“ MARY THOMPSON HILL WILLARD. and an active Christian. The mother's character was a rare combination of excellence, religious, cheerful, industrious, frugal, hopeful, buoyant, mirthful at times loving and lovable always, with a poet's insight, and fellowship with nature. Their oldest son. James Hill, was a youth of rare powers and high ambitions. Mary, strongly resembling her brother James, was the second daughter in the family, each one of whom possessed abilities of a high order. ”

“ Sympathizing with, guiding, stimulating and training each child according to its needs, the law of liberty in the development of every faculty and freedom for every right ambition were observed carefully. ”

“ Her early education was obtained in the country district school and in the log school house of a new country, but the schools were taught usually by students or graduates of Dartmouth and Middlebury colleges, who often boarded in Mary's home, and whose attainments and character made deep impressions for good upon the susceptible child. In her twelfth year her father sold his Vermont farm and removed to the new region of the Genesee valley in western New York. In the new settlement, fourteen miles west of Rochester, now known as the town of Ogden, Mary grew to young womanhood. ”

“ The family resided in their first home until four children had been born to them, the only son, Oliver, two daughters who died in infancy, and Frances Elizabeth, who was a delicate child in her second year, when her parents decided to remove to Oberlin, Ohio, in order to secure educational advantages for themselves and their children. ”