Her mother, Harriet Browne, was of Scotch and English descent, her paternal ancestor, in this country, being Nicholas Browne,--always spelled with an _e_,--who was a member of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts from Lynn in 1641, and afterwards from Reading, in 1655-1656, and 1661. Her great-grandfather, William Browne, of Cambridge, in 1705 sold sixty acres of upland and swamp to Thomas Brattle, Esq., of Boston, Treasurer of the society known as “The President and Fellows of Harvard University;” and on this land many of the Harvard College buildings now stand. He was a soldier in the French and Indian war in Canada. Miss Hanson’s grandfather, Seth Ingersoll Browne, was a non-commissioned captain at the battle of Bunker Hill; and the old “King’s arm” he carried on that decisive day is still in the possession of one of his grandsons. He was one of the “Mohawks” who helped to throw the tea into Boston Harbor; and his name is written in marble, among his companions of “The Boston Tea Party,” in Hope Cemetery, Worcester, Mass. He is buried in the Granary Burying-ground, in Boston. Harriet Hanson was born in Boston, Mass., Feb. 8, 1825, and in 1832 removed with her widowed mother and her three brothers to Lowell, where they lived for some years on one of the manufacturing “corporations.” Her first attempt at writing for the press was made while she was yet an operative in the Lowell mills, in the “annuals” and newspapers of the time. She was also a contributor to _The Lowell Offering_, and was on intimate terms with its editors and contributors. In 1848 she was married to William S. Robinson, journalist and parliamentarian, who, as “Warrington,” became well known as the war correspondent in the _Springfield Republican_, the _New York Tribune_, the _New York Evening Post_, and in other newspapers. He was also the author of “Warrington’s Manual of Parliamentary Law.” Mr. Robinson died March 11, 1876. Their children are Harriette Lucy (married Sidney D. Shattuck of Malden, Mass.), Elizabeth Osborne (married George S. Abbott of Waterbury, Conn.), William Elbridge (died young), and Edward Warrington (married Mary E. Robinson of Denver, Col.). [Illustration: Harriet H. Robinson at 28.] Mrs. Robinson is deeply interested in all the movements which tend to the advancement of women, and uses her pen and her voice freely in their behalf. She was the first woman to speak before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage in Congress, and has spoken for the cause before the legislature of her own State, where she is not only a citizen, but a _voter_ as far as the law allows. The woman’s club movement has always had her firm support; she assisted at the formation of The General Federation of Women’s Clubs in 1890, and was a member of its first advisory board; she is a Daughter of the American Revolution, and a member of the N. E. Historic Genealogical Society.