Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/349

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344
GRISWOLD.
GRISWOLD.

Church, of which her father was for twenty years the rector. Mrs. Griswold began to publish her literary work in 1853. and, though thirty-two volumes have already been published, besides innumerable fugitive articles for newspapers and other periodicals, her fruitful pen is not yet idle. Perhaps the most widely known of her books are the "Bishop and Nanette" series, which, as a carefully prepared exposition of the Rook of Common Prayer, have long been in use in advanced classes of Episcopal Sunday-schools; "Sister Eleanor's Brood," a story of the lights and shadows of a country clergyman's family life, in which the gentle, optimistic nature of the author works in its best vein, and which is understood to figure, under a thin veil of fiction, the actual experience of her mother, and the third book, "Asleep," to whose pages so many have turned for comfort in bereavement. Mrs. Griswold is an ardent Episcopalian, and the church has been from her earliest youth a spur to her glowing imagination and the outlet of her abundant energy. Her Christmas and Easter poems represent her most finished poetic work. She has been twice marriea. After the death of her first husband, Allen N Smith, of Stockbridge, Mass., she became the wife of her distant kinsman, Judge Elias Griswold, of Maryland. Judge Griswold passed the latter days of his life in Brooklyn, N. Y., the home through many years of Mrs. Gris- wold's family, where she still resides. Mrs. Griswold descended, on her father's side, from the Mucklestons of Muckleston Manor, Oswestry, and on her mother's side, from the Brentons of Hammersmith, England. Most of her books were written under the name of F. Burge Smith.


HATTIE TYNG GRISWOLD. GRISWOLD, Mrs. Hattie Tyng, author and poet, born in Boston, Mass., 26th January, 1842. Her father was Rev. Dudley Tyng, a Universalist minister. Her mother's maiden name was Sarah Haines. Both parents were typical New Englanders. They were Universalists, converted by Hosea Ballou, in Boston, in early life, and abolitionist-., even at that period of the great national conflict. Mrs. Griswold's unusual inheritance of the poetic gift and intense practicality combined may be traced as a cross between her father's ideality and her mother's Puritanical attention to actual details. The childhood days of Hattie Tyng were spent in Maine and Michigan until she was eleven years of age. when she went to Wisconsin, which State has been her home ever since. In 1863 she became the wife of Eugene Sherwood Griswold and in Columbus, Wis., their three daughters have been reared. When the "Home Journal" of New York was under the control of N. P. Willis, and the "Knickerbocker" the leading magazine of the country, Hattie Tyng, a mere girl, was a contributor to both. In 1874 she published her first volume of poems, "Apple Blossoms" (Chicago). Her other books are Home Life of Great Authors" (Chicago, 18771, "Waiting on Destiny" (Boston, 1889*, and "Lucille and Her Friends" (Chicago, 1890). None of the women poets of America have written anything more widely known or popular of its class than Mrs. Griswold's short poem, "Under the Daisies." Much of the work of her later years has been in the field of practical philanthropy as well as literature. She has been actively interested in associated chanties, temper- ance and all efforts looking toward the amelioration of suffering and reform of evils. She was a delegate from Wisconsin to the National Conference of Charities in St. Paul, and has read papers that attracted much attention in various Unitarian conferences and in State associations.


GROENEVELT, Mrs. Sara, litterateur, was SARA GROENEVELT. born on the "Bon Dieu," a cotton plantation of her uncle, F. G. Bartlett, which was romantically situated on a bend of the Red river called Bon Dieu, near Natchitoches, La. She is a daughter of Dr.