Cheney, Ednah Dow Littlehale, 1824-1904

She was born on Beacon Hill, Boston, June 27, 1824; and was educated in private schools in Boston. Cheney served as secretary of the School of Design for Women in Boston from 1851 till 1854. She married portrait artist Seth Wells Cheney on May 19, 1853. His ill-health limited his volume of work and after a winter trip abroad (1854-1855) he died in 1856. They had one child, Margaret.

Cheney's life was devoted to philosophic and literary research and work. She was one of the marked personalities of Boston in her day, prominent in reform movements. Naturally averse to personal publicity, she did not shun it where her name and word could add weight to the advocacy of a just cause. In the education and health of the community, she showed the most interest. She was a strenuous champion of the claims of African Americans to political and social justice. She advocated for religious toleration and the enfranchisement of women. She took an interest in social concerns such as the Freedman's Aid Society (secretary of the committee on aid for colored regiments and of the teachers' committee, 1863), Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (vice president), New England Women's Club (vice president) and the New England Hospital for Women and Children (secretary, 1862). She lectured at the Concord School of Philosophy on the history of art, and wrote about art in several books and articles. She was an active member of the Margaret Fuller conversation class. She went south to visit the Freedmen's schools in 1866, 1868, and 1869. Cheney was one of the founders in 1862 of the New England Hospital for Women and Children, its secretary for twenty-seven years and president fifteen years, is numbered among the veterans of the forward movements in education, philanthropy, and reform of the nineteenth century. who happily still live to grace by their presence and help by their wise counsels the deliberative assemblies and budding activities of the twentieth century. She was the author of "Reminiscences."

From 1863, Cheney made her home in Jamaica Plain. Early interested in the work of the Freedmen's Aid Society (founded in 1861), she the secretary of the teachers' committee on the resignation of Hannah E. Stevenson. In 1865, she went to Readville and taught soldiers, and attended the convention of Freedmen's societies in New York City. Cheney made several visits to the South in the years directly following the close of the Civil War for the Union, the first time going with Abby May as a delegate to a convention in Baltimore. Unexpectedly called upon there to address a meeting composed largely of African Americans, she had her first experience in public speaking. During her absence on one of these Southern trips, a society was formed in Boston in 1867, of which she was appointed a director, and later Honorary President, and in which she continued to work — the Free Religious Association, "the freedom and inspiration of whose first meetings" she finds it "impossible to report."

Cheney died at Jamaica Plain, November 19, 1904, and was buried at East Cemetery, Manchester, Connecticut.