Stephanie Taylor of Parkman will join the ranks of University of Maine alumni this week as she receives her degree in business.

The only female among my mother’s six grandchildren, she’s the one who can pass on the mitochondrial DNA, the material that comes only from the mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s line — and so on.

I would have her remember on her special day, and on Mother’s Day, May 9, not only who these women are, but what she got from them.

From her mother, Maureen (Moore) Taylor, also a UMaine grad, she got a wonderful sense of play and a ton of fearlessness. It was Maureen who held bloodsuckers in her hand as a child, who wasn’t afraid to ride a bus to New Hampshire for summer camp, and who rescued me from the roof when we were up there shoveling snow in 1969.

From her grandmother Joyce (Steeves) Moore, Stephanie will have a fierce devotion to family and the willingness to learn new things at any age. At age 70-something, Joyce became a hospital volunteer.

From great-grandmother Edith (Roberts) Steeves, she inherits athletic ability and an affinity for newspapers. Edith played basketball for Foxcroft Academy and worked on the linotype at the Piscataquis Observer more than 80 years ago.

Great-great-grandmother Etta (Eldridge) Roberts died young, and three of her four daughters had no children. But two of the three were teachers, and they all doted on their nieces and nephews, encouraging them to go to college.

I suspect that great-great-great-grandmother Agnes (Bray) Eldridge had a sense of adventure, since she married a man in Massachusetts who carried her off to Maine.

That brings us to Gram Jenks, born Mary Payne in the village of Cairo, N.Y.

At a young age, Stephanie’s great-great-great-great-grandmother wed John Bray, one of a dozen children. They moved to Northhampton, Mass., where they raised three girls and three boys.

Mary became a medical doctor and, after John’s death and marrying Edward Jenks in Rhode Island, became one of the first women’s police matrons in that state.

As a project of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, she was for a decade a kind of social worker, helping women inmates and families of inmates who had little.

The WCTU railed against alcohol, but not out of judgmentalism. Rather, they based their arguments on its cost, whether to a family left hungry when a man or women was jailed, or to the country at large.

We tend to forget that the WCTU was a great supporter of women’s suffrage. In fact, Dr. Mary A. Jenks wrote in her book, “Behind the Bars”:

There has been one great discovery in this much-lauded 19th century, and it is that woman has discovered herself. We have come to the knowledge that every statute book in every land that contains law and penalty for crimes, was placed there by men.

Now we have come to the front to know, who has so great a stake in the National Government as the motherhood of this nation? Why were all these laws made and placed there by men, and men only? There is no reason, no justice, in all this, and there never can be — good men know it right well, and some are honest enough in their convictions to say that women should have equal franchise.

Mary Jenks didn’t live long enough to see women vote. Probably she never gave a commencement address. But there’s one more thing she wrote that I think applies to this season’s graduates:

I believe there is a place for everyone in the great scheme of this world, and that God has given us power and talents, and placed us here to be workmen, and that we have a work to do that will not be done at all unless it is done by us.

That, dear Stephanie, is the heritage of your line of women.

···

We’re leading up to the 150th anniversary next year of the beginning of the Civil War.

Author Diane Smith, who wrote “Fanny and Joshua,” will speak on “Chamberlain at Petersburg” at the Brewer Historical Society meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 4, at First United Methodist Church, 40 South Main St., Brewer.

Refreshments will be served, and books will be available for purchase and signing.

···

The next meeting of the Washington County Genealogical Society was scheduled for Saturday, May 15, but that is the day of the Maine Old Cemetery Association’s spring program. So that members won’t have to choose between meetings, Washington County Genealogical Society members have been invited to attend the MOCA meeting at First Congregational Church, 20 River Road, Cherryfield.

The Cherryfield Narraguagus Historical Society will host the MOCA meeting, which begins at 9 a.m. with registration, coffee and snacks. Admission is $3 at the door. Also on the schedule are:

— 9:45 a.m. Welcome by MOCA President Cheryl Patten.

— 10 a.m. British Cannon Restoration Project, Ellen Tenan.

— 10:30 a.m. Cherryfield’s Old Cemetery and Pine Grove Cemetery, Kathy Upton.

— 11:15 a.m. MOCA business meeting. All welcome.

— Noon, lunch provided by church group — sandwiches, Mark’s Famous Church Chowder, desserts, $6. Reservations required by May 7. Mail check to Cherryfield Narraguagus Historical Society, PO Box 96, Cherryfield, ME 04622. Or you can pay at the door if you have made your reservation at info@cherryfieldhistorical.com.

— 1 p.m., door prize drawing, must be present. Tour of Pine Grove Cemetery, resting place of more than 100 veterans Civil War to Gulf War, with Upton. Brief meeting of Washington County Genealogical Society.

···

Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport has announced new hours for its research library: 9 a.m.-noon and 1-4:30 p.m. Thursdays; 9 a.m.-noon Fridays. The museum is on U.S. Route 1 at Church Street in Searsport, between Belfast and Bangor.

The Stephen Phillips Memorial Library is a research library with ships’ logs, business and church records and genealogical information for the region as well as a large collection of boating- and maritime-related books. Materials do not circulate. It is one of only two libraries in Waldo County whose holdings are listed in the online SOLAR catalog.

Volunteers form the core of the library’s staff, enabling the museum to open the library to researchers for regular hours every week. On Thursdays, Jon Johansen, who specializes in maritime research, supervises the library. He is director of the International Maritime Library, which is creating the most comprehensive database ever compiled of ships built in America.

Don Garrold, a land surveyor and mapper with strong interest in genealogy, manages the library on Fridays. Garrold works with the town of Searsport on GIS mapping and cemetery records. His research specialties include people and places of the Penobscot region.

Visitors are urged to contact the museum before visiting the library to confirm it is open at 548-2529 or e-mail nparker@pmm-maine.org.

For information, call 548-2529 or visit www.PenobscotMarineMuseum.org.

Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or e-mail queries to familyti@bangordailynews.com.