This collection includes papers of Jane Lathrop Loring and her nieces, Katharine Peabody Loring and Louisa Putnam Loring. JLL was born on August 27, 1821, the second child of Anna Pierce Brace and Charles Greely Loring. She married Asa Gray, the distinguished botanist and Harvard professor, on May 4, 1848; the couple resided in the Botanic Garden in Cambridge. She was a member of the Female Humane Society of Cambridge, a charitable organization for the relief of sick and indigent women, and in 1894, following the death of her husband in 1888, edited Letters of Asa Gray. She died at the Loring Estate in Pride's Crossing, Massachusetts, on July 29, 1909.
KPL and LPL were daughters of Elizabeth (Smith) Loring and Caleb William Loring, JLL's brother. Born on May 21, 1849, KPL was a founder of and for twenty years a teacher in the Society to Encourage Studies at Home. A trustee of the Beverly Public Library, Red Cross worker, and officer in the Woman's Education Association and in the Massachusetts Library Club, she was also a close friend of Alice James (1848-1892), sister of Henry James and William James. She wrote The Earliest Summer Residents of the North Shore and Their Houses (1932) and assisted in the preparation of Loring Genealogy (1917). For further information about KPL, see Jean Strouse, Alice James, A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980).
LPL was born on January 15, 1854. The founder (and president) of the Aiken, South Carolina, Sanitarium, also called Aiken Cottages, and the Beverly Anti-Tuberculosis Society, she also held offices in the Beverly Hospital and the Essex County Chapter of the American Red Cross. She compiled The Hymns of the Ages (American Unitarian Association, 1906). After 1872 she lived at Pride's Crossing, Massachusetts, until her death on May 18, 1924. She is mentioned in Strouse's book about Alice James (see above).
From the guide to the Papers, 1830-1943, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
