Margaret wrote to me: " Hi Jean, I have Asenath's journal and in the Introduction it gives the family informationwhich was supplied by Jean Hatch Farnham, a descendant of Nicholson's brother, David Hatch. She was a teacher in Chelsea (VT) and later ran a boarding house. She moved to New York where she met Norman Nicholson. Before going to New York she was suffering from poor health. When a doctor told her to make a change she ended up moving to New York where she met Norman Nicholson, a merchant (c.1790-1841). While in her early 30s she became a reformer. "While Nicholson ran her boarding houses, she visited the poor of New York in the Five Points, the notorious slum nearby in New York's Sixth Ward where cholera had raged in 1832. During those years Nicholson met the poor Irish. 'It was in the garrets and cellars of New York that I first became acquainted with the Irish peasantry and it was there that I saw that they were a suffereing people'". "Nicholson left Ireland in 1848 when she thought that her work was finished. Her long stay in Cork in the summer of 1848 speaks to the heroic work of her great friend father Theobald Mathew, whose famine work is less well-known than his crusade for temperance, and to the work of other volunteers like the Quakers and the South Presentation nuns, but she also brings the reader on some sightseeing excursions. The somewhat lighter tone of these pages suggests Nicholson believed that the worst was over. In fact, famine condiitons were to continue until 1852, the year she finally returned to America, where she lived in obscurity until her death from typhoid fever in Jersey City, New Jersey, on May 15, 1855." Taken from "Annals of the Famine Ireland - Asenath Nicholson,: Edited by Maureen Murphy Slan go foill, Margaret Earlier Margaret wrote: Hi Jean, Asenath Nicholson was born Asenath Hatch. She was born on the NewEngland frontier in the village of Chelsea in the White River Valley of easternVermont. Her parents were Michael Hatch (c. 1747-1830) and her mother was Martha (1745-1837). Michael Hatch of Ackworth, Cheshire County, New Hampshire arrived in Chelsea, Vermont on June 7, 1788. Asenath Hatch was born Feb 24, 1792 in Chelsea. Her name was common enough in the Hatch family, the Genealogy and History of the Hatch Family lists 4 other Asenaths in her generation alone (Hatch-Hale). Her parents were probably members of Chelsea's first Congregational Church, the branch of American Protestantism that emphasized the Bible, individual freedom and local congregational autonomy."Taken from - Annals of the Famine in Ireland - Asenath Nicholason," ed. Maureen Murphy. Hatch and Hale are both English names, But Hatch is also found in Ireland from the 1700s. Hale without the Mc is English. Possibly they came from Ireland before going to America. (?) Slan go foill, Margaret Original Message: Hi Margaret, You know I saw somewhere Asenath Nicholson's maiden name, but I didn't make a note of it, do you happen to know?