7 A Brief Memoir OF MRS. MARY BREWSTER PARK. IT is with deeply mingled feelings of pleasant and painful emotion, that the author of this little volume attempts a brief sketch of the life and character of a departed, but more than ever beloved wife; to whose memory these pages are devoted. Pleasant are the reminiscences of her beauty, her loveliness, and her devoted affection-but painful, inexpressibly painful, the consciousness of her loss, and of the loss of those dear children, who followed her so speedily to the grave, and to the gates of Paradise, leaving many friends to mourn. Although her own native modesty would have shrunk from a notice like this, as the violet seeks the shade; yet the writer feels that justice, alike to herself and to the world, requires that her many virtues should be commemorated, as an example and encouragement, both to the mothers and daughters of our highly favored land. The writer is aware of the delicacy of his task; and will endeavor not to weary the reader's patience by long details or selfish display; but simply to perform his duty, and bring his task to a close. MARY BREWSTER BALDWIN was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, on the 16th of January, in the year of our Lord 1815. Her paternal grandfather, Loammi Baldwin, was the engineer who constructed the Middlesex canal, leading from the Merrimack river at Chelmsford, to Boston harbor;-the first canal of any considerable length in the United States. It was completed in 1808; and was then regarded as a wonderful work of art though now superseded by the Boston and Lowell railroad. Her father, Benjamin Franklin Baldwin, was also a successful civil engineer; and after serving as a militia officer in the last war with Great Britain, and assisting in fortifying and defending Dorchester Heights, he was engaged by the State of North Carolina, in improving the navigation of the Roanoke and other rivers, for some time previously to his death, which took place in 1822. Her uncle and guardian, Loammi Baldwin, Esq., became still more distinguished as a civil engineer ; and was entrusted by the United States Government with the construction of the Dry Docks in the Navy Yards at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and Gosport, Virginia; which works he had satisfactorily completed before his death, in 1838. These works, at the time of their completion, were unsurpassed by any similar structures in the world. It may be permitted to add that Mrs. Park's surviving uncles have well sustained the honor of the family, in the same noble profession. Her maternal grandfather was Benjamin Coolidge, Esq., a highly respectable merchant of Boston, who de |