Fern, Fanny and Ethel Parton

Pen and ink drawing of Fanny Fern (Sara Willis Parton) by her daughter, Ellen Eldredge Parton, n.d.

Sara Payson Willis Parton, author and newspaper columnist better known as Fanny Fern, was born in Portland, Maine on July 9, 1811 to Nathaniel Willis and Hannah Parker. The fifth of nine children, Sara was educated in Boston and at Catharine Beecher's seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. While still in school she occasionally contributed to her father's periodical for children, Youth's Companion. Willis married Charles Eldredge in 1837. The couple had three daughters, Mary, Grace, and Ellen. After the death of Eldredge in 1846, Willis married Boston merchant Samuel P. Farrington, whom she divorced three years later. After several dismal employment ventures, in 1851 she began writing under the name Fanny Fern for several small Boston magazines. Numerous newspapers soon picked up her humorous pieces. A collection of her writings was published in 1853 as Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-Folio, an immediate bestseller. She married historian and biographer James Parton in 1856. Fanny Fern's other publications include two novels, Ruth Hall (1855) and Rose Clark (1856); and six collections of her columns including Fresh Leaves (1857), Folly as It Flies (1859), Ginger-Snaps (1870), and Caper-Sauce (1872). Her astounding success led to a regular weekly column in the New York Ledger, making her America's first women columnist. Fern's works incorporated wit and impudence, dealing with such topics as domestic problems, equality between the sexes, the double standard of morality, the need for parents to respect willful children, and tomboys. She deplored excessive housework and too large families, encouraged women to seek wider fields of endeavor, poked fun at the august male, and criticized conventional religion. A suffrage supporter after 1858, Fern was a co-founder of New York City's pioneer woman's club, Sorosis, in 1868. Fanny Fern died of cancer in New York on October 10,1872.

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