American poetess; born in Beverly, MA, in 1826. When she was twelve years old her father died, and her mother established a factory boarding-house in Lowell. After spending about three years at school she became a factory-hand in a cotton-mill. During that time she contributed to the Lowell Offering a series of parables. At the age of twenty she went to Illinois, where for three years she studied in Monticello Female Seminary. On her return to Massachusetts she was employed six years in the Norton Female Seminary, and later taught classes in the Boston schools. An acquaintance with the poet Whittier ripened into friendship which has become famous in literary circles. She was for a time editor of Our Young Folks, a Boston magazine. Her publications are Ships in the Mist (Boston, 1859); Poems (1868); An Idyl of Work (1875); Childhood Songs (1877); Wild Roses of Cape Ann, and Other Poems (1880). She died on the 15th of April 1893.
