Here’s her … As a young poet and writer, Hale moved to Boston in 1828 to become the editor of the first … Nothing indicates two authors. While there are affidavits attesting to the fact that Mary Sawyer’s lamb came to school and a lamb poem was written (for instance, one in Henry Ford’s publication, another by a schoolmate in the Joplin News Herald January 15, 1927, and other second-hand memories by Mary Sawyer’s relatives who were not there, but recall her telling the story), no direct participants recall the words of that child’s schoolhouse poem. The fact that a child named Mary in rural Massachusetts had a lamb and brought it to school is sweet, but not remarkable, especially for those times. [38], Hale was further honored as the fourth in a series of historical bobblehead dolls created by the New Hampshire Historical Society and sold in their museum store in Concord, New Hampshire. STERLING, Mass. The edition included “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The author was Sarah Josepha Hale, a well-known writer and editor. 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. 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 poem, written by an American teacher and author named Sarah Hale (1788-1879) was published … She operated a school for seven years before marrying a lawyer and giving birth to five children. [22], Hale worked endlessly to uplift the historical memory of outstanding women. Richard Walden Hale, “Mary Had a Little Lamb and It’s Author,” Century Magazine, March 1904, 738-742. The texts are taken to be discoveries of a first person narrative. "[19], Hale became an early advocate of higher education for women,[20] and helped to found Vassar College. He bought the Ladies' Magazine, now renamed American Ladies' Magazine, and merged it with his journal. 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. 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. 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. Hale said the event of Mary’s lamb and John inspired her to write the poem, although some still believe that Hale and Mary were one and the same. [40], Hale is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on April 30. Meanwhile, Blanche starts to regret having written sympathetic "love" letters to a man in jail. 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. Among her 50+ books were several editions of Woman's Record: Sketches of All Distinguished Women, from the Creation to A.D. 1854 (1855) it had 2500 entries that made an encyclopedic effort to put women at the center of world history. Her other accomplishments are far greater than the authorship of one poem published in a small book of poems for children. Louis Antoine Godey of Philadelphia wanted to hire Hale as the editor of his journal Godey's Lady's Book. [6] She agreed and from 1828 until 1836 served as editor in Boston, though she preferred the title "editress". Song facts “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a song recorded by Wings and released as their second single in May 1972.It is based on the traditional nursery rhyme of the same name. The Roulstone lamb poem was supposedly written in 1815 when Mary Sawyer was a student in a one-room school house and her sheep was still a lamb. [9], Hale founded the Seaman's Aid Society in 1833 to assist the surviving families of Boston sailors who died at sea.[10]. The history of the Mary Had a Little Lamb song goes back to the early 1800s, and is quite possibly based on a real incident involving Mary Sawyer and her pet lamb. She appeared as a conservative who emphasized convention and promoted special and separate roles for women. "Godey's Lady's Book: Sarah Hale and the Construction of Sentimental Nationalism. There were likely many Marys and very many little orphaned lambs in New England. She named them and dressed them in clothes. Our teacher, Mrs. Heddell, finally turned them out. Although it is widely believed to be an English rhyme, "Mary Had A Little Lamb" was actually written by an American schoolteacher turned novelist and magazine editor. Mary sold autographed cards, tied with a piece of old sock yarn, to support the renovation. Local newspapers at the time published many poems, but there is no sign of Roulstone’s anywhere in print. 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. In 1823, with the financial support of her late husband's Freemason lodge, Sarah Hale published a collection of her poems titled The Genius of Oblivion. Godey's published house plans that were copied by home builders nationwide. [1] Home-schooled by her mother and elder brother Horatio (who had attended Dartmouth), Hale was otherwise an autodidact. The first two are largely the same. During this time, Hale wrote many novels and poems, publishing nearly fifty volumes by the end of her life. 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. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1978: 94. 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. It was adapted from Mary Had a Little Lamb (Buddy Guy and Sarah Josepha Hale). [35][36] Hale "made sure the 221-foot obelisk that commemorates the battle of Bunker Hill got built."[35]. Sarah Josepha Hale first published the poem as Mary’s Lamb in 1830. The book also espoused New England virtues as the model to follow for national prosperity, and was an immediate success. The girls try to reconcile a pregnant teenage girl and her father. [15] In its day, Godey's, with no significant competitors, had an influence unimaginable for any single publication in the 21st century. Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And every where that Mary went The lamb was sure to go. ", Sommers, Joseph Michael. “Ten Little Indians” should set off alarm bells in your head already -- why … [1] For example, Hale believed that women shaped the morals of society, and pushed for women to write morally uplifting novels. The remaining lines, while still sweet, become moralistic and message-driven. 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. [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. It would have been very out of character for her to steal a poem. 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. 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. It is a simple poem, published with clear authorship. In May of 1830, a woman by the name of Sarah Josepha Hale published the three verses, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," in her collection, Poems for Our Children. The next day he is said to have handed Mary a slip of paper upon which he had written a poem about her lamb. As Sarah Buell grew up and became a local schoolteacher, in 1811 her father opened a tavern called The Rising Sun in Newport. By 1883, Sarah Hale’s poem was so well known that any school child (or adult) could easily write it from memory. Henry Ford was a promotional genius with lots of money. Sarah Hale in 1830 was a successful, prolific author and editor; she abhorred plagiarism. ‘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. 