Author: Smith, Sarah Louisa P.
Biography:
SMITH, Sarah Louisa P., formerly HICKMAN (1811-32: WBIS)
There are some mysteries around her naming. She was born in Detroit MI. Her mother was Nancy Binney (Hull) Hickman, whose father William Hull (1753-1825) was the Governor of Michigan at the time of the birth of his granddaughter and whose mother Sarah (Fuller) Hull came from a family with an estate in Newton MA. But there seem to be no records of Mr. Hickman, who must have been the father of the two daughters, Sarah Louisa and Anna Maria, whom Mrs. Hickman later brought back to her family home in Newton to be educated. (The only marriage found on record for Nancy Binney Hull of Newton is to a man named Royal Gurly in 1804, when she would have been 17.) Sarah Louisa Hickman began sending poems to periodicals in her mid-teens. In 1828 she married Samuel Jenks Smith, editor of a periodical in Providence RI. He arranged for the publication of her one collection of verse, Poems, in 1829, identifying the author as S. Louisa P. Smith. (Another mystery is her third given name, P.) The couple left in the same year for Cincinnati OH, where they would have two sons but where Sarah Louisa became ill. The family returned to the east coast, to New York, where he found work as a newspaper editor but she died aged 20. A few of her poems became popular anthology pieces. (findmypast.com 28 Sept. 2020; Appleton; Griswold)
Other Names:
- S. Louisa P. Smith