Summer began to slowly yield to autumn with an earlier dip of the sun over the New Hampshire horizon and a dip of the mercury on the thermometer. It was a time for harvest, good or bad, one that might meet or fall short of expectations, needs, and wants. No matter that season’s yield, this woman would, along with all the others in her place and time, take a moment, or even a day, to stop and give thanks.
She expected that the state’s governor would, as was custom by this point in time, proclaim when this somewhat annual, yet always changeable, celebration and day of reflection would take place. Despite a life that had brought her so much upheaval of late, and no matter her precarious financial situation, and with all of her recent and still deeply resonating loss, she welcomed the opportunity to find something, anything, for which to be grateful.
With her options severely limited and five young mouths to feed, the woman would do what she had always done. The one thing that brought her some measure of joy.
She was tired.
It was late.
There was a hungry baby at her breast.
Because of her gender she had little standing, but always a foundation on which she was willing to bravely stand. Her options were few. But she had a pen and a purpose and something to say.
And so as she had so many times before, Sarah Josepha Hale sat down to write.
Writing was never a vocation that a young Sarah had actively sought, despite her love of the written word and her rabid consumption of books—one of the few indulgences women were allowed. Even if writing had long been her goal, it was not the kind of calling encouraged in the young women of her time. No, she needed work and she needed money. Life thus far may not have provided her much in the way of opportunity, but it had prepared her well to make do and get by.
Sarah Josepha Buell had spent her childhood in the late 1700s on a farm just outside of Newport, New Hampshire, which sat near the Sugar River. The year she was born, 1788, the recently liberated colonies had yet to elect their first president. Farm life instilled in young Sarah, as it did in many rural folk, a work ethic necessary for survival, especially in the harsh climate of the states’ northern reaches. For Sarah, this drive also likely stemmed from witnessing as a child the struggles endured by her father, Gordon Buell, a Revolutionary War veteran who had fought under General Horatio Gates. Although her father survived those battles, he had returned to his family injured, with the use of his legs badly compromised. This in turn badly compromised his ability to run a farm. So he had long relied on his sons, Sarah’s brothers, Horatio and Charles, to help him.
Sarah also had a younger sister, Martha, named for their mother, and the young women helped their mother run the house. As for her two older brothers, Charles soon set out to sea and Horatio, whom they called “Race,” was left on his own to help Gordon Buell with the manual labor the family’s farm required.
Given that Martha Buell had fed her children’s minds in the best way she knew how—with ample helpings of books—it wouldn’t be a surprise that Race’s aspirations were to pursue college and law, not farming and agriculture. For young women not attending school, reading strongly shaped Sarah’s early years as well.
“Next to the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress,” she later wrote, “my earliest reading was Milton, Johnson, Pope, Cowper, and a part of Shakespeare.” But the book that made the biggest impression on her, at a mere seven years of age, was The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe. “Of all the books I saw,” Sarah added, “few were written by Americans and none by women. But here was a work, the most fascinating I had ever read, always excepting Pilgrim’s Progress, written by a woman. How happy it made me!”
And so Sarah was educated, primarily in the only way a young woman could be at that time—through books and conversation, yes, but also by intellectually piggybacking on the educations of the males in her life, like her brother Race. Race thought it unfair his sister was denied a college education, and what he learned at school, he generously shared with Sarah, including philosophy and Latin. Between her mother’s example and her brother’s encouragement, Sarah’s fertile mind and growing passion for reading and writing had well prepared her for some sort of work outside the home. That is, if she could get it.
Race—with the benefit of traditional schooling—had been preparing to attend Dartmouth, with the intention of becoming a lawyer. Though his attendance there took him away from the Buell household and therefore placed added pressure on Sarah and her younger sister, Race’s visits home to see his family offered Sarah even more advanced opportunities to continue her hand-me-down education.
However, Race’s visits home didn’t give him enough time to provide the assistance Gordon Buell needed in order to keep the farm running, and so it became clear to Sarah’s father that things had to change. He decided he had to seek other, less physically taxing options for work. With his energies waning and his resources drying up, he moved his wife and two daughters into town, where he decided to try his hand as an innkeeper. Gordon Buell opened the doors of the Rising Sun Inn on Newport’s main thoroughfare in 1810. Sarah was twenty-two years old.
