Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Mrs. Amos G. Draper

Mrs. Draper was born in Haverhill, New Hampshire, and is the daughter of Daniel F. Merrill, for many years principal of a large boys' school in Mobile, Alabama, and Luella Bartlett Bell Merrill, of Haverhill, New Hampshire.

She was graduated from Mount Holyoke Seminary in 1877 and soon after graduation was married to Professor Amos G. Draper, of Gallaudet College, a national institution, and the only one in the world where deaf mutes can receive a college education. Among the several ancestors through whose services Mrs. Draper claims eligibility to the Daughters of the American Revolution, two, Daniel and Jonathan Weeks, were over seventy years, and one, John Bell, Jr., only sixteen years of age at the time of service.

Another, Hon Josiah Bartlett, the last president of New Hampshire and its first governor, was the first member of the Continental Congress to vote for the Declaration of Independence, and the first after John Hancock, the President, to attach his name to that document Since her marriage Mrs. Draper has lived very quietly, surrounded by her family, but devoting her leisure moments to some of the many historical and benevolent societies of the Capital.

She was one of the original members of the Ladies' Historical Society, is the vice-president of the Home Missionary Society in her church, and has for many years been connected with the Homeopathic Hospital and Dispensary. She was for two years regent of the Dolly Madison Chapter, and in that capacity attended the Third and Fourth Continental Congresses of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and by the latter body was unanimously elected treasurer of the society.

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.