After her husband’s death, she went with her children to the old town of York, in the District of Maine, and thither the young New Hampshire minister repaired to find, in her daughter, his future helpmeet. She was a beautiful and very animated woman, with fine taste, much wit, and unusual conversational powers. Among her rejected admirers were those who have since become Judges, and otherwise “potent, grave, and reverend seigniors.” The calm, studious, sober minister, was her choice; and, in an humble country cottage, she reared her little brood of children.
But afflictions came. Ill health and mental disquiet, the conflict of a speculative mind with venerated creeds and cherished belief, impaired the energies of the father. And then the dark cloud, that had cast its gloom over Handkerchief Moody’s life, and settled in blackness over the close of her father’s, cast its fearful shadow upon the mother’s mind; and, through her, a sombre shade upon her family. Some years after, the mental sun broke through this cloud, and shone for a long time within the homestead; then again came the sad eclipse which, in this world, may never pass away. During the interval of brightness, came the tenth, and last, of the household band, more than half of whom have been taken away.
Harriet Farley was the sixth of these children. She was born amidst the beautiful scenery of the Connecticut valley, but educated, principally, in the quiet town of Atkinson, New Hampshire, where her father was both pastor of the parish and preceptor of the academy.
Prior to her fifteenth year, her advantages were good for obtaining an English and classical education. But she often expresses her regret that these advantages were not duly appreciated; that she was deprived in a great measure of a mother’s influence, and gave to light literature and social enjoyment too much of the golden hours that should have been devoted to more solid intellectual acquisitions.
At the age of fifteen the truth came home to the poor minister’s daughter, that upon herself she must henceforth depend for her subsistence. School teaching, sewing, straw plaiting, and shoe binding, were successively tried, but none suited; and so she went to the factory. Here she perseveringly laboured for several years, returning home when the sick or dying required her presence, and once leaving the mills for several months to attend school.
In 1840 the “Improvement Circle” was established, to which she became a constant contributor. Soon after, the establishment of the “Lowell Offering” disseminated the knowledge of these mill-girls’ efforts throughout our own and other countries. Though the work first attracted attention as a mere literary novelty, it was not destitute of intrinsic merit; and the writers were stimulated by praise and patronage. Miss Farley was invited to edit the third volume, a task which she combined with mill-labour. With editorial labours she combined the care of the “Home Department,” in publishing the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes.
