was Breton, and that the family is of French origin, Norman extraction. There are at the present day many persons in France who are descendants of the old stock, Le Breton, and who by "The Heraldry of France" have the same arms. In the Parliamentary Gazette of 1839, page 259, is a description of Brayton Parish and Brayton township, in Yorkshire. The first of the name in this country was Francis Brayton, born in 1612, died in 1692. He was a member of the Colonial Assembly in Rhode Island, in 1662. Colonial records give the line of descendants. Their places of residence were Tiverton, R. I., Newport, and Nantucket, Mass. The generations in this country are as follows: Stephen Brayton, 2d son of Francis and Mary, married Ann Tallman. 3. Israel Brayton, 3d son of Stephen and Ann, married, 1st, Eliphael Sanford; 2d, Elizabeth Lawton. 4. Isaac Brayton, 4th son of Israel and Elizabeth, married Sarah Hussey. 5. Isaac Brayton, 2d son of Isaac and Sarah, married Love Mitchell. 6. Mary A. Brayton, daughter of Isaac and Love, married F. W. Woodbridge. Thus Mary A. Woodbridge was of the sixth generation in this country of an ancestry that can be traced back for a period of eight hundred years. Her father, Isaac Brayton, was a typical New Englander. He was born in Nantucket in 1801, and became early in life captain of a whaling vessel. April 28, 1833, he landed the largest cargo of oil ever brought into Nantucket-2,824 barrels. He helped to land one of the first, if not the first, missionary on the Sandwich Islands, and was for many years on most intimate terms with the missionaries. His name is gratefully mentioned in a history of the islands, by Rev. Hiram Bingham, for more than twenty-five years a missionary of the American Board. Even in those early days he was A strictly temperate, never using tobacco or intoxicants. He was one of the few sea-captains who daily assembled his crew and led them in religious worship. He was physically "as round as a barrel," measuring exactly the same from breast to back as from side to side, possessing such exceptional vigor and vitality that he lived to be nearly ninety years of age. He had such a practical talent for business and public affairs, and such a rare gift of eloquence, that he was recognized by his fellow-citizens as a born leader of men, and they sent him to the Massachusetts legislature in the days when Edward Everett was governor, and when that body was composed of as able men as ever sat in any state assembly. He afterward moved to Ohio and served the commonwealth as associate judge with Ben Wade, and still later as a member of the Ohio senate. He was the father of the law by which the charitable institutions of Ohio are still governed. Few men anywhere could make so interesting a religious or missionary or political address. man of wide reading and equally wide experience, at home on any question of public interest. There are citizens still living who speak of his brilliant address of welcome to Louis Kossuth as Hungary's exile and America's guest. He was a In moral principle he was a very Puritan, firm in will, with an enlightened and tender conscience. In religion he was a godly Quaker, well read in Scripture, and most gifted in prayer. All his best qualities, physical, mental and spiritual, he repeated in his illustrious daughter. And Mrs. Woodbridge was not less fortunate in her Quaker mother, whose maiden name was Love Mitchell, the sister of William Mitchell, who, with his daughter, Maria Mitchell, were astronomers of world-wide fame. Col. George Mitchell Brayton traces his mother's ancestry as follows: I. Ritchard Mitchell, born 1686 at Brixton, Isle of Wight. His residence was in the Isle of Wight. Married Mary Wood, died in 1722. 2. Richard Mitchell, son of Richard and Mary, married Elizabeth Tripp. In 1708 came to Rhode Island. 3. Richard Mitchell, son of Richard and Elizabeth, married Mary Starbuck and lived in Nantucket. 4. Peleg Mitchell, son of Richard and Mary, married Lydia Cartwright. Lived at Newport and Nantucket. Love Mitchell, daughter of Peleg and Lydia, married Isaac Brayton. 5. 6. Mary A. Brayton, daughter of Isaac and Love, married F. W. Woodbridge. Captain Isaac Brayton married Love Mitchell by the Quaker ceremony, June 25, 1825. Of this union Mary Ann Brayton was born April 21, 1830. Such ancestry and immediate parentage relieved Mary of all credit for being possessed of talents of the highest order-executive ability, astute intellect, unerring logic, clear reasoning, exuberance of spirits, ready wit that could, on fit occasion, flame into merciless sarcasm; graceful, majestic yet thrilling eloquence; a divine, insatiable hunger for books and learning, and an untiring energy in the pursuit of knowledge which is genius itself. Joined to these was a physical vigor that could support all the faculties in exercise at white heat, in a strain and tension of effort for forty years, the knowledge of which fills one with amazement. What women the Island of Nantucket produced! Abiah Folger, the mother of Benjamin Franklin, Lucretia Mott, brilliant and saintly Maria Mitchell, the immortal female astronomer, Phoebe A. Hannaford, preacher and poet, and their own cousin, Mary A. Woodbridge, the reformer, of whom the Nantucket Mirror says: "There is no nobler name in history." Mary Clemmer once wrote: "This continent could scarcely produce another spot whose conditions of atmos phere, of intelligence, of self-reliance, of thrift, would all tend to so unique a training, to so distinctive a life for its women as does Nantucket. In no other place in America is its womanhood so distinct, original and independent, both in thought and action, as on Nantucket. This little island of the sea, on account of its isolation, has preserved the strong individualism of its early settlers and become a community unique and fascinating in New England history. In June, 1888, Mrs. Woodbridge in an address to a gathering of Friends in Pennsylvania, paid this beautiful tribute to them and to her Quaker mother: "In this religious society I had my birthright, and among such saints as Elizabeth Comstock, beloved of the Lord and of humanity, clad in softest robe of drab, my eyes first saw the light; and that 'plain language,' sweetly euphonious when correctly used, my tongue first lisped. The gone before, the mother loved (though spirit, which I cannot understand) is in my mind arrayed like these, with added sheen that comes from off the throne of God, as walking in His light, she waits the coming of her own. "I linked the lessons of the 'moving of the Spirit' of the childhood days with the Spirit's call of later years, and though I'married out' and can no longer claim membership in the society, their lessons will remain, and I rejoice that W. C. T. U. means 'Welcome Christians To Union,' and we are one in Him." CHAPTER II. FORTUNATE ENVIRONMENTS OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. CHILDHOOD. Be good, sweet child, and let who will be clever : And all fancies yearn to cover The hard earth whereon she passes, -Kingsley. And all hearts do pray, "God love her!" Ay, and always, in good sooth We may all be sure He doth. -Elizabeth Barrett Browning. O living thing can escape the influence of environment. Any record of life is incomplete without this factor. The giant oak of the fat valley dwindles to a scrub tree on the barren, thin-soiled mountain-top. The luxuriant vegetation of the tropical Amazon valley dwarfs as we journey northward and finally disappears in the ice-fields. Henry Buckle, in his immortal "History of Civilization," makes human life little more than a compound of climate and elevation above the sea, latitude and scenery, food and sky and storm. However much we may wish to qualify his view by adding stress to the importance of the human will and self-sovereignty, and the direct influence of God, yet none will deny that a talented, impressible, highly organ |