLIOT, teacher in the public schools of New Orleans, and secretary of the "Union Ladies' Soldiers' Aid Society" of that city in the Civil War, was born November 23, 1843, in Union, Rock County, Wis. Her parents, David, Jr., and Mary (Spencer) Ring, removed from Maxfield, Me., to Perkins Grove, 111., and thence to Wisconsin about 1839 or 1840. David Ring, Jr., Mrs. Elliot's father, was a son of David Ring (born March 3, 1769) and his wife, Mehitable Crockett (born August 26, 1769), and grandson of John Crockett (born August 14, 1738) and his wife, Mary Starbird, who was born January 19, 1745. David Ring, Jr., was born in Sumner, Me., April 7, 1801, died in Wisconsin in June, 1874. He married June 24, 1824, Mary, daughter of John and Mary (Urann) Spencer. She was born in Bangor, Me., in 1806, and died in Wisconsin, October 13, 1846. They had nine children, six of whom were born in Maine, one in Illinois, and two in Wisconsin. Their eighth child was Emily J., the subject of this sketch.
Through her maternal grandmother Mrs. Elliot is a descendant of Captain Thomas Urann, one of the Boston Tea Party and an officer of the American Revolution. He served at the battle of Bunker Hill in the regiment of Colonel Richard Gridley and later under General William Heath, 1777 to 1779. Captain Urann was one of the "Sons of Liberty" and a member of the "North End Caucus," a patriotic association whose membership included Paul Revere, John and Samuel Adams, and General Joseph Warren. He was also a member and for some time Master of St. Andrews Lodge of Free Masons, and one of the organizers and first officers of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. He was a son of Joseph and Sarah (Jamison) Urann, was born in Boston, February 3, 1723, and married April 3, 1751, Mary Sloper, of Boston. They had seven sons and six daugh- ters. Their son Joseph, born June 11, 1753, married Hannah Emmes, of Boston, July 28, 1776, and was the father of Mary Llrann, bap- tized December 14, 1777, who wJis married February 16, 1795, in the Brattle Street Church, by the Rev. Peter Thatcher, to John Spencer, of Boston. Mr. Spencer died in 1816; and in 1818 his widow became the second wife of David Ring, Sr., of Bangor, Me., whose son, David, Jr., married, as above noted, her daugh- ter, Mary Spencer. Another of Mrs. Elliot's ancestors was Jonas Clark, " the famous Ruling Elder of the Cambridge Church."
After the death of her mother Emily J. Ring became, by act of Legislature, the adopted daughter of the Hon. Nathaniel F. Hyer, Judge of Probate, one of the founders of the State of Wisconsin and a member of its Constitutional Convention. An extended sketch of Mr. Hyer is contained in the " Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsin," published in ISSO. He was a native of Vermont. Receiving a collegiate education, he was admitted to the bar and became a prosperous lawyer. In 1836, his health failing, lie emigrated to the wilds of Wisconsin, locating in Milwaukee. Soon afterward we find him engaged in various exploring expeditions, in one of which, after following an Indian trail for forty miles, he came upon curious and extensive prehistoric mounds and works, which he believed to be the site of an ancient Aztec settlement. Here Mr. Hyer founded a new town which he called Aztalan, which name it still bears. In January, 1837, he surveyed and mapped the.se old ruins, publishing an interesting description of them, which was copied into Silliman's and other journals. They also became the subject of an interesting correspondence between Mr. Hyer and the Hon. Edward Everett. Mr. Hyer's discovery and accoimt of these remains is mentioned in the elaborate work of the Smith- sonian Institution on Wisconsin Antiquities as being "the foimdation of all subsecpient plans and descriptions."
