ABSTRACT
Jane Means Appleton was born in Hampton, New Hampshire, on March 12, 1806, the third of six children of Elizabeth Means Appleton and Jesse Appleton. The Appleton family enjoyed their status as prestigious New Englanders with connections to business, religion, law, and academics. Jane’s father, a Congregational minister, served as president of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. After the death of her father in 1819, Jane's mother moved her family to the Means Mansion in Amherst, New Hampshire. During her teenage years, Jane enjoyed close relationships with her sister Mary, who married and moved to nearby Lowell, Massachusetts, and her sister Elizabeth, who married a Bowdoin professor, Alpheus S. Packard.
