# Representative women of New England/Lucretia H. Wetherell

​LUCRETIA HASTINGS WETHERELL, a member of the Department Relief Committee of the W. R. C, was born in Newton, Mass., and was educated in the public schools of that town. Her parents were Samuel Beal Cheney and Julia Ann Maria Cheney. Her father died when she was but eight years old.
Her maternal grandfather, General Ebenezer Cheney, was born May 22, 1759. The records in vol. iii., "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War," show that early in 1778 he was for two months a private in Captain Abraham Peirce's company. Colonel Eleazer Brooks's regiment of guards, at Cambridge; also in Captain Joseph Fuller's (Second Newton) company. Colonel Thatcher's regiment; marched to Cambridge, September 2, 1778, to guard British troops; service, three days; also in 1778 a private in Captain Edward Fuller's company, in the regiment commanded by Colonel Wiiliam Mcintosh. In 1779, as stated in the Cheney Genealogy, he was in Captain Samuel Healy's company, Colonel John Jacobs's (Light Infantry) regiment; enlisted September 22, discharged November 21; service, two months, six days, travel included, at Rhode Island. On June 10, 1805, Governor Caleb Strong appointed Ebenezer Cheney, Esq., Brigadier-general of the First Brigade in the Third Division of the militia of this Commonwealth of Massachusetts. General Cheney was a Representative to the General Court from 1808 to 1817. He was a member of the committee of that body which produced the remonstrance against the Embargo Act in 1808, and it is thought that he may have written the document. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Revision Convention in 1820. He was very active in the incorporation of the South Burial-ground in Newton in 1802 and in the erection of the new meeting-house in 1803-1805. He died February 27, 1853.
In 1886 the subject of this sketch (then Lucretia Hastings Cheney) was married to Alonzo B. Wetherell, a steel manufacturer and an acting Lieutenant in the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment. He was a prominent member of the Masonic order. His father, Jacob B. Wetherell, was connected with the firm of Grover & Baker, manufacturers of the well-known .sewing machines of that name, as superintendent, from the first establishment of the firm to the time of his death.
Mrs. Wetherell has always been interested in church, charitable, and patriotic work. In the early ])art of the Civil War she helped in sending supplies to the soldiers at the front.
She joined the Warren Avenue Baptist Church of Boston, but transferred her membership to the Tremont Temple church, where she was for many years actively identified with all its branches of work. She is now a helper in the social and charitable enterprises of the church of the same denomination at Field's Corner, Dorchester, where she is a resident.
Mrs. Wetherell is a life member of the Home for Aged Couples of Roxbury and deeply interested in its success; is a member of the Charity Club, which comprises .some of the best known workers in philanthropy throughout Massachusetts; also a member of Keystone Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, of Boston, and of the ​Ladies' Aid Association of the Soldiers' Home in Massachusetts.
In 1891 Mrs. Wetherell became a member of the Woman's Relief Corps, uniting with Benjamin Stone, Jr., Corps, No. 68, auxiliary to Post No. 68, G. A. R., of Dorchester. She has held various positions of honor in the corps, and was its President in 1899. She attended the National Convention at Louisville, Ky., as a delegate in 1895 and the convention at Washington, D.C., in 1902. She has travelled extensively in the South and West, having made six trips to Colorado and visited many Southern battle-fields. She has performed faithful service as Department and National Aide in the Woman's Relief Corps, and has been a liberal contributor to its various funds. For several years she has been a member of the Department Relief Committee, a position requiring a thorough knowledge of relief methods and a love for the cause, and one which Mrs. Wetherell is admirably adapted to fill, being systematic, kind-hearted, and a woman of excellent judgment. She was a member of the Executive Committee of Arrangements for the National Convention held in Boston in August, 1904, and of other committees.