This is a transcription of the Lucy (Kendall) Spalding biography from New Hampshire Women: A Collection of Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Daughters and Residents of the Granite State, Who are Worthy Representatives of their Sex in the Various Walks and Conditions of Life, The New Hampshire Publishing Co., Concord, NH, 1895, page 11.
Lucy (Kendall) Spalding
ON the eighth day of December, 1893, in the city of Nashua, a woman whose name had been a household word in that city for nearly half a century, departed this life, at the great age of ninety-seven years. Lucy Kendall, daughter of Nathan Kendall of Amherst, was born in that town, December 13, 1796. She married Isaac Spalding, of Nashua, May 1, 1828, and was the affectionate helpmeet of that worthy and honored citizen until his decease, May 14, 1876. Two sons, born in the early years of their married life, died in childhood, and thus left without children, and favored with ample means for ministering to the comfort and welfare of others, they neccessarily looked beyond the confines of home for the objects of their consideration and regard. Mr. Spalding was an enterprising business man and a public spirited citizen, and was closely identified with the growth and progress of Nashua, from a struggling village to the second city in the state, and in all his work and purposes his wife was an earnest sympathizer. Though personally of a retiring disposition, modest and unassuming, Mrs. Spalding, through all her long life, was an active promoter of every deserving charitable cause and benevolent work to which her attention was called in the community, and her generous contributions of money for various worthy objects, as well as her devoted personal service, will be remembered to her credit for long years to come. She was actively identified with the First Congregational church of Nashua, and deeply interested in all lines of its work. During the year 1892 her gift of twenty-three thousand dollars for the purchase of a site made it possible for the society to erect the new and commodious house of worship, one of the finest in the state, which it now occupies. Among her other prominent benefactions were ten thousand dollars to the New Hampshire Orphans’ Home, of which institution she was ever an earnest friend, and ten thousand dollars to Dartmouth college.