Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Wakefield, Nancy Amelia Woodbury Priest

WAKEFIELD, Nancy Amelia Woodbury Priest, poet, b. in Royalton, Mass., 7 Dec., 1836; d. in Winchendon, Mass., 21 Sept., 1870. Her maiden name was Priest, and in 1865 she married Lieut. Arlington C. Wakefield. Her fame rests on the popular poem “Over the River,” which first appeared in the Springfield, Mass., “Republican” in 1857. A collection of her poems was published by her mother, Mrs. Francis D. Priest, with a memoir by the Rev. Abijah P. Marvin, of Lancaster, Mass. (Boston, 1871).