While in SLC - FHL last week I copied several new additions for my reference list for Franklin County, Mass. I will list the titles in a separate e-mail. The following booklet has articles on the following women: Remember Ellis Smith - posted July 23, 2002. Lydia Hall Miles, and Dora Knowlton Ranous. First Ladies From Ashfield's History, by Mary Priscilla Howes and the Ashfield Historical Society. Published by the Ashfield Historical Society, 1983. pgs. 2 - 15. Introduction, p. 2: As I glanced through the index of the first written history of Ashfield, I was somewhat dismayed to find hardly a woman's name listed. Ashfield has produced some remarkable women, however, As I have studied their lives, three of them have become real friends of mine. I hope they will become friends of yours too. Their personalities are very different, but the common denominator is that all of them were women of courage and spirit. I have chosen them from different periods of Ashfield's history, thinking this might give us an overview of our continuing heritage. First of all, I would like to introduce you to Remember Ellis Smith, Ashfield's first bride; next to Lydia Hall Miles, a one-room school mistress; and finally to Dora Knowlton Ranous, actress and translator. NOTE: Mary Priscilla Howes is a native of Ashfield, a graduate of Sanderson Academy and Middlebury College. High among her priorities is an appreciation of her town, its history, its beauties and especially its people. Acknowledgments: The author would like to acknowledge the help of Barbara Zalenski, librarian of the Belding Memorial Library; Eleanor Hargraves for the loan of newspaper clippings, and Michael E.C. Gery for his editorial skill and judgment.