Maine Women in History Rediscovering Their Lives and Legacies

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, the daughter of David and Sophia Prince, was born Aug. 12, 1806, in North Yarmouth, Maine. At 16, she married Seba Smith, 31, a Portland newspaper editor who is best known for his fictional character Maj. Jack Dowling. The Smith household was a busy place, as not only did they have six sons, they also provided room and board to many of the newspaper’s apprentices and printers. In addition to her domestic responsibilities, Elizabeth also contributed poems and sketches to the Eastern Argus and acted as editor when her husband was in Boston on book publishing business. Her writing was either published anonymously or over the initial “E.”

By the late 1830s, the Smiths experienced bankruptcy as the result of bad investments and the 1837 financial panic. Elizabeth’s first novel, “Riches Without Wings, or The Cleveland Family” (1838), focuses on the panic’s effect on the characters. The Smiths then moved to New York City to board with family members and to continue their writing careers. Now identifying herself as either Mrs. Seba Smith or the pseudonymous Ernest Helfenstein, Elizabeth contributed poems and stories to a number of popular magazines such as Godey’s Lady’s Book and Graham’s Magazine.

During the 1840s, Smith continued to publish poetry and articles in literary magazines. Two of her most well-known poems are “The Sinless Child” and “The Acorn.” Her poem “Heloise to Abelard” is available online. Her second novel, “The Western Captive,” was published as a two-part series in the “New World” magazine in 1842. She also published “Jack Spanker and The Mermaid” (1843), “The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith” (1845), and “The Salamander: a Legend for Christmas, Found Amongst The Papers of The Late Ernest Helfenstein” (1848), a supernatural tale and her third novel.

She also wrote children’s stories: “The Dandelion” (1843), “The Moss Cup” (n.d.), and “The True Child” (1845).

Smith became a public proponent for women’s rights with the publication of “Woman and Her Needs,” first published as a series of newspaper articles in the New York Tribune and then as a pamphlet in 1851.

During the 1850s, she continued her book publishing but also lectured extensively throughout the eastern United States on women’s rights, religious issues and abolition. Books published during that decade were: “The Lover’s Gift: or Tributes to the Beautiful” (1850), a poetry gift book; “Shadow Land, or The Seer” (1852), whose subject was dreams; “Hints on Dress and Beauty” (c.1851); “The Newsboy” (1854), a novel set in New York City slums; and “Bertha and Lily; or, The Parsonage of Beech Glen, A Romance” (1854), a fictional treatment of social and religious problems.

During the 1860s Smith wrote dime novels for the Beadle Publishing Co. Smith’s best-known dime novels, which are series of inexpensive paperbacks that contained sensational and exciting tales, were “Black Hollow” (1864); “Bald Eagle: or, The Last of the Ramapaughs: a Romance of Revolutionary Times” (1867); and “The Sagamore of Saco” (1868).

Although Smith wrote an autobiography, “A Human Life,” it was never published. She died Nov. 15, 1893. In 1924, the Lewiston Journal Co. published “Selections from the Autobiography of Elizabeth Oakes Smith,” edited by Mary Alice Wyman.

Sources: Biographical information provided by the Waterboro Public Library’s online Maine Writers Index. Not all books by the authors listed in the index are available at the Waterboro Library. Maine writers who want to be listed on the index are invited to e-mail librarian@waterborolibrary.org.

An excerpt from the 1,600-line poem, “The Sinless Child,” by Elizabeth Oakes Smith, New York: J. S. Redfield, 1846, originally published serially in “The Southern Literary Magazine” in 1843:

Young Eva said, all noisome weeds

Would pass from earth away,

When virtue in the human heart

Held its predestined sway;

Exalted thoughts were alway hers,

Some deemed them strange and wild;

And hence in all the hamlets round,

Her name of SINLESS CHILD.

Her mother told how Eva’s lips

Had never falsehood known;

No angry word had ever marred

The music of their tone.

And truth spake out in every line

Of her fair tranquil face,

Where Love and Peace, twin-dwelling pair,

Had found a resting-place.

She felt the freedom and the light

The pure in heart may know-

Whose blessed privilege it is

To walk with God below;

Who see a hidden beauty traced,

That others may not see,

Who feel a life within the heart,

And love and mystery.

Maine’s history is full of female pioneers who blazed a path for the women of today. The Bangor Daily News, in cooperation with the Maine Historical Society’s online museum Maine Memory Network, the Maine FolkLife Center and others, will highlight a different woman each day throughout March. If you are just joining us for this series, you may find the installments you have missed at www.bangordailynews.com. Elizabeth Oakes Smith (portrait), an accomplished lecturer and writer, wrote a four-part account of her August 1849 adventure of being the first woman on record to climb Mount Katahdin. The account appeared on Page 2 of the Portland Daily Advertiser on Sept. 12, 15 and 26, and Oct. 8, 1849.

This portrait, circa 1851, is attributed to Jared Flagg (1820-1899).

Click it For more information visit www.mainememory.net for the Mount Katahdin stories and other correspondence www.waterborolibrary.org for Maine Writers Index Northeastern Illinois University Library at www.neiu.edu