Source: 'Poets and Poetry of Cecil County,' collected and edited by George Johnston, 1887 - my transcription is from a transcription at: http://www.risingsunmd.com/williammcnamee.pdf "Mrs. Alice Coale Simpers was born in the old brick mansion known as 'Traveler's Repose,' a short distance south of Harrisville, in the Sixth district of Cecil county, on the first day of December, 1843. "The Coale family of which Mrs. Simpers is a member, trace their descent from Sir Philip Blodgett, a distinguished Englishman, who settled in Balti- more shortly after its foundation, and are related to the Matthews, Worth- ingtons, Jewetts, and other leading families of Harford county. On her mother's side she is related to the Jackson, Puseys, and other well-known Friends of Chester county, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware. "Mrs. Simpers' early education was received at Waring's Friends' School, near the village of Colora, which was kept up by a few families of Friends in the neighborhood. She also attended the State Normal School in Balti- more, and qualified herself for teaching in the public schools of the State, in which she taught school in the State of Illinois with great acceptability and success. "When Mrs. Simpers was quite young her father removed his family to the banks of the romantic Octoraro, near Rowlandville, and within less than two miles of the birth-place of the two poetic Ewings and the late John Cooley, and the romantic spot where Mrs. Hall lived when she wrote the poems which are published in this volume. The soul-inspiring beauty of this romantic region seems to have had the same effect upon her mind as it had upon the other persons composing the illustrious quintette, of which she is a distinguished member, and when only seventeen years of age she began to write poetry. At the solicitation of her friend, E. E. Ewing, she sent the first poem she published to him, who gave it a place in the Cecil Whig, of which he was the editor and proprietor. "Mrs. Simpers began to write for the New York Mercury, which then numbered among its contributors Ned Buntline, Harriet Prescott, George Marshall, George Arnold, Bayard Taylor, W. Scott Way, and many other distinguished writers with whom she ranked as an equal in many respects, and many of whom she excelled as a brilliant satirist and pathetic painter of the quaint and beautiful. "For ten years she continued to contribute letters, essays, stories and poems to the Mercury, and to advocate the claims of her sex to the right of suffrage, in which she still continues to be a firm believer. Mrs. Simpers has also contributed largely to the Woman's Journal and other periodicals. "Though possessed of a brilliant poetic genius, Mrs. Simpers is best known as a writer of prose; and, in addition to the large quantity of matter she has contributed to the newspaper press, is the author of a story of about two hundred pages illustrative of the principles and practices and exempli- fying the social life of the Friends, for which she received a prize of two hundred dollars. This story was highly spoken of by Dr. Shelton McKenzie with whom she was on terms of intimacy for some years immediately before his death, and also by many other distinguished writers. "On the 22nd of February, 1879, the subject of this sketch married Captain John G. Simpers, who served with distinction in the Second Regiment Dela- ware Volunteers in the war of the rebellion. They, at the time of writing this sketch, reside near the summit of Mount Pleasant, and within a short distance of the birthplace of Emma Alice Browne."