Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/513

 CELIA M. BURR. Celia M. Bure was born in the town of Cazenovia, New York, about the year 1825. She was the adopted child of Henry and Sarah Tibbitts, of whom she speaks with loving kindness as persons of unblemished integrity of character. Her educa- tion was mainly acquired at the district school-house, a mile distant from her home. More liberal opportunities were offered her for a short period, at a popular Seminary, when she became a school-teacher, and was successfully employed in that capacity until her marriage, in January, 1844, to C. B. Kellum, then a citizen of Albany, New York. Soon after marriage Mr. Kellum removed from Albany to Cincinnati. There Mrs. Kellum began her literary career. Adopting the signature Celia, she wrote prose and verse which were acceptable to leading papers. In 1849 she became the literary editor of the Ch~eat West, a weekly journal of large size and of popular char- acter, which E. Penrose Jones had established in 1848. Mr. Jones was the leading member of the firm of Robinson & Jones, booksellers and pubhshei'S, who were agents for literary journals printed in Boston and New York, with editions for the western market dated at Cincinnati, Louisville, or St. Louis. The success of Robin- son & Jones as agents induced them to become legitimate proprietors. Judiciously conducted and liberally advertised, the Great West attained a large cir- culation in all the Western States. All the prominent writers of the Ohio Valley were paid contributors, and Mr. Jones was able to show that the West could have as good a literary journal of its own, as those New York and Philadelphia publishers sought to provide for it. In March, 1850, the Great West was united with the Weekly Columbian, a paper of like character, which had been in existence a few months. The product of this union, The Columbian and Great West, published by E. Penrose Jones and edited by William B. Shattuck, was eminently successful until September, 1853, when it was suspended on account of embarrassments growing out of a Daily Columbian. Sprightly letters written for the Great West by Mrs. Kellum as "■ Mrs. John Smith," were much admired and widely circulated by other literary papers. When the Great West and Weekly Columbian were united, Mrs. Kellum was engaged as a regular contributor ; and she afterward wrote for the JVew York Tribune, for G7'a- ham's 3Iagazine, and other literary periodicals published in eastern cities. Having obtained a divorce from her husband, Mrs. Kellum married, in 1851, C. Chauncey Burr, Avho is well known as a lecturer and writer. This marriage proving uncongenial, Mrs. Burr separated from her husband and returned to the profession for which she had fitted herself in early life. She is now a teacher in the University of the Swedenborgian Church, at Urbana, Ohio. (497) 32