Born in 1838, Ellen Dana was the granddaughter of Ambrose Morell, a Frenchman who served in the French army under Napoleon before escaping to America. Little is known of her life, although she is thought to have been a prominent social figure and a friend of Julia Ward Howe, a noted social activist who wrote ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’ Upon her death in 1913, Ellen Dana bequeathed her East Lexington estate to the Lexington Home for the Aged, which had previously struggled to find a facility. The cost of renovating and maintaining the home and property was too much for the organization, and it was sold in 1916 in order to fund the purchase of 2027 Massachusetts Avenue, which became the location of the Lexington Home for the Aged until 2010. The building was re-named The Dana Home of Lexington in 1970 in honor of the original gift. This portrait of Ellen Dana as a young girl is accompanied by a letter from Elizabeth Harrington, the original founder of the Lexington Home for the Aged, suggesting the establishment of such a place – in her own words, “a Home for such aged people as have no secured home of their own.”