Now living in the town of Newport, Sarah, with her mind full of books and a thorough if secondhand education at her disposal, sought work as a teacher. This occupation was still considered primarily a job for men who had had the benefit of formal schooling, but exceptions were sometimes made if the need in the community was there. The nearby town of Guild had just such a need, and Sarah began teaching there to earn money for her family. There she was able to share what she had learned and observe the lives of the youngsters in her care. As she did—as she would continue to do—she made note of what she saw in her tiny schoolhouse day to day, and those experiences would inform her writing for years to come.
Race was away at school, Gordon Buell had his inn, and Sarah had her job. Things in Newport were seeming settled, if challenging. The family had not heard from Sarah’s older brother, Charles, for some time, long enough that he was presumed lost at sea. They all felt Race’s absence. And now, not long after the Rising Sun Inn opened, on November 25, 1811, the Buell family encountered yet another loss. On that day, Sarah’s sister, Martha, died of consumption, or tuberculosis. Adding to the family’s grief, Sarah’s mother passed away shortly thereafter. Now only Sarah and her father remained at home. Without his wife’s efforts and support, and with Sarah now occupied with her teaching responsibilities, Gordon Buell was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the inn.
Living in town also meant that Sarah was interacting with more people and passers-through. And though 1811 had brought loss and turmoil to the household, it also brought something new and exciting to Sarah’s life, in the form of a lawyer named David Hale. Taverns were indispensable locales in a small town: a place to meet; get food, drink, or lodging; find out the latest news. David had come to Newport to open his own law office and shortly after his arrival, the newcomer stopped into the Rising Sun Inn. And there he met Sarah.
David was older than she, but the pair were impeccably well suited to each other. And though Sarah’s father eventually sold the inn, it was there that the pair married on October 23, 1814. Sarah was a day shy of her twenty-sixth birthday. The two moved into a lovely two-story white-painted wooden house on the town’s main street. It had plenty of windows and ample light, and sat across from several small streams that ran through the center of town and created small islets that residents would hop and traverse to get from one side to the other. The pair filled their house with those very objects they both cherished most: books.
Sarah delighted in the evenings she and David spent sitting together to read and discuss the books that filled their shelves. They even devised a nightly program of study, lending goals and purpose to their favorite pastime. From eight in the evening until ten, the couple studied topics like French and botany. In some ways, David had taken up where Race had left off, sharing the benefits of his formal education with Sarah. “In all our mental pursuits,” she later wrote, “it seemed the aim of Mr. Hale to enlighten my reason, strengthen my judgement, and give me confidence in my own powers of mind, which he estimated much higher than I did.” And with David’s encouragement, Sarah had also begun to dedicate more time to her writing. Her observations and notes evolved into poems and short stories. She did not, she would later say, want her personal life in the pages of her works. Yet her personal beliefs, her views, and her passions often infused her characters.
The couple quickly grew their family. While pregnant with her third child, Sarah came down with tuberculosis, and it was feared she and the unborn child would die, victims of a disease that had already struck Sarah’s own family. David refused to accept this. Against doctor’s orders, he took his wife on a tour of New Hampshire. It was late autumn and brisk. David had heard that fresh air was healing and that “frost grapes”—wild grapes exposed to the first frost while still on the vine—were curative. The pair returned home and, somewhat miraculously, Sarah regained her strength and gave birth to a healthy baby. A fourth followed soon after. And since they had seemed to work, Sarah would continue to eat grapes for the rest of her days.
Sarah was now busy taking care of the home and, as her mother had for her, educating her children. David was occupied with his practice and active in the Newport community, and had been elected Worshipful Master of the Corinthian Lodge of the Masons. Sarah’s father, Gordon, had died just five years after his daughter married, so this was Sarah’s family now, save for visits from her brother Race, who, like her husband, was now a lawyer. Growing in experience if not in confidence, Sarah began to take on larger and larger writing projects, with David encouraging her to submit those pieces to the local newspapers or other outlets that might publish them. Sarah’s experiences as a teacher, the settings and rhythms of life in New England, as well as her cherished role as a mother—which she considered her first vocation—informed and inspired some of her earliest writing. And her children comprised her earliest audience. When it was time to put her four youngsters to sleep, Sarah would share her own poetry with them.
