Born: 5 March 1824, United States
Died: 17 April 1893
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
Lucy Larcom, Mill Girl, Teacher and Poetess, 1826 – 1893 A.D.
Her birthplace was Beverly, Mass., by the sea. She was next to the youngest of eight sisters. Her father died when she was quite young, and the mother moved to Lowell, which was fast becoming a great mill town.
Here Mrs. Larcom kept a boarding house for the mill girls, her own daughters being among the operatives. But that was home, and quite unlike the mill-town boarding house of to-day.
When Lucy was still quite young, she entered one of the mills as a “doffer,” that is, taking off empty bobbins and putting on full ones.
She had learned to love good books before coming to Lowell, and this taste she cultivated as there was opportunity.
Some kind of a reading and literary club was formed among the mill girls and several of them wrote papers to be read at their meetings. The poet Whittier was then editing a paper in Lowell, and became interested in these young women who were seeking self-improvement.
When about twenty years of age she accompanied a married sister to Illinois, and taught school in vacated log building in a two mile neighborhood. She received forty dollars for three months’ [sic] work. The commiteeman [sic] remarked as he paid her, “That’s a lot o’money [sic] to pay a young woman for three months’ [sic] teachin’ [sic].”
She was enabled to attend the Monticello Female Seminary for three years and then went back to her beloved Beverly. After teaching private classes for a few years, she was called to a position in Wheaton Female Seminary, where she taught for six years with great success.
The strain upon her health was too great and she turned to literary work. For some time she edited Our Young Folks. She also wrote for many of the leading periodicals.
She was a poetess of friendship and nature. Her girlhood days at Beverly, with its seaside and roadsides, largely influenced the substance and style of her writing.
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Lucy Larcom, an American poet, born at Beverly Farms, Mass. Her father dying, her mother removed to Lowell, where she kept a boarding-house for the mill hands, and Lucy, after three years at school, worked in the cotton mills herself.
She wrote for the Lowell Offering, the paper edited by a circle of mill girls, and gained the interest and friendship of Whittier.
In 1866 she became editor of Our Young Folks, since merged in St. Nicholas.
Her writings include Ships in the Mast, The sunbeam, Poems, Childhood Songs, and Wild Roses of Cape Ann.
Her poems of New England life were especially effective, the best known being Hannah Binding Shoes.