Ellen  McRoberts Mason     

"(Mrs. Mahlon L. Mason); writer, club-woman; b. North Baldwin (Quaker Brook) Me.; dau. John and Charity (Davis) McRoberts  (her father,  born  in Belfast, Ireland, son of a Scotch mother and Irish father, who was an army officer, came to this country in youth and was at first engaged in railroad building);

ed. public schools and academies, and Farmington, Me., Normal School,; taught school for a time and was married April 21, 1873, to Mahlon Lee Mason, proprietor of the Sunset Pavilion, a widely known summer hotel at North Conway, where her home has since been.

Endowed with literary taste and talent for writing, she cultivated these and made frequent contributions, both in prose and verse, to the Portland Transcript, the Press, and other Maine papers; also letters and stories published in the "Boston Courier"; served for a dozen years as the "East Side" correspondent of the "Boston Herald"; was a constant contributor to the White "Mountain Echo" during the period of its publication, and more recently wrote for Among the Clouds. She is also a forceful and convincing public speaker.

She has traveled in Germany, having been there when the old Emperor William died; saw the troops swear allegiance to his son, Frederick, and realized the approaching prominence of the Hohenzollern regime. Her letters at that time attracted wide attention. She has translated many stories and poems from the German, some of which have been published in the "Granite Monthly", as have various historical articles from her pen; she is also represented in the "Poets of Maine" and the "Poets of New Hampshire"; served six years on the Conway school board and was mainly instrumental in securing expert supervision for the schools, her personally obtained opinions upon these subjects having also been used by State Superintendent Morrison, in his work of extending the system through the state.

She was also instrumental in establishing a school library at North Conway, effected the centralization of the schools in the villages of the town and took the initiative in bringing to North Conway the first meeting of the American Institute of Instruction, in 1898; vice president, N.H. Federation of Women's Club; first chairman, Forestry Committee, N.H. Federation, 1897-1905, and during this service induced many of the Women's Clubs of the state to become life members of the Society for the Protection of N.H. Forests, of which she was a charter member and had the honor of naming, having also written much upon the subject of forest preservation; clerk of the North Conway Public Library Ass'n for the last thirty years; member, book committee, of the same and of the building committee erecting the handsome stone structure for housing the library,; member, New England Woman's Press Ass'n; president of the local S.P.C. A., Suffragist; Episcopalian, and clerk of the corporation of the Christ Church, North Conway for nearly thirty years past.

One son, Dr. Nathaniel R. Mason.

*This has been contributed by Mrs. Mason's great-granddaughter Ellen McGrath.