“Good night,” she’d say.
Good night—and peace be with you—
Peace, that gentlest parting strain;
Soft it falls like dew on blossoms,
Cherishing within our bosoms,
Kind desires to meet again:
Good night—Good night.
Good night—Good night—but not forever,
Hope can see the morning rise,
Many a pleasant scene before us,
As though angels hovered o’er us,
Bearing blessings from the skies:
Good night—Good night.
Good night—Good night—oh, softly breathe it!
’Tis a prayer for those we love;
Peace to-night and joy to-morrow,
For our God, who shields the sparrow,
Hears us in his courts above:
Good night—Good night.
In 1822, at the age of thirty-three, Sarah was expecting her fifth child. What she was not expecting, not so early into their marriage, not with a child weeks away from being born, was that David would take ill. It was late September, the air was turning cold, and David was returning home from visiting a client. Wintry weather was unexpected on this, an early fall day, but it arrived nonetheless and David found himself caught in it. At first, he was struck by a cold, but then his symptoms advanced. David soon succumbed to pneumonia, an illness Sir William Osler, the father of modern medicine, would later dub “the most fatal of all acute diseases.” And so it was. David did not recover.
Sarah had not yet been married ten years. The couple’s fifth child, William, entered the world just two weeks after his father’s departure from it. Sarah had donned her mourning black for David’s burial at Pine Hill Cemetery in Newport, and she would wear it the rest of her days.
Sarah Josepha Hale was now a thirty-four-year-old widowed mother of five. She had never earned enough of a living from her writing to support a family. “Till my husband’s death . . . I had never seriously contemplated being an authoress,” Sarah later wrote. With a lawyer for a husband, she had not needed to. But as with most paths taken in life, Sarah’s was partially forged by necessity. Now, she needed money.
“My husband’s business had been large for the country,” Sarah wrote later, describing the relative success of a lawyer working outside of a major city such as Boston or New York, “but he had hardly reached the age when men of his profession begin to lay up property and he had spared no indulgence to his family. We had lived in comfort, but I was left poor,” she wrote, adding, “for my children I was deeply distressed. I care not that they should inherit wealth, but to be deprived of the advantages of education was to make them ‘poor indeed.’”
Sarah’s first attempt to rebuild her family’s finances was to go into business with David’s sister Hannah and open a millinery in town. The local Masons, in the wake of David’s sudden death, offered to help set up the pair in a shop of their own. The two women placed an ad in the local newspaper, Spectator, to announce their new business and offerings to the residents of Newport: figured gauze, hats for daily wear, silk mourning bonnets, brown cambrics, headdresses, and more. They assured potential customers they offered “the latest and most assured patterns.” As for payment, they would happily take currency or even feathers. But there was plenty of competition as well. And Sarah simply did not want to make mourning bonnets. She wanted to write.
Nights proved the most opportune time to get writing done. Her days were packed with work at the shop, as well as caring for her four children and newborn William. But she made the most of the time she could spare, and Sarah’s steady commitment to her writing netted her an accumulation of poems that she thought might make a nice collection. Within a year after David’s death, in 1823, and again with the fortunate backing of the Masons, Sarah published The Genius of Oblivion; and Other Original Poems. The title page described the author simply as “A Lady of New Hampshire.” Despite its mediocrity, its publication was a major accomplishment for Sarah. Nevertheless, the book garnered little attention or critical praise. Undeterred, she decided to submit her work to more widely read publications, and almost immediately the United States Literary Gazette, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Boston Spectator and Ladies’ Album snapped up her work. In fact, the latter published seventeen of Sarah’s poems, two short stories, and a review—in one year alone. She was beginning to get noticed. Several of her poems were also included in a popular gift book, The Memorial. Momentum was hers, and she was eventually able to wish her sister-in-law well and leave the millinery behind.
The years of nightly writing soon reaped an even larger reward: Sarah had completed a weighty novel. She sent off the manuscript to one of the country’s major publishing hubs at the time, Boston, and into the hands of, as she later wrote, “a stranger.” Soon after, she traveled to Boston to meet with the publishers at Bowles & Dearborn. The institution agreed to publish her book, and in 1827 Sarah’s first novel, Northwood; or, A Tale of New England, would be in print for anyone who might be interested in reading it. That remained to be seen; depending on what a reader brought to her work and believed, Sarah’s themes would prove either compelling or repellant.
