Born: 1 September 1791, United States
Died: 10 June 1865
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Mrs. Sigourney, Lydia Howard Huntley
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Lydia Huntley Sigourney, an American writer, born in Norwich, Conn.
She was one of the first women in America to plan for higher female education, and in 1809 established a girls’ school in Norwich.
Later she directed a school in Hartford, Conn., until her marriage in 1819 to Charles Sigourney, a merchant of that city.
She was a prolific writer on many subjects, producing about fifty volumes of prose, poems and selections, many of which attained wide popularity.
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
Lydia H. Sigourney, American Writer of Prose and Poetry, 1791 – 1865
Norwich and Hartford, Connecticut, are respectively the places of her birth and death. As a child she was precocious in acquiring knowledge, and studied at Hartford and Norwich schools. In both cities she established and conducted select schools for young ladies as early as 1814.
In that 1815 she published a volume, Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse, and from that time she became one of the most popular American poets.
She wrote extensively in many departments of thought, but all her works had a distinctly moral and religious tone. In her Letters of Life which was published after hear death, she mentioned forty-six separate works which she had published, besides two thousand articles contributed to three hundred periodicals.
In charitable and philanthropic work she was always active, giving not only largely of her means, but also devoting much of her time and energy to the cause of humanity. Her interest in education, also, continued unabated throughout her entire life. So the world is interested to know that she was not a mere poetic dreamer, sitting apart from a suffering world.
We mention a few of her works: Trails of the Aborigines of America, Sketch of Connecticut Forty Years Since, Letters to Young Ladies (which had a run of twenty American and five English editions), Letters to Mothers, Past Meridian.
In 1840, Mrs. Sigourney visited Europe, and two volumes of her verses were issued in London.
She married a Hartford Merchant, Charles Sigourney, in her twenty-eighth year and with him led a life of ideal domesticity.
Mrs. Sigourney was sometimes accused of being an imitator of Mrs. Hemans, but we doubt whether the imitation was deliberate or conscious. With similarity of taste and sympathy it is not surprising that there should be a similarity of thought and expression; the feeling of religious devotion and moral elevation is a common heritage, and often finds expression through different persons in like symbolism.