Sarah Bolton

September 15, 1841 (age 74)

Farmington, Connecticut, United States

Her pen was early busy; Sarah wrote verses, publishing some of them at the age of fifteen, and she had a passion for biographical writing. After graduating in 1860, she went with a Prof. Tenney to teach school in Natchez, Missouri. Forced to return by the outbreak of the Civil War, she taught for a time in Meriden, Connecticut. At the age of twenty-three she brought out a volume, Orlean Lamar and Other Poems (1864), of which one reviewer said "Very well to have written but a great mistake to have published. " She next produced "Wellesley, " a novel on the insurrection of Kossuth, which was published in the Literary Recorder in 1865. In 1866 Sarah married Charles Edward Bolton of Cleveland, Ohio, a man of congenial humanitarian interests. They were drawn more and more into the temperance movement, and in 1874 they took a prominent part in the Woman's Temperance Crusade in Ohio. Mrs. Bolton also wrote for the cause a book called The Present Problem (1874), but only 250 copies were sold. The next two years she spent in Europe, making a study of higher education for women and of the methods used by employers to better the condition of their employees. On her return she read an influential paper on the latter subject before the American Social Science Association at Saratoga. Mrs. Bolton nevertheless found time for voluminous writing. In addition to two more volumes of didactic, sentimental poetry, From Heart and Nature (in collaboration with her son, Charles Knowles Bolton, 1887) and The Inevitable and Other Poems (1895), she published several works of fiction, and a long series of books designed to assist in popular education, their character indicated by titles such as Poor Boys Who Became Famous (1885), Girls Who Became Famous (1886), Famous American Statesmen (1888), Famous Men of Science (1889). Written with enthusiasm and a vigorous narrative power, these biographical works perhaps merited the large sale which they obtained. A reformer to the last, Mrs. Bolton rounded out her life by devoting herself to the welfare of the animals she had loved in youth. She was chiefly responsible for the Ohio law stopping the sport of pigeon-shooting and on several occasions she deterred the Cleveland city council from waging war on the faithful dog.

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The Story of James Watt and the Steam Engine (Annotated)

(Originally published in 1890 as a portion of the author’s...)

Lives of Girls Who Became Famous

(All of us have aspirations. We build air-castles, and are...)

Rembrandt: A Brief Guide to His Life and Work

(Originally published in 1890 as a portion of the author’s...)

Originally published in 1890 as a portion of the author’s larger “Famous European Artists,” this Kindle edition, equivalent in length to a physical book of approximately 30 pages, describes the life and work of seventeenth century Dutch painter Rembrandt. Note: This Kindle edition is text only; reproductions of Rembrandt’s paintings are not included. Sample passage: In September 1641 a son was born to Saskia, Titus, named for her sister Titia van Ulenburgh. The latter died the same year. On the 19th of the next June, Saskia was buried from the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, leaving her son, not a year old, and her husband, to whom her loss was irreparable. This year he had completed his greatest work, “The Night Watch,” now in the Amsterdam Museum, and stood at the very zenith of his fame. From this time, while he did much remarkable work, he seems like a man on a mountaintop, looking on one side to sweet meadows filled with flowers and sunlight, and on the other to a desolate landscape over which a clouded sun is setting. With Saskia died the best of Rembrandt. Before her death he had painted various pictures of himself, all joyous, even fantastic, sometimes as a warrior, sometimes with jeweled robes and courtly attire. Now for five years he made no portrait of himself, and then one simple and stern, like a man who lives and does his work because he must. “The Night Watch,” or the “Sortie of the Banning Cock Company,” represents Captain Frans Banning Cock’s company of arquebusiers emerging from their guild-house on the Singel. Amicis says of it, “It is more than a picture; it is a spectacle, and an amazing one. All the French critics, to express the effect which it produces, make use of the phrase, ‘C’est écrasant!’ (‘It is overpowering!’) A great crowd of human figures, a great light, a great darkness—at the first glance this is what strikes you, and for a moment you know not where to fix your eyes in order to comprehend that grand and splendid confusion. About the author: Sarah Knowles Bolton (1841-1916) was an American writer of biographical sketches, children’s books, and poetry. Other works include “Famous Men of Science,” “Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous,” and “Famous Voyagers and Explorers.”

