Ellen Maria Stone was born on July 24, 1846 in Roxbury,
Suffolk Co., Massachusetts. Her father, Benjamin Franklin Stone was
born on April 6, 1814 in Marlborough, New Hampshire. He died on April
1, 1882 in Chelsea, Suffolk Co., Massachusetts. Benjamin married Lucy
Waterman Barker on June 27, 1837 in Framingham, Middlesex Co.,
Massachusetts. Her mother, Lucy Waterman Barker was born on January
22, 1813 in Malden, Middlesex Co., Massachusetts. She died on Mar 1,
1905 in Chelsea, Suffolk Co., Massachusetts. She was a noted
missionary, was a graduate of Chelsea grammer and high schools and
taught in the latter two years following her graduation. She then
became associate editor on staff of The Boston Congregationalist.
On the late afternoon of September 3, 1901 while enroute from the
village of Bansko, Macedonia (now Bulgaria) to the town of Gorna
Dzhumaia (now Blagoevgrad), an American missionary woman, Ellen Maria
Stone, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, was taken hostage with a Macedonian
companion, Mrs. Katarina Stefanova Tsilka, the wife of an Albanian
Protestant minister. The women’s captors, a band of twenty armed men
were affiliated with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary
Organization (IMRO) and led by Yane Sandansky and Hristo Chernopeev.
Katarina Stefanova Tsilka
The capture of Miss Stone was no accident. The plan for the
detention and ransom of a high-profile American connected with the
missionaries had been under consideration for some time. The
immediate demand for 25,000 Turkish lira (about $110,000) to release
Miss Stone had been calculated so as to support an erupting
revolutionary situation between the Turkish authorities and their
subjects in Macedonia. The Ilinden Uprising of 1903 was the
manifestation of these troubled times. The ransom was raised by
public subscription in the United States and they were released six
months later.
The drama of the Stone-Tsilka Affair was heightened when the world
learned that Miss Stone’s companion was pregnant (a fact unknown to
the women’s abductors at the time of the capture). The fate of the
women captured the attention and imagination of most of the Western
world and the incident received extensive press coverage. In the
intervening century, chapters of Macedonian and Balkan histories have
been devoted to it.
A resident of Chestnut Street in Chelsea, Miss Stone was away when
the Chelsea Fire of 1908 began. Her brother, knowing she was out of
town and that her home contained many valuable books and manuscripts,
secured a horse and wagon and drove to the house to save whatever he
could. The doors were locked, and while he was battering the door the
structure caught fire. When the door finally yielded the interior was
ablaze and nothing could be saved.
Ellen Maria Stone died on December 13, 1927 in Chelsea, Suffolk
Co., Massachusetts.
