As one biographer pointed out, Ednah Dow Cheney was "A Jack-at-All-Trades," or--as Cheney called herself--"A Jack-in-A-Pinch."
Franklin B. Sanborn of Concord called Cheney an idealist of Boston's old school. He quoted her at a memorial service arranged by Julia Ward Howe and other friends of the New England Women's Club. Cheney, espousing a Kantian philosophy to a younger friend, once said, "If duty to yourself be first performed, see how large a sphere of intercourse with others and what your sympathetic nature give you for the second duty." But she chided herself: "My idealism struggles, indeed, with my stronger nature; and I cannot take the strong direct course which others can. While you fear that course and determination are in danger of leading me too far, I fear more that cowardice and irresolution should keep me from going at all."
Cheney was of pioneer stock. She was born Ednah Dow Littlehale on Beacon Hill in Boston on 27 June 1824, the third surviving daughter of Sargent Smith Littlehale, a merchant whose family had followed the sea, and Edna Parker Dow Littlehale, the daughter of an Exeter, New Hampshire, tanner. Four girls and a single boy, all younger than Ednah, had died in infancy.
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