r cared for in their dear, earthly home.

To this home Richard Hale, married May 2, 1746, at the age of
twenty-nine, brought his young bride, Elizabeth Strong. If Richard
Hale's pedigree was a good one, his wife, Elizabeth Strong, came from a
family even more finely endowed. The first of her ancestors who came to
America was Elder John Strong. He was one of the founders of
Dorchester, now a part of Boston; later he helped to found Northampton,
Massachusetts.

Mrs. Hale's grandfather, Joseph Strong, represented Coventry for
sixty-five sessions in the General Assembly of Connecticut, and when he
was ninety years of age he presided over the town meeting, suggesting by
that deed a man of some vigor, for town meetings were no playdays in
those early years. His descendants, active in whatever their hands found
to do,--in the ministry, the law, business, or politics,--were long
prominent in New England and New York, and doubtless many are to-day
still helping to mold their country's future.

The son of this Justice Joseph Strong was also named Joseph, and called
Captain Joseph Strong. In 1724 he married his second cousin, Elizabeth
Strong. He, too, was a noted man among the colonists. She, later, became
the "grandmother" to whom Nathan so warmly alludes in one of his last
letters to his brother. Captain Joseph Strong and his wife were the
parents of Elizabeth Strong who, in her nineteenth year, married Richard
Hale.

To Elizabeth Strong Hale we can give but a passing notice. There is not,
it is believed, one word that she wrote now in existence, nor any record
left of that gracious womanhood, save a name on an obscure gravestone.
But what brave-hearted mother would not count it well worth while to
leave, for the coming years, the impress she left upon her many
children; one of them alone destined to carry to coming generations of
Americans the assurance that such a son could only have been borne by
one of the noblest of mothers. Dying at the age of forty,--April 21,
1767,--after a married life of twenty-one years, she had performed all
the duties then expected from the mistress of a farmer's household in a
section where the principal help that could be secured in any time of
need came from the voluntary kindnesses of neighbors; for, like one
large family, they felt it necessary to "lend a hand" whenever any one
of their number was in need. Mrs. Hale had been the mother of twelve
children when she died. Two of her children,