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. 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 Henry Ford version is driven by his promotion of the schoolhouse and so expands on the simple story, adding much argument about the poem’s heroine and its author. In the broad scope of Sarah Josepha Hale’s historical legacy, this is not an important question. [41], A box of her correspondence, containing 28 folders, is in the collections of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.[42]. [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. It was part of a small book of children’s poems entitled Poems for Our Children. “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. "Mary Had a Little Lamb". [11] She remained editor at Godey's for forty years, retiring in 1877 when she was almost 90. Mary Had a Little Lamb written by Buddy Guy English July 26, 1968 Mary Had a Little Lamb written by Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney English May 29, 1972 Mary Had a Little Lamb written by Lowell Mason English In 1830, when Mary Sawyer was 24, Sarah Josepha Hale’s poem was published in Poems for Our Children.  Sometime after its publication, Mary Sawyer saw Sarah Hale’s poem, and thought it must be her lamb (after all, her name was Mary) and the poem must be Roulstone’s. 2 in Sterling, Massachusetts.  That same day a ten year-old boy, John Roulstone, Jr. (1805-1822) was visiting the school. [13] Other notable contributors included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, William Gilmore Simms, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. [citation needed], According to Mary Benson, American intellectuals considered Hale to be well within the bounds of propriety and certainly not a troublemaker. Mary Had a Little Lamb. A lamb or two in school is just not unusual in a farming community. Her success in publishing works by so many women enhanced the visibility of women authors. She is clearly named as the author of these poems on the title page. Hale wrote no fewer than seventeen articles and editorials about women's education, and helped make founding an all-women's college acceptable to a public unaccustomed to the idea. 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. While the lamb was outside the class, John Roulstone, a young man who had newly arrived in Boston in order to study and prepare for college, witnessed the event and wrote a poem about it: Mary had a little lamb; Its fleece was white as snow; And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go. In addition to founding the first national women’s magazine, Godey’s Ladies’Magazine, and successfully campaigning to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, she was inspired to write the rhyme by an actual case of a child’s being followed to … ‘Mary was my cousin, her full name was Mary Elizabeth Sawyer.’ Very conveniently, Mary Sawyer had written a complete account, at the age of eighty-eight. ", This page was last edited on 29 December 2020, at 19:09. Did Sarah Hale Write 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'? Hale famously campaigned for the creation of the American holiday known as Thanksgiving, and for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. 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. She used her pages to campaign for a unified American culture and nation, frequently running stories in which southerners and northerners fought together against the British, or in which a southerner and a northerner fell in love and married. Her advocacy for the national holiday began in 1846 and lasted 17 years before it was successful. Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And every where that Mary went The lamb was sure to go; He followed her to school one day— That was against the rule, It made the children laugh and play, To see a lamb at school. C Everywhere that Mary went, G C Mary went, Mary went, Everywhere that Mary went, G C the lamb was sure to go. [25] Hale did not support women's suffrage and instead believed in the "secret, silent influence of women" to sway male voters. 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.  Who would want to buy that?  These cards sold because she said she was the famous Mary and the yarn was the famous Mary’s lamb’s wool. Hale adamantly opposed slavery and was strongly devoted to the Union. Sarah Josepha Buell was born in Newport, New Hampshire, to Captain Gordon Buell, a Revolutionary War veteran, and Martha Whittlesay Buell. by Rita Smith.  Mary finally wrote the poem she attributed to Roulstone down as she remembered it, in her own hand, in 1883. (We know this date from the facsimile of a letter Mary wrote in 1889, found on page 12 of The Story of Mary’s Little Lamb, published by Henry Ford in 1928.) He used the schoolhouse as an attraction at his Wayside Inn. [31] Before Thanksgiving's addition, the only national holidays celebrated in the United States were Washington's Birthday and Independence Day. Poems about lambs written by children must have been commonplace during the sheep boom also. "[27], Hale may be the individual most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States; it had previously been celebrated mostly in New England. 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". She had many famous quotes of the day that espoused her way of thinking. [29] In support of the proposed national holiday, Hale wrote presidents Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, and Lincoln. Hope you guys enjoy my new If I Wrote It (IIWI) of Mary Had a Little Lamb. 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. [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. His forty page book includes 25 pages embellishing Mary’s “circumstantial story,” (as described on page 12). Benson says her editorial policy probably did more for the moral tone of her readers and for their literary judgment. The style of Sarah Hale’s poem is in keeping with the times and with her stated goals for her children’s poems. In 1829, Hale wrote, "Physical health and its attendant cheerfulness promote a happy tone of moral feeling, and they are quite indispensable to successful intellectual effort. In 1830, Poems for Our Children was published. In 1823, with the financial support of her late husband's Freemason lodge, Sarah Hale published a collection of her poems titled The Genius of Oblivion. Sarah met lawyer David Hale the same year. Sarah Hale published her poem fifteen years later in 1830. Her opposition to suffrage alienated active feminists. Henry Ford’s book explains that the two towns were close to each other. 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