At the insistence of Mary’s brother, Mary brought her lamb friend to the schoolhouse, attracting the attention of her classmates and a minister’s nephew John Roulstone. How could she have come across it?  The explanation in Henry Ford’s book is that the lost poem by Roulstone (who died in 1822, about seven years after supposedly writing it), traveled by word of mouth from Sterling, Massachusetts to Newport, New Hampshire where Sarah was living in 1815. Her opposition to suffrage alienated active feminists. [7][8] The poem was written for children, an audience for which many women poets of this period were writing. Her success in publishing works by so many women enhanced the visibility of women authors. One of the earliest and most influential American magazine editors, Sarah Josepha Hale wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in 1830. Librarians at the Richards Free Library, in Sarah’s hometown of Newport, New Hampshire, have been clearly refuting the story for the last 100 years, in the end contending that a woman of Hale’s renowned integrity would never stoop to plagiarism. [1] Home-schooled by her mother and elder brother Horatio (who had attended Dartmouth), Hale was otherwise an autodidact. The lyrics belong to American writer Sarah … They were a popular item. He bought the Ladies' Magazine, now renamed American Ladies' Magazine, and merged it with his journal. The discussion appeared in an anonymous article in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent Magazine, and continues to be repeated, for instance in the Sterling, Massachusetts Historical Society’s 1981 Mary Had a Little Lamb pamphlet. Mary’s lamb followed her to school one day. ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ has inspired such far-fetched and easily disproved theories, another of which is that a Welsh girl names Mary Thomas (later Hughes) was the original Mary in 1847. In 1830, Poems for Our Children was published. The book also espoused New England virtues as the model to follow for national prosperity, and was an immediate success. The story of Mary Sawyer implies that somehow Sarah Hale came across this never published schoolhouse poem and plagiarized it. The novel made Hale one of the first novelists to write a book about slavery, as well as one of the first American woman novelists. Sarah Josepha Buell was born in Newport, New Hampshire, to Captain Gordon Buell, a Revolutionary War veteran, and Martha Whittlesay Buell. [1] Hale hoped the magazine would help in educating women, as she wrote, "not that they may usurp the situation, or encroach on the prerogatives of man; but that each individual may lend her aid to the intellectual and moral character of those within her sphere". She was the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Henry had not yet invented the automobile, so the distance was considerable. C Everywhere that Mary went, G C Mary went, Mary went, Everywhere that Mary went, G C the lamb was sure to go. "Onward Christian Women: Sarah J. Hale's History of the World", Ryan, Susan M. "Errand into Africa: colonization and nation building in Sarah J. Hale's Liberia. [15] In its day, Godey's, with no significant competitors, had an influence unimaginable for any single publication in the 21st century. She operated a school for seven years before marrying a lawyer and giving birth to five children. His forty page book includes 25 pages embellishing Mary’s “circumstantial story,” (as described on page 12).  But this question will not go away, and for some reason that poem is often all anyone knows of Sarah Josepha Hale, so it must be addressed again. [34], Hale raised $30,000 in Boston for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. [9], Hale founded the Seaman's Aid Society in 1833 to assist the surviving families of Boston sailors who died at sea.[10]. Traditional Music Lyrics by Sarah Josepha Hale C Mary had a little lamb, G C little lamb, little lamb, Mary had a little lamb, G C its fleece was white as snow. Sarah met lawyer David Hale the same year.  She was incredible. Watts, Emily Stipes. As it is, the “Mary’s Lamb Schoolhouse” stands as a physical metaphor for the equally altered and promoted story of the lamb at the school. Just think of them all:  editor of a very popular magazine, publisher of many famous authors, crusader to make Thanksgiving Day a national holiday, successful campaigner to complete the Bunker Hill monument, supporter of innumerable other causes… and at the same time raising five children as a single mother. Her husband died in 1822 and Hale became a writer in order to support her family. Its readership was the largest of its day, boasting over 150,000 subscribers both North and South. At the time, some observers such as Roy Carr and Tony Tyler of New Musical Express presumed the song was recorded by McCartney in response to the BBC ban of his … [5] The novel supported relocating the nation's African slaves to freedom in Liberia. Mary S. Benson, "Hale, Sarah Josepha Buell," in John A. Garraty, ed.. Abby Goodnough, "Living History at National Landmarks: Championing An Unsung Hero", Etsuko Taketani, "Postcolonial Liberia: Sarah Josepha Hale's Africa. Ruth E. Finley, 1931, “The Lady of Godey’s, Sarah Josepha Hale,” … Did Sarah Hale Write 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'? According to one of Hale’s biographies, she took inspiration for the nursery rhyme from her own personal experiences while teaching boys and girls at school near her New Hampshire home. [11] She remained editor at Godey's for forty years, retiring in 1877 when she was almost 90. As stated in her introduction to Poems for Our Children: “I intended… to furnish you [children] with a few pretty songs and poems which would teach you truths, and, I hope, induce you to love truth and goodness.” Children populating the literature of the time were forever making poor choices and drowning. Ruth E. Finley, 1931, “The Lady of Godey’s, Sarah Josepha Hale,” Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., 318pp. [21] In 1860, the Baltimore Female College awarded Hale a medal "for distinguished services in the cause of female education". (Hale is also famous for her role in creating the Thanksgiving celebration). The inclusion of a moralistic ending to poems that begin sweetly was a device of the time; the change in tone does not indicate a different author.  