Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/409

 PRANCES DANA GAGE. Of all the lady writers represented in this volume, none can show a more thor- oughly Western and pioneer origin and training, than Mrs. Gage. Joseph Barker and Captain Dana, were in the first company of settlers from New England, who crossed the Alleghanies in the winter of 1787-8, under the lead of Rufus Putnam, and landed at Marietta on the seventh of April, 1788, thus becoming the founders of Ohio. Joseph Barker married Elizabeth Dana, of which parentage Frances Dana Barker was born, in 1808. The first settlers of Marietta were, in strength of char- acter and for vigor of manly virtues, the most remarkable band of pioneers the West has ever seen. Coming from the flower of such a stock, and reared amid all the stir- ring incidents of such a life of toil, danger and heroism. Miss Barker became early and thoroughly imbued with the romance of the border. Earnest, impulsive, moody and romantic, she grew up amid the magnificent scenery of the Muskingum, a child of nature, most loyal to the hills, woods and waters, in whose inspirations she found her true existence. At the age of twenty years. Miss Barker was married to James L. Gage of McConnelsville, where she settled in a lovely home still overlooking the Mus- kingum, at which place she continued to reside for twenty-five years, rearing a family of six stalwart sons and two daughters. In 1853 the family removed to St. Louis, near to which city has since been their home. Early in the winter of 1859, in company with a relative, Mrs. Gage visited the West India Islands and closely scanned the habits of the people, from her own peculiar stand- point, and on her return prepared several popular lectures on Life in the West Indies, which were largely patronized in northern Ohio, during the spring of 1860, placing the lecturer in the first rank of social female orators, and establishing her reputation as a keen obseiwer of the anatomy of human society. Mrs. Gage early practiced the writing of verses as an h'repressible expression of her peculiar nature. These verses were for some time kept strictly private, and first found their way into the local newspapers through the partial theft of her friends. About the year 1850, the poetical publications of Mrs. Gage began to attract consid- erable attention : these were mostly written for the Ohio Gidtivator, published at Co- lumbus, for which periodical she Avas thenceforth a regular contributor for some years. Between the years 1845 and 1855, Mrs. Gage's muse seems to have culminated, as, from her taste for travel and public lecturing in behalf of various reforms, she has since neglected llie bower of the muses for the platform of public disquisition. Her writing is always the spontaneous gushing of her feeling or fancy. The rhythm is never studied, but measured only by the ear. Mrs. Gage has never concentrated her powers of versification upon the construction of a studied poem, as a representative of her best talent, but thrown off her minstrelsy like the chimes of Easter-bells, making the world welcome to what cost her nothing and must be said. Mrs. Gage is (393)