The two-volume Northwood is set in a country divided in experience and views, if not yet officially torn asunder and at war with itself. Part of the saga took place in Sarah’s home state of New Hampshire, while the other part was set in the southern United States on a plantation. Her descriptions of life in New England were much more detailed and nuanced, as she had lived her entire life thus far in the state in which that aspect of the story took place. She—via her characters—upheld life and customs in New England. The language and perspectives of the characters reflected, in many ways, the times in which Sarah lived. Views on slavery espoused by the characters in Northwood ranged from abolitionist to paternalistic to racist, from an abhorrence of slavery to its tolerance—much akin to the growing debate in the United States. Sarah’s decision to write a book presenting in any manner the institution of slavery was practically unheard of in 1827, especially for a woman. (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin would not be published for another twenty-five years.)
Northwood managed to strike enough of a chord with the public to garner Sarah a bit more attention—and to sell some copies. This came as a relief to its author.
“To those who know me,” she would address her readers years later, “it is also known that this was not entered upon to win fame, but a support for my little children. Northwood was written literally with my baby in my arms—the ‘youngling of the flock,’ whose eyes did not open on the world till his father’s were closed in death!”
The book’s success may not have been overly notable, but it appealed to enough readers that it was published in England as well, under the title Sidney Romelee: A Tale of New England.
“The Reader who has suffered, or who is struggling to perform sacred duties,” Sarah wrote, “will rejoice that this work not only succeeded, but that the mode of its success proved it was not unworthy of public favor.”
After the publication of Northwood came reviews of Sarah’s work, letters of congratulations, and a job offer. She received the opportunity to edit a brand-new magazine just for women: the Ladies’ Magazine. The new position, should she accept it, would take her to Boston.
“I had many fears for its success,” Sarah wrote almost a decade later. “No publication of the kind had been long sustained; but the adventure promised advantages in educating my children—and I accepted.”
It was 1828. The railroads were new and connecting the country in ways never previously conceived. Former presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had died on the very same day, July 4, just two years earlier. Only one signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll, still lived. Literate Americans were hungry for print—whether newspapers, magazines, or books. Sarah had reached her fortieth year, and the former teacher and milliner, self-taught poet, and now author would add “editor” to her evolving résumé.
“And thus commenced my literary life . . .”
Other women of the time actively sought publication and achieved success at it, often writing for children. In 1827, Lydia Maria Child was editing and publishing the Juvenile Miscellany, a publication to which Sarah herself had also contributed. Women editors were in a position to not only communicate their own views but embolden other women to do the same. By accepting the job at the helm of the Ladies’ Magazine, Sarah had embarked on an extraordinary journey that would, in many ways, defy the very limitations that she, as a decidedly apolitical individual, never actively sought to change. In the years to come, she would advocate for one overarching cause: education for women. She believed that this was the best way to improve the lives of all women. And now, with a growing audience, she might be able to rally others to do the same.
When Sarah went off to live in Boston, her son David was doing preparatory work in order to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point. Horatio, named for her brother, would live with his namesake in Glen Falls, New York, to further his own education. Her two daughters, Frances Ann and Sarah Josepha, went to live with their uncle Selma, David Hale’s brother, in Keene, New Hampshire. Sarah’s youngest child, William, would accompany his mother to their new home.
One thing was certain. Among the many campaigns she would wage there in the pages of her magazine, there was another that would obsess her for years.
It was a theme a reader of Northwood would already have spotted. The novel had brought Sarah much needed income, much valued expression of her voice, and a new job in a new city. But through the pages of Northwood Sarah had also presented more to the world than views on the North and the South, or a country headed for division. She had also proposed an image of what she considered to be a reason for them to come together. In those pages, in 1827, Sarah put forth an idea that would in time consume her personal and professional lives.
“We should love our native land were it a sterile rock; but we love it better when to our cultivation it yields an ample increase; and the farmer, instead of sighing for foreign dainties, looks up to heaven, and depends on his own labors; and when they are crowned with a blessing, he thanks God, as tens of thousands throughout our State are doing this day. Let us join our voices with theirs.”