The fact that the “expert” author of the two-styles theory was unnamed, and the theory appeared in Henry Ford’s own magazine, raises significant questions about the validity of the analysis.  There has not been any new expert analysis since that time, just a repetition of the anonymous article.  Those who are inclined to trust the historical accuracy of something supported by the famous Henry Ford may want to read up on the quite shocking editorial approach of Ford’s Dearborn Independent. But she did at some point tell family and friends the story. The book described how while slavery hurts and dehumanizes slaves absolutely, it also dehumanizes the masters and retards their world's psychological, moral and technological progress. For those who need to do further research. Finally, for me, it is interesting to note that my mother, who cared for the bottle-fed lambs on her family’s farm in Putney Vermont in the 1920’s, was named Mary. [3] David Hale died in 1822,[4] and Sarah Josepha Hale wore black for the rest of her life as a sign of perpetual mourning.[1][5]. If we were soon assigned the task of writing a poem (which we were not, Mrs. Heddell was much more interested in math), I suppose many of us would have written about those lambs. [16] Hale died at her home, 1413 Locust Street in Philadelphia, on April 30, 1879. Here’s her … Mary Had a Little Lamb. Born in Newport, New Hampshire, Hale was schooled at home and later by her husband. And so the Teacher turned him out, But still he lingered near, And waited patiently about, Till Mary did appear; On this day, May 24, in 1830, “Mary had a little lamb,” written Sarah Josepha Hale, was published for the first time, as a standalone poem by the Boston publishing firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon. Hope you guys enjoy my new If I Wrote It (IIWI) of Mary Had a Little Lamb. It would have been very out of character for her to steal a poem. "Domesticity and Women's Collective Agency: Contribution and Collaboration in America's First Successful Women's Magazine.". Why he didn’t make an effort to make his schoolhouse resemble the one attended by Mary is a mystery. None the less, there are at least three published accounts of Mary Sawyer’s lamb story, all of them published after her death: – Mary had a Little Lamb, the True Story of the Real Mary and the Real Lamb by Fannie M. Dickerson (1902, Frederick Stokes Company), – The Life and History of Mary and Her Little Lamb by Letitia W. Owen (1913, Davis Press). She called for play and physical education as important learning experiences for children. She wrote that "while the ocean of political life is heaving and raging with the storm of partisan passions among the men of America... [women as] the true conservators of peace and good-will, should be careful to cultivate every gentle feeling". Now it falls to me: I don’t doubt that Mary Sawyer had a lamb that followed her to school.  I don’t even have reason to question that John Roulstone could have written a lamb poem about it.  But there is absolutely no evidence to connect that lamb incident to the poem written by Sarah Hale. During this time, Hale wrote many novels and poems, publishing nearly fifty volumes by the end of her life. Mary Had A Little Lamb is one of many favorite childhood nursery rhymes. Mary Had a Little Lamb Play along with this well-loved rhyme and an adorable lamb puppet! Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 24, 1788 – April 30, 1879) was an American writer, activist, and an influential editor. Liberty Ship #1538 (1943–1972) was named in Hale's honor, as was a New York City Board of Education vocational high school on the corner of Dean St. and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. [28] Each state scheduled its own holiday, some as early as October and others as late as January; it was largely unknown in the American South. [10] Hale also published the works of Catharine Beecher, Emma Willard and other early advocates of education for women. Ideal pets until they abruptly grow into sheep, herd animals with no remaining interest in their human parents.  The little lambs often ended up in school.  When I attended school in Alaska in the early 1960’s, my friend, Royal, brought his two lambs to school one day. The rhyme was inspired by an actual incident when a girl named Mary Sawyer, from Sterling Massachusetts, took her pet lamb to school at the suggestion of her brother. Her initial letters failed to persuade, but the letter she wrote to Lincoln convinced him to support legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863. – The Story of Mary’s Little Lamb, no author. [citation needed] In later years, it meant that Hale particularly liked to publish fiction with American themes, such as the frontier, and historical fiction set during the American Revolution. Mary Sawyer did not make her story public until more than 60 years after the event took place, and did so as part of an urgent fund-raising campaign. [30] The new national holiday was considered a unifying day after the stress of the Civil War. The date when Mary first recognized the poem is unclear, as she did not tell her story publicly until she was an old woman, sixty-one years later, when, in 1876, at age 70, she participated in the successful fundraising effort to save Boston’s Old South Meetinghouse. They are ninety miles apart over the most direct route that would have been followed in 1815. [12] During her tenure at Godey's, several important women contributed poetry and prose to the magazine, including Lydia Sigourney, Caroline Lee Hentz, Elizabeth F. Ellet, Eliza Cook, and Frances Sargent Osgood. The remaining lines, while still sweet, become moralistic and message-driven. In the broad scope of Sarah Josepha Hale’s historical legacy, this is not an important question. There was no avenue for Sarah Hale to have seen or