A New England Girlhood Outlined from Memory: Outlined from Memory

Lucy Larcom (1824-1893) was an American poet. Larcom was the ninth of ten children. She left Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1835 to work in the cotton mills in Lowell from the ages of 11 to 21. As a mill girl she hoped to earn some extra money for her family. While working at the mills in Lowell, Lucy made a huge impact. She wrote and published many of her songs, poems, and letters describing her life at the mills. Her idealistic poems caught the attention of John Greenleaf Whittier. Larcom served as a model for the change in women's roles in society. In the 1840s, she taught at a school in Illinois before returning to Massachusetts. From 1865 to 1873, she was the editor of Our Young Folks, later renamed St. Nicholas Magazine. Larcom penned one of the best accounts of New England childhood of her time, A New England Girlhood, commonly used as a reference in studying early American childhood. Her relatives live in the Greater Boston area, Tampa area, and Orange County, California.