Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/383



Sarah T. Barritt was born at Newport, Kentucky, in the year 1820. Her father was the youngest son of Lemuel Barritt, who distinguished himself as an officer in the American War for Independence. He was an experienced soldier when the war began. When Earl of Dunmore was Governor of the Colony of Virginia, he conferred upon him the command of an exploring expedition to the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers. Mrs. Barritt, Sarah's mother, was a daughter of one of the Pendletons of Virginia, who was a cousin to James Madison.

When Sarah was about three years old, her father removed to Jennings county, Indiana. His cabin was one of the first, around which the wilderness was broken, in that part of the State. He was not well satisfied with frontier life, and while Sarah was yet a little girl, changed his residence to Madison. There his daughter was given the best education which that town afforded. Before she was fourteen years of age, she wrote verses of which her friends were proud. When not more than sixteen years old, several of her poems were published in a newspaper at Madison, which was edited by Nathaniel Bolton. Writing for the paper led to an acquaintance with the printer, and that acquaintance resulted in marriage.

In the early settlement of Indiana, Mr. Bolton had acquired valuable property, and having assumed responsibilities for others as well as for himself, during the financial disasters of 1837-38, became much embarrassed.

As described by William C. Larrabee, in a biographic notice of Mrs. Bolton written for the Ladies' Repository at Cincinnati:

To extricate himself from his difficulties, he opened a tavern on his farm, a short distance west of the city of Indianapolis. Mrs. Bolton, then scarcely seventeen years old, found herself encumbered with the care of a large dairy, and a public house. To aid as much as possible in relieving her husband from embarrassment, she dispensed with help, and with her own hands, often for weeks, and months, performed all the labor of the establishment. Thus, for nearly two years, this child of genius, to whom song was as natural as to the bird of the greenwood, cheerfully resigned herself to incessant toil and care, in order that she might aid her husband in meeting the pecuniary obligations which honesty or honor might impose. During those long and dreary years, of toil and self-denial, she wrote little or nothing. At last the crisis was reached, the work accomplished, and the bird, so long caged and tuneless, was again free to soar into the region of song.

When Mr. Bolton was enabled to return to Indianapolis, he took possession of a neat cottage, which has ever since been the home of the family. There Mrs. Bolton caught up her long-neglected lyre and gracefully invoked the Muse: ( 367 )