In 1849 Mr. Hyer, by ill health compelled to seek a wanner climate, removed with his family to St. Louis, where for several years he was County Surveyor. In 1856 they went to San Antonio, Tex., and in May, 1857, crossed the Texas prairies in Mexican ox-carts to the coast, where they embarked for New Orleans and thence went to Pensacola, Fla. In September, 1857, they removetl to Louisiana. Mr. Hyer was there engaged in surveys of the levees and of swamp lancls, the family in the meantime living sometimes in New Orleans, sometimes in the country. The opening of the Civil War found them in their country home, cut off from New Orleans, and surrounded by Con- federate troops and sympathizers, among whom Mr. Hyer, being an outspoken Unionist, was a marked man. His knowledge of the country made him a dangerous person for the Confederacy should he reach the Federal lines, and a plot was therefore laid to kill him; but, fore-warned and aided by personal friends among the Confederates, he escaped with his family by bribing the rebel guard. Secreted in the hold of a little schooner, they made their way safely across Lake Pontchartrain, reaching the Union lines at New Orleans in October, 1862.
Mr. Hyer was immediately appointed by General Butler upon his staff of assistant engineers, serving until the close of the war. He furnished many plans and a large amount of data concerning the roads, rivers, and topography of Louisiana, also other information of an important military character, to the Union army. After the war he was appointed Collector of United States land tax, later United States Register of Voters, and afterward Parish Treasurer and Surveyor. In 1877 he returned from Louisiana to Wisconsin, where he died September 12, 1885.
In 1840 Mr. Hyer married Frances Elizabeth, daughter of Caleb and Nancy (Ruggles) Clapp and a descendant of the old Boston and Roxbury Clapp, Dorr, and Ruggles families. Mrs. Hyer was born in Vermont, her father having removed to that State and become an importer of merino sheep and a wool raiser and manufacturer. After his death his family migrated to Wisconsin. Mrs. Hyer was educated at Madam Seaton's Seminary. Much of her early life was spent with her kinsfolk in Boston. She was a woman of brilliant intellect and char- itable and progressive ideas, antl a valued con- tributor to periodical publications. In the soldiers' relief work in New Orleans, in which she was ])roniinent during the war and after it, she passed through many scenes of excite- ment and horror. In 1864 she made a voyage up the Mississijjpi River on the steamer " Em- press," which was attacked by masked bat- teries, riddled with cannon shot, and disabled, the captain and several convalescent soldiers being killed, and the steamer only saved from falling into the hands of the Confederates by the arrival of the Unitetl States gunboat "Kineo." Mrs. Hyer died in Wisconsin in De- cember, 1SS8.
Among Mrs. Elliot's many thrilling experi- ences while in Texas was the raiding by Indians of a camp near where she was visiting, all the horses and cattle being stampeded.
Shortly after their arrival in New Orleans in the autunm of 1S62 Mrs. Hyer, Mrs. N. M. Taylor, Mrs. Elliot (then Miss Hyer), and other Union ladies of the city, at the suggestion of prominent Union men, organized the " Union Ladies' Sokliers' Aid Society," afterward called the "Union Ladies' Aid As.sociation," which attained a membershi|) of more than hfty of the loyal women of the city. Mrs. Hyer was elected president, Mrs. Taylor vice-president, and Mrs. Elliot secretary. The members of this society visited the hospitals and admin- isteretl to sick and wounded sfildiers, provid- ing them with lint, bandages, and other neces- sities and comforts. Among workers promi- nent in Ihis society were Mrs. N. M. "^Taylor, previously mentioned, who, though a strong Unionist, had a son conscripted into the Con- federate army; Mrs. Phoebe Farmer, the poet; Miss Kate Buckley, a teacher in the New Or- leans schools; Mrs. Dr. Kirchner; Mrs. and Miss Bai'nett; and others whose names are among the recognized women workers of the Civil War. Their badge was a miniature Union flag. This society published a little paper. The Acorn, with Mrs. Hyer and Mrs. Taylor as editors, devoted to the cause of Unionism in Louisiana. This paper received the approval and became one of the official organs of the conuuanding general of the Department, and in it were published the official orders of the Army of the Gulf. Mrs. Elliot was a contrib- utor to this paper. The members of the soci- ety received from army surgeons instructions in their chosen duties. They also held public meetings in Lyceum Hall weekly, and on other evenings at private houses.
