Woodworth, Samuel, , Massachusetts 1784 1842 Male Dramatist Journalist Poet playwright, poet, and journalist, was born in Scituate, Massachussets, the son of Benjamin Woodworth, a Revolutionary soldier, and Abigail (Bryant) Woodworth, and a descendant of Walter Woodworth, freeman of Scituate in 1640.
Because his family was poor and the educational advantages of Scituate were meager, young Woodworth had but a desultory schooling.
During this time he frequently published verses in the newspapers, and in 1805-06 edited a juvenile paper called the Fly, in which John Howard Payne [q. v. ] seems to have had a part.
Expressing his bitterness towards Connecticut in a satirical poem called New-Haven, he set forth for Baltimore, where he also stayed but a brief time.
He proceeded in 1809 to New York, which now became his permanent home.
The next year (1819) he established the Ladies' Literary Cabinet, but in 1820 withdrew as editor for "want of patronage. "
Though this periodical continued for many years, Woodworth himself, for some unknown reason, severed his connection with it at the close of the first year.
Three years later (1827) he made one further journalistic venture in the Parthenon, which had but a brief run.
To these periodicals and to the press at large Woodworth was a frequent contributor of poetry over the signature "Selim. "
Yet little has survived save "The Bucket" ("The Old Oaken Bucket") and "The Hunters of Kentucky. "
In 1816 he also published a novel, The Champions of Freedom, the scenes of which were drawn from the War of 1812.
The success of this play was due chiefly to his creation of the Yankee character, Jonathan Ploughboy.
Another drama, King's Bridge Cottage (1826), "written by a Gentleman of N. York, " has sometimes been attributed to him.
In spite of every effort to eke out an existence, he was repeatedly reduced to poverty.
Finally in February 1837 an attack of apoplexy, resulting in paralysis, incapacitated him for further work.
Though his works sometimes reveal a certain asperity of character, the result, in part, of his failures fully to adjust himself to the world of action, yet he was in the main amiable, and had a reputation for great honesty.
[Sources include preface to The Poems, Odes, Songs of Samuel Woodworth (1818); memoir by G. P. Morris, in The Poetical Works of Samuel Woodworth (2 vols. , 1861); E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyc.
of Am.
Lit.
(1855), II, 70-71; Critic, Jan. 24, Mar. 7, 1829; N. Y. Mirror, Mar. 1, 1828, July 29, Oct. 28, Nov. 11, and Dec. 2, 1837, and Dec. 17, 1842 (obituary); Evening Post (N. Y. ), Nov. 2, 1837; Autograph Album (N. Y. ), Apr. 1934; A. H. Quinn, A Hist.
of the Am.
Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (1923); O. S. Coad, in Sewanee Rev. , Apr. 1919; information furnished by Kendall B. Taft, who is preparing a biog.
of Woodworth.
For family hist. , see Samuel Deane, Hist.
of Scituate, Massachussets (1831), and Vital Records of Scituate, Massachussets (1909), I, 418, II, 335.
For a fairly complete bibliog. , see P. K. Foley, Am.
Authors (1897).
Important Woodworth MSS.
are in the N. Y. Pub.
Lib.
and the colls.
of the Hist.
Soc.
of Pa. ]
During these years of experimentation he also published two Swedenborgian magazines, the Halcyon Luminary (1812 - 13) and the New-Jerusalem Missionary (1823 - 24).
In 1817 he became the editor of a newspaper called the Republican Chronicle, but the following year he retired from the editorship.
Although his first play, The Deed of Gift (1822), was a somewhat feeble comic opera on a domestic theme, and his second, La Fayette (1824), was of no lasting importance, his third attempt, The Forest Rose (1825), was "one of the longest-lived American plays before the Civil War" (Coad, post, p. 166).
He at once entered the printing business, and on Sept. 23, 1810, married Lydia Reeder (New-York Evening Post, Sept. 24, 1810), by whom he had a large family.
But this failing, he became editor in 1823 of the New York Mirror, which his friend, George P. Morris q.v., had just founded.
