MARTHA CHURCH MALTBY
(Mrs. Harlow Swain Love)
(CFH-Gj)
For this sketch of Mrs. Harlow Swain Love we are indebted to her daughter, Mrs. Frederick E. Foster. Mrs. Love was a daughter of General Isaac Maltby (See Biography.)
Martha Church Maltby was the youngest of the ten children of Gen. Isaac Maltby and Lucinda Murray, his wife, who was the daughter of Gen. Seth Murray, an officer during the entire war of the Revolution and who participated in nearly all of the early engagements and was present at the Battle of Bennington, and also at the surrender of Burgoyne. She was born in Hatfield, Mass.; later her parents removed to Waterloo, Y. Y., when she was but two years of age, and upon her marriage to Mr. Harlow S. Love, their home was established in Buffalo, N. Y., where all of her five children were born. Prior to 1860 the family made several trips to California by way of Panama, and in that year they located permanently in San Francisco, where Mr. Love, until his death in 1866, was a prominent member of the legal profession, and where, later, their son John became Attorney-General of the State of California and subsequently the city and county attorney of San Francisco.
Mrs. Love was a person of great intellectuality, refinement and cultivation and of a lovely and graceful presence. She was endowed in an eminent degree with all those tender attributes which endear a woman to the circle with all those tender attributes which endear a woman to the circle of her familiar friends and possessed that gentleness and benevolence of character which purifies and softens the social atmosphere of her surroundings. To these qualities were united an unostentatious charity and helpfulness which all of her intimates have reason to remember with affectionate gratitude. Her literary attainments were of a high order; and for many years she contributed to the public prints articles on various subjects, which were widely read and favorably received. She also devoted much labor and attention to genealogical research, and was instrumental in tracing and rescuing from oblivion the lines of her descent from Colonial and Revolutionary ancestors, all of whom were of distinguished stock.
Mrs. Love crossed the Pacific Ocean numerous times, visiting Hong Kong, China, on the occasion of the marriage of her daughter, Leila, to William Hammond Foster, Jr. (a member of the celebrated American house of Russell and Co., China) and some years later making her home with the youngest daughter, Martha, the wife of Frederick E. Foster, successively in Yokohama, Japan, and Hong Kong, China, where Mr. Foster represented, as General Agent, the trans-Pacific lines of steamers plying between those ports and San Francisco. Mrs. Love and her husband are interred in Lone Mountain Cemetery, San Francisco, California, and are survived (in 1908) only by their daughter, Martha (Mrs. F.E. Foster) now residing in Mount Vernon, N.Y.*
* Mrs. Love took great interest in her Maltby ancestors and was indefatigable in her efforts to obtain family records and old documents. This work is always a labor of love and in her time was doubtless unappreciated and undervalued, but posterity can not fall to be grateful for the careful work done by her, and must honor her for her persistency in carrying on labors which met with little encouragement or response.
Note. – Mr. Maximilian Foster, the well known author, is a son of Leila Love who married William Hammond Foster, Jr., a grandson of Martha Maltby Love, and great-grandson of General Isaac Maltby.
Mayor Seth Murray Maltby, son of General Isaac, was the father of Mr. George Beecher Maltby, Mr. John Whitehouse Maltby and Mrs. Albert T. Higby (Mary Maltby), whose pictures will be found on the opposite page. George Beecher and John Whitehouse are the two oldest “Maltby twins” known to the compiler and are seventy-two years of age.
From left to right, seated on the bench are Mr. George Beecher Maltby, Mary Maltby Higby, and Mr. John Whitehouse Maltby, Standing are Mrs. George Beecher Maltby, who kindly furnished the photograph and Mr. Albert T. Higby. This photograph was taken in the summer of 1910, and we regret to record that shortly after Mr. John Whitehouse Maltby’s death occurred.
It will be sad news to many of the Maltbys to learn that shortly after photograph of “the Maltby Twins” was taken, Mr. John Whitehouse Maltby began to fail rapidly in health. On June 17th, 1911, he passed away at the home of his twin brother, Mr. George Beecher Maltby, in Aurora, Indiana, a hardening of the arteries being the cause of his death.
Mr. Maltby, accompanied by his son, made the sad journey east to the old home in Rochester, New York, and there on June 20th, buried his brother beside his wife, who had died on Oct. 20th, 1908, and whose loss had caused a breaking down in health from which the bereaved husband never recovered.
Mr. George Beecher Maltby died April 22, 1915.