Submitted by marmorset t3_103zcvo in todayilearned
And now you Know Better.
I've had just about enough of your Vassar bashing, young lady!
someone saw the KB video
So it’s her fault I had to be around my dumbass extended family members every November?
Nope. That’s your fault. Thanksgiving is soooo much better without them, and I speak from experience.
Jim Gaffigan has a bit about this kinda: https://youtu.be/z7bVBc6pN3Y
Mary had a little lamb
She tied it to a pylon
Ten thousand volts went up its ass
And turned its wool to nylon
Mary had a little lamb
It was full of fun and frolics
It tried to jump a barbed wire fence
and ripped off both its bollocks
Mary had a little lamb, It's fleece was black as charcoal, and every time it jumped the fence, You could see it's little eyes roll...
I'm related to the Mary who had a little lamb in that poem.
The Patron Saint of Retail.
People buy food on Thanksgiving, not gifts.
Black Friday Sales would beg to differ.
What if she pushed Thanksgiving and turkeys just to keep people from eating lamb??
You think she pulled the wool over our eyes?
Ewe, sheep puns are baaaaad
Puns are tricky word play, they're like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
I actually bought my first house in sterling, right next to the original house that burnt down
That's so awesome.
Good one!
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This is not true. My Mom told me when I was young that "Mary Had a Little Lamb" came from her pen. She would not tell me a fib. Would she?
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Well, she probably wrote part of the poem, anyway. But the original, and best known, stanza was written in Sterling, Massachusetts by John Roulstone about Mary Sawyer's pet lamb. https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2017/09/14/mary-had-a-little-lamb-massachusetts/
That story is nonsense. It's written to suggest that the tale happened in 1815 and fifteen years later Hale published it as her own poem, but that's not remotely the truth. Hale's poem was published in 1830 and almost 50 years later a woman came forward claiming that she was the Mary in the poem and that a young man visiting the village wrote the poem for her on a slip of paper. She never produced the paper and there's no evidence that Roulstone wrote the poem other than the word of Mary Sawyer.
Roulstone himself died very shortly after having supposedly written the poem, he never wrote anything else and there's nothing tying Roulstone to the poem, Sawyer, or Hale, other than the word of Sawyer. It was never seen or published by anyone anywhere until Hale, a prolific author, journalist, and poet, put it in her book.
There's also no evidence that Mary Sawyer was the Mary in the poem. She came forward with that story only several months before the death of Sarah Josepha Hale.
Wow, you're already quite invested in something you just learned today.
I didn't learn it today, I wrote about it today. I had read about Hale a while ago, I think when I took my family to New England. Last night I happened to see something that reminded me of the story so I found a link and posted it this morning.
Sawyer claimed the story as her own and tried to make a living off of it, selling wool and memorabilia. Sometime after her death Thomas Edison got involved. He'd heard the poem and they were the first words recorded on phonograph. Years later he had a book published supporting Sawyer's unfounded claims.
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Did you find out anything about her faith? Surprisingly it is not obvious. Quaker?
Though she often wrote about religion and morality there's no information about specific religion. Her father's side of the family was from Wales and they appear to have been Baptists, but I couldn't find anything about her mother's side. I suspect if she had been a Quaker that would have been mentioned.
This sub is for things you just learned about today. Not something you’re quite knowledgeable on for awhile.
TIFU by thinking TIL actually meant TIL.
😆
marmorset OP t1_j31ugqe wrote
Her father was a Revolutionary War veteran and a believer in education, which led to her becoming home schooled, unusual for a woman at that time. She worked as a schoolteacher for a time, then in 1811 she married a lawyer and they had five children. Her husband died only eleven years later, leading her to wear black the rest of her life. With support from her late husband's Freemason's lodge, she published a book of poetry. Four years later, in 1827, she released her first novel, one of the earliest novels condemning slavery.
She was then hired as the editor, or "editress" as she called herself, of the influential Ladies' Magazine. Continuing as a writer for the magazine and herself, she released another books of poems, including "Mary had a Little Lamb" based on an experience as a schoolteacher.
Starting in 1846 and over the course of seventeen years and five presidents, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln, she urged that the local New England tradition of Thanksgiving become a national holiday. It became the third national holiday, after Independence Day and George Washington's birthday. It was her menu, described in one of her novels, that became the template for Thanksgiving dinner.
A believer in education, she helped found Vassar College and advocating the hiring of woman as professors and administrators. Hale was also instrumental in raising the funds for the Bunker Hill Monument. Her novels, articles, and poetry were very influential and inspired many women to become writers, publishing some in her magazine. Hale finally retired at the age of 89 and died the next year.