heard of Roulstone’s schoolhouse poem. Perhaps she saw it in the 1857 McGuffey’s Reader. The text as originally published consisted of three stanzas, each of eight lines, although the ABAB rhyming scheme allows each stanza to be divided into two four-line parts. She interpreted the progress of history as based upon the development of Christianity and emphasized how essential women's morality was to Christianity, for she argued that the woman was "God's appointed agent of morality. The same year, Thomas Edison spoke the opening lines of "Mary's Lamb" as the first speech ever recorded on his newly invented phonograph. [12][35] When construction stalled, Hale asked her readers to donate a dollar each and also organized a week-long craft fair at Quincy Market. [40], Hale is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on April 30. Beginning in the 1840s, she also edited several issues of the annual gift book The Opal. It appears that Mary did not save this slip of paper because a poem written in Roulston’s hand has never been produced. As Mary later remembered it, a new arrival wrote the poem/nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb. STERLING, Mass. She is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. It must be noted that no printed copy of a pre-1830 poem about a lamb at school has ever surfaced in the United States. Louis Antoine Godey of Philadelphia wanted to hire Hale as the editor of his journal Godey's Lady's Book. Sheep are very poor mothers.  It is astonishing.  They reject lambs (especially twins); they drop their lambs in unfortunate places and die, leaving the lambs orphaned.  These lambs may be adopted by other sheep, or may need to be bottle-fed.  Bottle feeding a lamb requires the time and attention that most farmers cannot easily spare, so the orphaned lambs are often given to the farmer’s children to raise.  My mother grew up on a sheep farm in Putney, Vermont and talked all her life about the bottle-fed lambs.  They are sweet, wooly things that follow their adopted parents everywhere until they are weaned. The song Mary Had a Little Lamb was written by Buddy Guy and Sarah Josepha Hale and was first released by Buddy Guy in 1968. [1] Her championship of women's education began as Hale edited the Ladies' Magazine and continued until she retired. John Roulstone had just come to town to study with his uncle to prepare … Sarah Josepha Hale first published the poem as Mary’s Lamb in 1830. It is even known to happen today, and it must have been very common during the New England sheep boom of the early 1800’s. She appeared as a conservative who emphasized convention and promoted special and separate roles for women. ", This page was last edited on 29 December 2020, at 19:09. Benson says her editorial policy probably did more for the moral tone of her readers and for their literary judgment. Ten Little Indians. For nearly 50 years she edited an extremely popular women’s magazine. This contradicts Sawyer’s origin story. In 1928 Ford published the author-less The Story of Mary’s Little Lamb, in which he promoted this schoolhouse as the very school to which the famous Mary’s lamb went. The theory is that Roulstone wrote the first twelve lines and Sarah Hale the last twelve.  True, the first twelve lines are more well-known and more appealing to children. She was a member of a succeeding generation of Marys and their lambs. She had many famous quotes of the day that espoused her way of thinking. He used the schoolhouse as an attraction at his Wayside Inn. The Mary had a Little Lamb lyrics were first published by a Boston publishing firm, as an original poem, written by Sarah Josepha Hale in 1830. [26], Hale was a strong advocate of the American nation and union. Baym, Nina. Mary still had some of her lamb’s wool because, she said, she had saved two pairs of socks knitted way back in 1818 from the wool.  Mary’s teacher, who might have recalled John Roulstone’s poem, was long gone, as was John Roulstone. There were likely many Marys and very many little orphaned lambs in New England. And, regarding the Dearborn Independent: where Ford’s version of the lamb story first appeared: Max Wallace; The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and the Rise of the Third Reich. [2] The couple married at The Rising Sun on October 23, 1813,[2] and ultimately had five children: David (1815), Horatio (1817), Frances (1819), Sarah (1820) and William (1822). A childhood poem sprang to mind, and as a result, the first example of recorded verse in history was the poem Mary Had a Little Lamb. "[23][24], Hale, as a successful and popular editor, was respected as an arbiter of taste for middle-class women in matters of fashion, cooking, literature, and morality. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a beautiful rhyme for kids telling the story of a girl who one day is taking her lamb to school. Sarah Hale published her poem fifteen years later in 1830. Local newspapers at the time published many poems, but there is no sign of Roulstone’s anywhere in print. I bet some of those lambs followed her to the one-room school house near her family’s farm in Putney, Vermont.  The tails of those lambs were docked, but my mother did not go around in her old age claiming to be Little Bo Peep. [33], Hale also worked to preserve George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation, as a symbol of patriotism that both the Northern and Southern United States could all support. 10/29/03. It was covered by George Baicea, Michaela Rae, Big Boys Rock and Blues Band, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble and other artists. When Mary’s Redstone Schoolhouse was closed in 1856, it was used as a barn or garage for the  Baptist parsonage in Sterling.  In 1926, almost 40 years after Mary’s death, Henry Ford purchased the cornerstone, some foundation stones, and what remained of the frame from this barn, and incorporated those remains into a schoolhouse he had built in Sudbury. Of Marys and very many Little orphaned lambs in New England Domesticity and women Heritage! 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