Author: Randall, Thomas
Biography:
RANDALL, Thomas (1778-1869: WBIS)
He is known to a few reference works as "the poet of Eaton" because the title-page of his one book refers to him as "resident of Eaton, New Hampshire." The Preface inside, written by Benjamin R. Jordan of Parsonsfield ME who transcribed the poems and prepared them for the press, is more illuminating. It calls Randall an "Etonian" poet despite his "illiteracy." (He may not have been entirely illiterate since Jordan reveals also that he corrected some of his editor's words, insisting on an idiomatic rather than a literary vocabulary.) Randall was born in Lee NH, married Lydia Mathes (1779-1866, also of Lee) in 1798, moved to Parsonsfield in 1800, but later farmed in Eaton NH, where he lived for the rest of his long life. They had five children, among them a son who is included with them and with his own wife and two children as residents on the farm in the 1850 Federal Census. (ancestry.com; Herringshaw; J. W. Dearborn, A History of . . . Parsonsfield, Maine [1888] 399)