Author: Wolcott, Sarah G.
Biography:
WOLCOTT, Sarah G., later NORTON (1790-1822: findagrave.com)
The eldest of six children of Thomas Goodsell Wolcott and his wife Lucy Hoffman (in some sources Huffman), both of Branford CT, Sarah Goodsell Wolcott is said to have composed her first poem impromptu at the age of three. In 1814 she married Charles R. Norton, a doctor, and moved to Southwick MA. They had a son, Charles, who was born in 1815, but the father died very suddenly of "a mortification"--physical, not emotional--in 1818. Sarah returned to Branford, where she taught school, but she then died in 1822 of a "wasting disease" and was followed by the boy, who suffered from "hip-disease," in 1826. Her sister Eliza Wolcott (q.v.) wrote a family memoir to accompany their joint collection of poems in 1830. (ancestry.com 25 Feb. 2021; The Two Sisters' Poems and Memoirs [1830] 141-50) HJ