# Representative women of New England/Electa N. L. Walton

​ELECTA N. L. WALTON
​ELECTA NOBLES LINCOLN WALTON, wife of George A. Walton and co-author with her husband of Walton's Arithmetics, was born in Watertown, N.Y., May 12, 1824, the youngest child of Martin and Susan W. (Freeman) Lincoln. On the paternal side she is a descendant of Samuel* Lincoln, who settled at Hingham, Mass., in 1637, and of his son Mordecai,^ who was born in Hingham in 1657. These two ancestors of Mrs. Walton were also ancestors of the martyred President, Abraham Lincoln, who was of the same generation that she is — the seventh. Mrs. Walton's great-great-grandfather, Jacob' Lincoln, born in 1711, son of Mordecai' by his second wife, was half-brother to President Lincoln's great-great-grandfather, Mordecai Lincoln, born in 1686, who removed from Hingham, Mass., to New Jersey and thence to Pennsylvania. And Mrs. Walton's great-great-grandfather on her grandmother Chloe's side, namely, Isaac' Lincoln, born in 1691, was own brother to President Lincoln's great-great-grandfather, Mordecai,' both being sons of Mordecai^ by his first wife, Sarah Jones. ​ Obadiali^ Lincoln, son of Jacob^ and Mary (Holl)rook) Lincoln, was the father of Jacob,^ born in 1762, who married Chloe^ Lincoln, daughter of Deacon Isaac^ and Sarah (Hobart) Lincoln. .Licob^ and his wife Chloe'* were the parents of Martin Lincoln, above named, father of Mrs. Walton.
Through her grandmother, Chloe" Lincoln, Mrs. Walton is descended from the Rev. Peter Hobart, who settled at Hingham, Mass., in September, 1635, and from his father, Edmund' Hobart. Chloe Lincoln's mother, Mrs. Sarah Hobart Lincoln, born in 1727, was a daughter of the Rev. Nehemiah' Hobart fHarv. Coll., 1714), minister of the Second Parish of Hingham, now Cohasset. Her father's father, Davi(P Hobart, of Hingham, was son of the Rev. Peter" Hobart and one of a family of fifteen children. The Rev. Peter Hobart, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England (A.M. 1629), died in 1679, in the fifty-third year of his min- istry, nine years in Hingham, England, and nearly forty-four in Hingham, Mass.
Mrs. Walton's father, Martin Lincoln, was born in Cohasset in 1795. A teacher by pro- fession, he tavight in the public schools of Lan- caster, Mass., also in the Lancaster Academy, and afterward for some years kept a private school in Boston.
Mrs. AValton's mother, whose maiden name was Susan Miite Freeman, was the daughter of Adam and Margaret (White) Freeman. Adam Freeman, grandfather of Mrs. Walton, emigrated with a party from Frankfort-on-the- Main about 1780, and settled in the locality then known as the "German Flats," afterward named Frankfort, N.Y. His wife, Margaret ^'hile Freeman, Mrs. Walton's maternal grand- mother, was from Windsor, Vt. Archibald 'hite, Jr., and William ^^'hite, who ^are on record as tax-paying inhabitants of the town in 1786, w(>re her brothers.
When Electa Not^les Lincoln was two years old, her parents removed to Lancaster, Mass., the family afterward living in Roxbury and Boston. Her first teacher and the chief in- structor of her early years was her father. Li the autumn of 1841 she entered the State Nor- mal School in Lexington, Mass., of which the Rev. Cyrus Peirce ("Father Peirce," of revered memory) was tw principal. About a year anil a half later, or in 1843, having completed the normal course of study and received her diploma, she became an assistant in the Franklin Gram- mar School, Boston. After teaching there for a few weeks, she was appointed assistant in the Normal School, her Alma Mater, where sh(> began to teach on May 7, 1843, when she lacketl five days of being nineteen years old. She retained her position as assistant at the State Normal School for seven years, one at Lexington antl six at West Newton (whither the school was removed in 1844), and served under three principals — the Rev. Cyrus Peirce, the Rev. Sanuiel .1. May, and Eben S. Stearns. In the interregnum between the resignation of Mr. Peirce and the accession of Mr. Stearns, Miss Lincoln served as principal of the school; and it was the expressed wish of Mr. Peirce that she should succeed him as permanent principal. Miss Lincoln was thus the first woman in the country to act as principal of a State Normal School, but to make her the permanent principal was too great an innova- tion to be seriously thought of by those in authority at that early day.
She was married to George Augustus Walton on August 27, 1850. Mr. Walton at that time and for a number of years after was principal of the Oliver Grammar School in Lawrence, Mass. Subsequently, as a teacher in teachers' institutes in New England, also in New York and 'irginia, he became widely known and in- Huential. For twenty-five years from 1871 he was agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Education. Mr. Walton is a graduate of the liridgewater Normal School. He received the degree of Master of Arts from Williams College. Born in South Reading (now Wakefiekl), Mass., February 18, 1822, son of James and Elizabeth (Bryant) ^^^lton, he is a lineal descendant of the Rev. William Walton, whose services as minister of the gospel at Marblehead covered a period of thirty years, 1638-68.
For eighteen years after marriage Mr. and Mrs. A'alton r(sided in Lawrence. A Unitarian in religious faith, brought up under the pulpit teachings of the Rev. Nathaniel Thayer, of Lancaster, and the Rev. Dr. George Putnam, of Roxbury, and later influencetl by the inspir​ing eloquence of Theodore Parker, Mrs. Walton devoted herself to benevolent and philanthropic enterprises in her spare time, and was a leader in church and charitable work. During the Civil War, turning the sympathies of the Lawrence people toward the Sanitary Commission, she aided in organizing the whole community into a body of co-laborers with the army in the field.
Having received thorough instruction in vocal culture from Professors James E. Murdock and William Russell, she was for years employed as a teacher of reading and vocal training in the teachers' institutes of Massachusetts. She also taught in the State Normal Institutes of Virginia, and for five successive years, by invitation of General Armstrong, conducted a teachers' institute of the graduating class in Hampton. Her belief in the right of woman to be rated equally with man at her own worth and be credited with her own work was intensified by the decision of the publishers that her name should not appear with her husband's on the title-page as co-author of the arithmetics which were their joint production, and led at length to earnest advocacy of equal rights for the sexes. She was always zealous in the temperance cause, and during a residence in Westfield was president of the local branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Since the removal of Mr. and Mrs. Walton to West Newton, where they now reside, Mrs. Walton has been active in promoting woman suffrage, believing that this will best advance the interests of temperance and kindred reforms, and tend to the purification of politics. She was for many years an officer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, is a valued member and vice-president of the New England Women's Club of Boston, for twenty years was president of the West Newton Women's Educational Club, organized in 18S0, and is now on the Board of Directors of the Woman's Club House Corporation. Although not a prolific writer, she sometimes contributes to the press. She is an interesting speaker and an occasional lecturer upon literary and philanthropic subjects.
Mr. and Mrs. Walton are the parents of five children, of whom three are living: Harriet Peirce, wife of ex-Judge James R. Dunbar, of the Massachusetts Superior Court; Dr. George Lincoln Walton (Harv. Univ., A.B. 1S75, M.D. 1880), neurologist, of Boston; and Alice Walton (Smith Coll., A.B. 1887; Cornell, Ph.D. 1892), now (1903) associate professor of Latin and archa-ology at Wellesley College. Mr. and Mrs. Dunbar have five children — namely, Ralph Walton, Philip Richards, Ruth, Helen Lincoln, and Henry Fowler.