Hannah Louisa Plimpton was born on June 30, 1823, in Sturbridge, Massachusetts to Ziba Plimpton and Hannah Marsh Plimpton. Her father was a farmer, miller, and teacher. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary and graduated in 1848. She became an Associate Principal of West Haven Ladies Seminary with Susan Arms Wright, x-Class of 1840, which then became the Oak Hill Seminary in West Haven, Connecticut from 1848-1856. Her younger sister, Sarah, also taught at the school. With another Mount Holyoke alumna, Eliza Paine, she opened the Duquoin Female Seminary in Duquoin, Illinois and taught there from 1852-1856. In 1857 she traveled east to raise money for the school and met the Reverend Lyman Peet. He was a missionary to Foochow, China whose wife, Rebecca Sherrill Peet, had recently died, leaving him with three young children: Jane, Frances, and Anna. Louisa Plimpton and Lyman Peet married on June 6, 1858. They sailed for China on October 5, 1858 aboard the "Empress" and arrived in Shanghai on March 1, 1859. They had four children: Ellen Louisa, Lyman Plimpton, Edward Wright, and Mary Susan. They served as missionaries in Foochow until Lyman Peet became ill and the family returned to Connecticut in 1871. He died on January 11, 1878 in West Haven, Connecticut at the age of sixty-eight. Louisa Plimpton Peet returned to Foochow in 1884 with her daughter and son-in-law and in 1885 married the Reverend Charles Hartwell, who had served as missionary in China since 1853. She became stepmother to his daughter, Emily S. Hartwell. She began a school for women at Ponasang, China in 1885 and also taught English at Foochow College. Charles Hartwell died in 1905 in Foochow. Hannah Louisa Plimpton Peet Hartwell died in Foochow on December 7, 1908 at the age of eighty-five. Many of her relatives attended Mount Holyoke, including: Catherine Plimpton, Ellen Louisa Peet, Emily S. Hartwell, Jane S. Peet, Frances R. Peet, Christine Hubbard, Christine Winifred Pickett, Patricia Louisa Pickett, and Barbara Elizabeth Pickett.
From the guide to the Hartwell papers MS 0761., 1847-1909, 1850-1871, (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)
