Ellen Hale and Hale Family papers, circa 1860-1952

Writer, publisher, and clergyman Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) and his wife, Emily Perkins Hale, were well regarded members of Boston society. After graduating from Boston Latin School at age 13, Hale enrolled directly into Harvard University and graduated second in his class in 1839. He became a licensed Unitarian minister in 1842 and was a church pastor from 1846 to 1899. In the 1860s, Hale began publishing short stories in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, and other periodicals. In 1869, he co-founded the Christian Examiner, which later merged with Scribner's Magazine in 1875, and founded Lend a Hand in 1886. He and his wife had one daughter and eight sons. Three of those sons died in childhood, and a fourth, Robert Beverly Hale, died as a young adult.

Writer and artist Susan Hale (1833-1910) was schooled at home by tutors before enrolling in George B. Emerson's school. She was a self-taught artist who learned to paint and draw early in life. In 1872, she traveled to Europe to pursue formal art instruction and, upon her return to Boston, began giving lessons in watercolors. From 1873 to 1885, she maintained a studio at the Boston Art Club, wrote articles for Boston papers, edited literary collections for fundraisers, lectured on popular fiction, and eventually became a literary celebrity. Beginning in the mid-1880s, Hale began traveling the country and abroad giving lectures in the winter and visiting Edward Everett's family in Matunuck, Rhode Island in the summer. In between her travels, she continued to publish books, including a traveling series for young readers, and an instruction book on painting techniques.

Artist and teacher Ellen Day Hale (1854-1939) was the eldest of the Hale children. She received her early art training from her aunt, Susan Hale, and received formal art training from Boston artists William Rimmer, William Morris Hunt, and Helen Knowlton. Hale continued her education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1877, opened a portrait studio where she taught private students. In the early 1880s, Hale traveled through Europe before settling in Paris to study at the Académie Julian for three years. In 1883, she met fellow artist and lifelong companion Gabrielle de Veaux Clements. In 1893, they purchased a home near Gloucester, Massachusetts named "The Thickets," where they opened their studio to women artists and taught various painting, printing, and etching techniques. After the death of her mother, from 1904 to 1909, Hale moved to Washington, D.C. to act as hostess for her father, who had been appointed Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. After her father's death, Hale continued to produce paintings, and together with Clements, summered at the artists' colony at Folly Cove on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and frequently traveled abroad in the winters.

Arthur Hale (1859-1939) was a general agent for the American Railway Association and an employee of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In 1899, he married Camilla Conner, with whom he had one daughter.

Architect Herbert Dudley Hale (1866-1908) graduated from Harvard in 1888 and studied architecture abroad at the École des Beaux Art in Paris, where he graduated among the first in his class. After his return to Boston around the turn of the century, Hale married Margaret Marquand, with whom he had five children, and established the architecture firm Hale and Rogers with James Gamble Rogers.

Writer Robert Beverly Hale (1869-1895) graduated from Harvard in 1892 and published numerous stories and articles in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Weekly, and Youth's Companion. Elsie and Other Poems was published in 1894, and Six Stories and Some Verses was published posthumously after Hale's death in 1895.

Artist Lillian Westcott Hale (1881-1963) was the wife of fellow artist Philip Leslie Hale, the third eldest of the Hale children. Hale received a scholarship to attend the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, where she met Philip and married him halfway through her studies. Hale held her first solo show in 1908, the same year her daughter was born, and continued to produce work for exhibitions through the 1920s. She was the recipient of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition gold medal, the National Academy's Shaw Memorial Prize (1915), and the National Academy of Design's Altman Prize (1927). She continued producing works until her death in 1963.