A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Whitman, Sarah Helen
WHITMAN, SARAH HELEN,
Is a native of Providence, Rhode Island. Her maiden name was Power. Her father died when she was a child. Her mother being thus left to the solitariness of a widow's lot, devoted herself with unwearied care to the education of her daughter. The health of Miss Power was constitutionally delicate, while her mental faculties developed with that quickness and brilliancy which surely indicates the predominancy of imagination. Poetry was the favourite literature of her youthful studies, and she soon manifested the propensity, which the Muse will foster in those she elects her votaries, to "write rhyme."
In 1828, Miss Power was married to John W. Whitman, a young lawyer of Boston. The marriage was one of affection, induced by the congeniality of poetical and literary tastes, but the union was in a few years dissolved by the death of Mr. Whitman, whose widow then returned to her mother's arms and her early home, at Providence, where she now resides. Her poetry has appeared in the periodicals and annuals over the signature "Helen," and always excited attention by its richness of imagery, and sweet melodious versification. She has an uncommonly retentive memory, and elaborates her poems in a rather peculiar manner; arranging, correcting, and finishing them as compositions perfectly and wholly in her mind, be they ever so long, before committing a line to paper. By this means she has no unfinished performances; those that she does not complete at once are entirely abandoned.