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Lucy Larcom was born in 1826 by the seashore in Beverly, Massachusetts, the second youngest of eight sisters. When she was quite young, her father died and her mother moved the family to the mill town of Lowell. Here Mrs. Larcom kept a boarding house for the mill girls, making it more than just a boarding house, but a home. When Lucy was a bit older she entered one of the mills as a “doffer”. A “doffer” was one who took off empty bobbins and put on full ones.
Lucy loved books and literary pursuit. Before coming to Lowell she had learned to love good books and she took advantage of every opportunity to expand her studies. While she worked at the mill some kind of reading and literary club was formed by the mill girls and several of them wrote papers to be read at the meetings. It was then that the poet Whittier was editing a paper in Lowell and became interested in these young women who were thirsting after knowledge.
When Lucy was about twenty years old she traveled to Illinois with a married sister. There she taught school in a vacated log building. She received forty dollars for three months of work, which was thought to be a good wage.
After finishing this job she received the opportunity to attend the Monticello Female Seminary for three years. Upon finishing her education at this institution, Lucy returned to her home town of Beverly to teach. 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 much success.
Maintaining a teacher’s schedule proved too much for her and her health began to fail. She then turned to literary work. She edited “Our Young Folks” a leading periodical of the day and she also had work published in other publications.
Lucy was a poetess of friendship and nature. Her girlhood days at Beverly, with its seaside and beautiful scenery, pervaded the content and style of her writing.
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