Lucy Larcom

LARCOM, Lucy. b. Beverly, Massachusetts, 5 March 1826; d. Beverly, 17 April 1893. The ninth of ten children, she worked from the age of 13 in the cotton-mills at Lowell, Massachusetts, to which she moved on the death of her father, a sea captain. She became an elementary school teacher, and was then trained at Monticello Female Seminary at Alton, Illinois (1849-52). She continued to work in education. She was a friend of John Greenleaf Whittier*, and wrote a poetic tribute to him for the commemorative volume at Amesbury, in which she described him as ‘A simple, noble, unpretending man/ Who built his life upon his Maker’s plan’. According to JJ (p. 1661) she helped Whittier in some...