The Unionists of New Orleans formed a so- cial conununity of their own, and, by assemblies, receptions, and a cordial welcome to their homes, made the life of the Union officers and men in New Orleans more endurable and pleasant than it would otherwise have been.
The loyal men of New Orleans also formed an association in the interest of the Union cau.se, many officers of the army lu-ing members, among them Mr. Hyer and Mr. Elliot, both offi- cers of the Association'. Dr. A. P. Dostie, an outspoken Unionist antl a martyr of the New Orleans anti-Union riot of 1866, was a promi- nent officer of this and other loyal societies. Soon after her escape to the Union lines in 1862 Mrs. Elliot, who had been a teacher in the parish schools of Louisiana, was ai)pointed ttrst assistant in one of the gnunmar schools of New Orleans, which had been reorganized by General liutler. She held this position until after her marriage, September 3, 1863, to Charles Darwin Elliot, of Massachusetts, As- sistant Topographical Engineer of the Army of the Gulf.
Mr. Elliot is a descendant of Thomas Eliot, of Swansea, Mass., a soldier of King Philip's War. His great-grandfather, Joseph Eliot, of Stoughton, was a minute-man of the Revolution, serving from April 20, 1775, until his death, December 15, 1777. Another ancestor, John Hicks, was a member of the Boston Tea Party, and was killed in the battle of Lexington. The home of a third, Stephen Tucker, Jr., was destroyed by the burning of Charlestown.
Mr. Elliot, son of Joseph and Zenora (Tucker) Elliot,' was born June 20, 1S37, in Foxboro, Mass. He received his education in the schools of Foxboro, Maiden, A'rentham, and Somerville, and at the Hopkins Classical School, Cambridge. He studied civil engineering in the office of W. B. Stearns, wIkj was later president, of the Fitchburg Railroad. Appointed by the War Department in 1862 Assistant Topographical Engineer, he served on the staffs of Captain (afterwards General) Henry L. Abbot and Major D. C. Houston, Chief Engineers of the Nineteenth Army Corps, in the Teche, Port Hudson, Texas, Florida, and Red River campaigns, receiving special mention for efficient service in the field.
Mr. Elliot, immediately after his marriage, sailed for Texas as engineer officer to General Franklin in the unfortunate expedition which met with such signal defeat in the battle of Sabine Pass. Returning, he was ordered again to the Teche country, under General Franklin, then to Fort Butler at Donaldsonville, and shortly afterward to the Department of Western Florida, under General Asboth. Later he was placed in charge of the construction of field fortifications in Eastern Louisiana, under General Grover, in the intended expedition to Mobile, after which he took part in the ill-fated Red River expedition. During the march to Port Hudson and in the second Teche expedition he had suffered severely from congestive and malarial fevers, symptoms of which again appearing, in the latter part of April, 1864, with impaired health, he returned to Massachusetts.
Mr. Elliot is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, of the American Historical Association, of the Somerville Board of Trade, and of other organizations, and ex-president of the Somerville Historical Society. After residing successively in Foxboro, Cambridge, Brookline, and Newton, Mr. and Mrs. Elliot removed to Somerville, where Mr. Elliot had lived previous to the war, and where they have resided for the past thirty years, most of the time in their present home on Central Hill. They have four children living: Clara Zenora, born in Cambridge; Ella Florence, born in Newton; (Charles Joseph, born in Cambridge; and Addie Genevieve, born in Somerville. Their first child, Emily Frances, was born in Cambridge, July 4, 1865, and died August 2S, 1865.
Mrs. Elliot's tastes are quiet and homelike. She has always been much interested in flori-culture, of which she has an excellent practical knowledge. She is a well-informed student of history and literature, and at various times has written for the press. She is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, of the Ladies' Aid Association of the Massachusetts Soldiers' Home, of the Woman's Relief ('or])s, a life member of the Somerville Historical Society, and a member of several fraternal organizations.