Gilman, Caroline Howard, 1794-1888

Caroline Howard Gilman (pen name, Mrs. Clarissa Packard; 1794–1888) was an American author. Her writing career spanned 70 years and include poems, novels, and essays.<p>
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She was born Caroline Howard in Boston, Massachusetts in 1794, the daughter of Samuel Howard. She was young when her parents died and grew up with an older sister and brothers.
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She passed her school days at Concord, Cambridge and other towns in her native State of Massachusetts. Despite a poor formal education, she was motivated to teach herself and was granted access to the personal library of her neighbor, Governor Elbridge Gerry.
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She began to write poems and stories at a very early age. Howard's first published work was a Bible-inspired poem called "Jephthah's Rash Vow", which was printed without her permission when she was 16 years old. In 1817, she allowed another of her religious poems, "On the Raising of Jairus’ Daughter", to be printed in the prestigious <i>North American Review</i>.
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In 1819, she married Rev. Samuel Gilman, then a theological student at Harvard University who would later write the institution's alma mater, "Fair Harvard". The couple moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where her husband served as a Unitarian pastor from 1819 to 1858.
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In 1832, she began to edit, at Charleston, a juvenile weekly paper, which she named <i>The Rosebud</i>, and which afterward took the title of <i>The Southern Rose</i>. She contributed to it most of the verses, tales, and novels, which were subsequently published in volumes. Aside from this, the paper contained instructions for young slaveholders, and critical reviews of abolitionist literature. <i>Recollections of a Northern Housekeeper</i> originally appeared in <i>The Rosebud</i>, in 1834; and <i>Recollections of a Southern Matron</i> in <i>The Southern Rose</i>, in 1835 and 1836. These, with <i>Ruth Raymond, or Love’s Progress</i>, and others of her popular works, passed through many editions, and were much admired for “their practical lessons as well as their genial simplicity and humor.” She was the author, for several years, of the <i>Lady’s Annual Register and Almanac</i>, and wrote also a book entitled <i>The Poetry of Travelling in the United States</i>. Her <i>Verses of a Lifetime</i> she gave to the press in 1849, and published her <i>Oracles from the Poets in 1854</i>, and, still later, <i>The Sibyl, or New Oracles from the Poets</i>, the latter “consisting of passages of verse ingeniously arranged to correspond to numbers which are to be taken at random.”
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After Dr. Gilman's death in 1858, she resided for a time at Charleston, Cambridge, and subsequently at Tiverton, Long Island, Nova Scotia with her daughter, Mrs. Charles J. Bowen, and other members of the family circle.
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In 1872, she and her daughter, Mrs. Caroline H. Jervey, published a small book of Stories and Poems for children, for whom Gilman, all through her life, rendered a literary service. Caroline Jervey was also the author of <i>Poetry and Prose for the Young</i>, 1856, as well as the stories, "Vernon Grove,” 1859, and “Hannah Courtenay,” 1866.
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Gilman shared with her husband the toils and satisfactions of his long ministry at Charleston, and shared with him also the gift of song. Several of her hymns have, like his, were used during the service of praise.

Author, Poet. Caroline was the daughter of Boston shipwright Samuel Howard who was one of the original "Indians" in the Boston Tea Party. Her parents died young and she was raised and educated by her sister Ann Marie White. By 1810 she had begun writing and did it rather secretly since young girls of her age didn't express themselves outwardly. However the same year a Boston newspaper published "Jephthah's Rash Vow" a poem her family had secretly submitted. The sixteen year old later stated she was "as alarmed as if I had been detected in Man's apparel." She married Unitarian pastor Samuel Gilman in 1819, and moved to Charleston, South Carolina six weeks later. From 1832 to 1842, she published the first American weekly journal for young people, "Rose Bud" (later the Southern Rose), which circulated from Massachsetts to Georgia and made her the best-known woman writer of the South. Humorous sketches about the management of a middle-class household and its servants, written for the Rose were published in 1834 as "Recollections of a New England Bride". Also in 1934 the first of her volumes "Recollections of a Housekeeper" humorously described the little vicissitudes of early married life. Gilman attributed its great popularity to the fact that "it was the first attempt, in that particular mode, to enter into the recesses of American homes and hearts." Other publications include "Recollections of a Southern Matron" in 1837, a chapter of which English journalist Harriet Martineau included in her "Society in America" in 1837; "The Lady's Annual Register and Housewife's Memorandum Book, 1838, a manual for housekeepers; "Love Progress in 1840", a domestic novel. Her children book's, included "The Little Wreath of Stories and Poems for Children" 1847, and "Verses of a Lifetime" in 1849 which includes descriptions of Southern landscape, dramatic pieces and romantic ballads. Two unusual contributions are "Oracles from the Poets" in 1845 and "The Sibyl, or New Oracles from the Poets" 1847 in which Gilman adapted extracts from the works of poets as a fortune-telling parlour game. "Oracles for Youth" was published in 1852. Perhaps her most popular work was "The Letters of Eliza Wilkinson during the Invasion of Charleston" which documents the British conquest of Charleston in 1780. Her views on gender were progressive, but her position on slavery was not. Although the Gilman's bought, educated and freed several young black men, she justified slavery in her writing and supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her biographer would state that "her prose was of an unaffected and light-hearted character, and her poetry dealt with the beauties of nature and domestic affection, qualities which appealed to the sentiments of the time and which made her one of the most popular women writers of her day". Gilman was reported to be the most famous female author in the South for the quarter century from 1832 to 1857.