A Brief Biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(Originally published in 1887 (just five years after Longf...)

Famous European Artists

The Story of Ferdinand Magellan

(Originally published in 1893 as a portion of the author’s...)

A Brief Biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Annotated)

Famous American Statesmen

Sarah Knowles Bolton Edit Profile

social activist writer

Background

Sarah Knowles was born on September 15, 1841, at Farmington, Connecticut, United States, of distinguished New England stock. Her father, John Segar Knowles of Connecticut, was descended, through his mother, Mary Carpenter, from Elizabeth Jenckes, sister of Joseph Jenckes, governor of Rhode Island 1727-1732, and through his father from Henry Knowles, one of the earliest settlers of Portsmouth, Rhode Island; her mother, Elizabeth (Miller) Knowles, had among her ancestors, Nathaniel Stanley, treasurer of Connecticut Colony; Col. John Allyn, secretary of the colony and historian of the Pequot War; and Col. William Pynchon, one of the incorporators of Massachusetts Bay Colony. On the Knowles side the family had been Quakers for generations. Sarah Knowles passed her childhood at Farmington, Connecticut, where her fondness for pets, particularly hens, laid the foundation for her later interest in animal welfare. Losing her father when she was eleven, she and her mother went to live with an uncle, Samuel Miller, and later she resided with another uncle, Col. H. L. Miller, an able lawyer of Hartford, Connecticut. Here she became acquainted with Lydia Sigourney and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Education

Sarah graduated from the Hartford Female Seminary in 1860.

Career

Her pen was early busy; Sarah wrote verses, publishing some of them at the age of fifteen, and she had a passion for biographical writing. After graduating in 1860, she went with a Prof. Tenney to teach school in Natchez, Missouri. Forced to return by the outbreak of the Civil War, she taught for a time in Meriden, Connecticut. At the age of twenty-three she brought out a volume, Orlean Lamar and Other Poems (1864), of which one reviewer said "Very well to have written but a great mistake to have published. " She next produced "Wellesley, " a novel on the insurrection of Kossuth, which was published in the Literary Recorder in 1865.

In 1866 Sarah married Charles Edward Bolton of Cleveland, Ohio, a man of congenial humanitarian interests. They were drawn more and more into the temperance movement, and in 1874 they took a prominent part in the Woman's Temperance Crusade in Ohio. Mrs. Bolton also wrote for the cause a book called The Present Problem (1874), but only 250 copies were sold. The next two years she spent in Europe, making a study of higher education for women and of the methods used by employers to better the condition of their employees. On her return she read an influential paper on the latter subject before the American Social Science Association at Saratoga.

Mrs. Bolton nevertheless found time for voluminous writing.

In addition to two more volumes of didactic, sentimental poetry, From Heart and Nature (in collaboration with her son, Charles Knowles Bolton, 1887) and The Inevitable and Other Poems (1895), she published several works of fiction, and a long series of books designed to assist in popular education, their character indicated by titles such as Poor Boys Who Became Famous (1885), Girls Who Became Famous (1886), Famous American Statesmen (1888), Famous Men of Science (1889). Written with enthusiasm and a vigorous narrative power, these biographical works perhaps merited the large sale which they obtained.

A reformer to the last, Mrs. Bolton rounded out her life by devoting herself to the welfare of the animals she had loved in youth. She was chiefly responsible for the Ohio law stopping the sport of pigeon-shooting and on several occasions she deterred the Cleveland city council from waging war on the faithful dog.

Achievements

Sarah Bolton was famous through her poems, children's books, and biographical sketches. Her writings reflected her belief in the ability to better one's world through faith and hard work. She was also active in the temperance and other reform movements, including animal rights. She served as secretary of the Woman's Christian Association and assistant corresponding secretary to Frances E. Willard in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.