Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 2.

[p. 97] calamity which was followed in about a year by the marriage of her elder sister Mary, on whom had fallen the duties of mother and housekeeper, and to whom she was warmly attached. Mary was eight years older than Maria, a well-poised character, and of rare judgment. The child was inconsolable, refused to be present at the wedding ceremony, and, taking her kitten for a sympathetic companion, disappeared up the side lane until all was over.

This dear sister's home was in the beautiful valley of the Kennebec, in the ‘District of Maine,’ a cruel distance in the slow stage-coach days of 1814, and the household left behind in Medford felt the separation keenly. Maria was left to the companionship of her always busy father, who wrote to a friend that he was ‘alarmed at her increasing fondness for books.’ This taste was fostered by her elder brother Converse, then a student at Harvard. Through him she had access to books beyond her entire comprehension, but all the more attractive to her imagination. It is easy to understand that David Francis should find it wise, after two or three years of school in Medford, to send this precocious daughter to Maine, to be under the care of her judicious sister, whose husband, the Hon. Warren Preston, was a lawyer of standing in Norridgewock, the shire town of Somerset county. The ‘Kennebec region,’ as it was called, was largely settled by members of cultivated Massachusetts families, graduates of Harvard and other universities, and professional men seeking new fields of occupation and interest. The court convened in Norridgewock. This brought judges and lawyers with their families to the town, from various parts of the State, and formed a centre of intelligence and refinement, in which Judge Preston's home was prominent. These new associations, combined with the freshness and vigor of the climate, the majestic forests and rivers, far beyond anything the young girl had ever seen before, could not fail to stimulate a temperament of such enthusiasm as hers.