This week’s column: Sarah had a mighty pen

Sarah Josepha Hale was born October 24, 1788 in Newport, New Hamsphire.
She was the third child born to Captain Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell.
Her early education was from her mother, but later on she was an autodidact, or self-taught.
She married Freemason and lawyer David Hale in 1813 and continued her self-education.
She was widowed in 1822 with five children, four under the age of seven.
But in 1823 she published her first collection poems entitled, “The Genious of Oblivion” with support from her husband’s Freemason lodge.
She then went to work from 1827 to 1836 as the editor of Lady’s Magazine.
She later served as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, publishing only American manuscripts, from 1837 to 1877.
She was a champion of equal education for women and was the first to start a day care nursery for working women.
Before her death in 1879, she published over 50 differnet volumes of her work, including her most famous work, the nursery rhyme entitled, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
Hale wrote the poem in 1830 and most believe the nursery ryhme was based a true story about a young friend of Hale’s who owned a pet lamb that she took to school at the suggestion of her brother.
Although some debate has been given as to whether Hale wrote the entire poem or if part of the poem was written by a schoolmate, Hale is still credited with its authorship.
In 1877 Thomas Edison recited the first stanza of the rhyme while testing his phonograph, making it the first audio to be recorded and played back succesfully.
But despite her many accomplishments, her greatest and possibly least known accomplishment was in persuading President Abraham Lincoln to create Thanksgiving as a National Holiday.
In her letters to President Lincoln, Hale encouraged him to have the, “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.”
Hale had championed the cause of Thanksgiving from as early as 1827.
“Thanksgiving like the Fourth of July should be considered a national festival and observed by all our people,” she wrote. “There is a deep moral influence in these periodical seasons of rejoicing, in which whole communities participate. They bring out . . . the best sympathies in our natures.”
Before war broke out in 1861, Hale believed Thanksgiving would help bring the country back together and keep us from the insanity of fighting each other.
“If every state would join in Union Thanksgiving on the 24th of this month, would it not be a renewed pledge of love and loyalty to the Constitution of the United States?” she wrote in 1859.
But President Lincoln did not declare the national holiday until 1863, after the War of the States had ravished the country.
Yet still, Hale had accomplished the goal she had set before her so many years before.
With thousands of handwritten letters, one lady made a difference in a country torn by war.
And now as we look back, maybe this Thanksgiving we’ll remember to give thanks to God and pray that He will continue to heal our nation and keep us from the insanity of fighting each other.