A MEMORIAL SKETCH LICE FREEMAN PALMER, the eldest of the four chil A dren of James W. and Elizabeth Higley Freeman, was born in Colesville, a small town near Windsor, New York, February 21, 1855. She died in Paris, December 6, 1902. The mother's ancestors came to the State of New York from the hill country of western Massachusetts near Stockbridge, and her father was a descendant of the original Scotch owners of large land grants in the beautiful Susquehanna Valley. Her father was first a farmer, as were his fathers before him, but after his marriage he was enabled, with the help of his young wife of seventeen, to realize his youthful ambition, and ten years after the birth of their first child he obtained the degree of M.D. Alice E. Freeman came into an excellent inheritance of body and brain. The example of her parents in mental application during her younger years early inspired a passion for study. Of this time, she was accustomed to say at a later period, "I grew up with my mother." She was ten years of age when her parents left the farm and took up their residence in Windsor. There she spent seven years in study at the Academy, and it was there also that she joined the Presbyterian church. It was said of her that "she was an eager, ambitious student, determined by the very forces of her nature towards the getting of knowledge and the building up of a symmetrical character." At Windsor Academy she was prepared for college. In those days the requirements for women's colleges were not so rigorous as for men's, and that desire which was to be hers in all her educational work for girls later, was hers then. She wished to fit herself to meet the world, compelling equality |