# The Poets and Poetry of the West: With Biographical and Critical Notices/Sarah T. Bolton

Sarah Tittle Bolton
SARAH T. BOLTON.
Sarah T. Barritt was born at Newport, Kentucky, in the year 1820. Her father was the youngest son of Lemuel Barritt, who distinguished himself as an officer in the American War for Independence. He was an experienced soldier when the war began. When Earl of Dunmore was Governor of the Colony of Virginia, he conferred upon him the command of an exploring expedition to the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers. Mrs. Barritt, Sarah's mother, was a daughter of one of the Pendletons of Virginia, who was a cousin to James Madison.
When Sarah was about three years old, her father removed to Jennings county, Indiana. His cabin was one of the first, around which the wilderness was broken, in that part of the State. He was not well satisfied with frontier life, and while Sarah was yet a little girl, changed his residence to Madison. There his daughter was given the best education which that town afforded. Before she was fourteen years of age, she wrote verses of which her friends were proud. When not more than sixteen years old, several of her poems were published in a newspaper at Madison, which was edited by Nathaniel Bolton. Writing for the paper led to an acquaintance with the printer, and that acquaintance resulted in marriage.
In the early settlement of Indiana, Mr. Bolton had acquired valuable property, and having assumed responsibilities for others as well as for himself, during the financial disasters of 1837-38, became much embarrassed.
As described by William C. Larrabee, in a biographic notice of Mrs. Bolton written for the Ladies' Repository at Cincinnati:
To extricate himself from his difficulties, he opened a tavern on his farm, a short distance west of the city of Indianapolis. Mrs. Bolton, then scarcely seventeen years old, found herself encumbered with the care of a large dairy, and a public house. To aid as much as possible in relieving her husband from embarrassment, she dispensed with help, and with her own hands, often for weeks, and months, performed all the labor of the establishment. Thus, for nearly two years, this child of genius, to whom song was as natural as to the bird of the greenwood, cheerfully resigned herself to incessant toil and care, in order that she might aid her husband in meeting the pecuniary obligations which honesty or honor might impose. During those long and dreary years, of toil and self-denial, she wrote little or nothing. At last the crisis was reached, the work accomplished, and the bird, so long caged and tuneless, was again free to soar into the region of song.
When Mr. Bolton was enabled to return to Indianapolis, he took possession of a neat cottage, which has ever since been the home of the family. There Mrs. Bolton caught up her long-neglected lyre and gracefully invoked the Muse:
In a notice of Mrs. Bolton's poetry, written for the Columbian and Great West in 1850, William D. Gallagher, alluding to this "Invocation," said:
Her adjuration was answered, and since then (1845) the Muse has been her constant companion. .... Some of her poems are among the most beautiful of the day, and are entitled to an hon- orable place in the poetical literature of her country She sings, not because she has a demand from either the book trade or the magazine trade, but because song is the language of her heart, and she mmt sing, or her heart must ache with its suppressed emotions. She explains all this, truthfully and beautifully, in the following graceful stanzas :
Her power of imitation is very strong. Of all the attempts that have been made to copy the construction and flow of Poe's " Raven," hers is the most successful by far. It occurs in a poem on Poe's Death, and one or two of the stanzas are equal not only to the verse of the " Raven,"' but also to its poetry.
In 1850 the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Free and Accepted Masons of Indiana presented Mrs. Bolton a silver cup, as a prize for an ode written by her, and sung at the laying of the corner-stone of Masonic Hall at Indianapolis. The presentation ser- vices were public. The largest church in Indianapolis was crowded. The Grand H. P, stated the object of the convocation, when James Morrison presented the cup, in an appropriate address. Mrs. Bolton accepted it, with a few words of thankfulness, which the State Sentinel said were "in the best taste, delivered in womanly style, clear and effective."
On the evening of the second of March, 1852, we heard IMrs. Bolton make a speech. Louis Kossuth was then the guest of the State of Indiana. ]Irs. Bolton, who had written a stirring poem to him in 1849, manifested deep interest in his mis​sion to America, and was chosen by the ladies of Indianapolis to present him a purse con- taining one hundred and fifty dollars, which they had contributed. At the close of an address by Kossuth, to a large audience, on the characteristics of the people of Ilun- gary, a committee of ladies, among whom was the wife of Joseph Wright, then Gov- ernor of Indiana, was presented, and Mrs. Bolton, with subdued earnestness of feel- ing, but in clear tones, and with fitting elocution, presented the purse, in a few words which exactly represented the spirit of the last stanza of her poem to the Magyar :
In his response, Kossuth said :
You say that you have prayed for the success of freedom in my native land — I know, for your- self, you have done more than this. You have contributed to that cause your genius — a genius which it is the pleasure of your State to honor and appreciate, I know that there is a chord in the tender heart of woman that ever responds to justice, and that her impulses are against oppression in every land. I entreat you to go on and bestow your sympathy even as the mother bestows her love on her child. Human liberty is well worthy of a mother's fostering care.
Mr. Bolton was appointed consul to Geneva, Switzerland, by President Pierce, in the spring of 1855. Mrs. Bolton and her daughter, Sallie Ada, accompanied him to Eui'ope. They spent the summer of 1856 in Italy, and the autumn of the same year in Germany. In the spring of 1857 Mrs. Bolton and daughter returned to Indiana. They had been home but a few weeks, when a letter was received from Mr. Bolton, which stated that he had been ill, but was convalescent. Mrs. Bolton had serious fore- bodings, and before sunrise, on the morning after the letter had been read, was on her way back to Switzerland alone. She found her husband attending to liis accustomed duties, when she reached Geneva, but his health was not fully i-estored. In the spring of 1858 he returned with Mrs. Bolton to Indianapolisj His family and friends enter- tained strong hope that, in the climate to which he had neai'ly all his life been accus- tomed, he would regain his health. The hope was vain. He died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, on the twenty-sixth of November, 1858. Mr. Bolton was a man of important influence in Indiana. He started the first paper published at Lidianapolis ; was an officer of the Legislature, several terms — had been Register of the Land-office, and for many years State Librarian.
Mrs. Bolton, with a son and daughter, resides still at Indianapolis. She possesses property Avhich affords her family competent support.
Wliile in Europe, Mrs. Bolton wrote graphic letters for the Cincinnati Commercial, and contributed numerous poems to its columns and to those of the New York Home Journal, which were suggested by observations or experiences in Switzerland. She ​publishes rarely now. Her poems have never been collected. We trust she will collect them, and, before another year has elapsed, gratify her friends with a volume.
Mrs. Bolton was well described in an article written for the New York Home Journal, in 1850, by Robert Dale Owen:
With a finely formed head, and ample intellectual forehead, her countenance, without boasting regularity of feature, is of highly pleasing expression, especially when lighted up, as in conversation it usually is, by the bright and cheerful spirit within. Her manners are frank, lively and winning, with little of conventional form and much of genuine propriety about them.
The freedom from conventional form thus ascribed to Mrs. Bolton's manners, is a characteristic arising from the independence and force of character displayed when she abandoned poetic pleasures for domestic duties, and the spirit which then animated her, a spirit worthy of her patriotic ancestors, breathes nobly m many of her poems.
PADDLE YOUR OWN CANOE.
CALL THE ROLL.
WHERE IS THY HOME?
IF I WERE THE LIGHT OF THE BRIGHTEST STAR.
THE FLOWER AND THE STARLIGHT.
DIRGE FOR THE OLD YEAR.
IN MY SLEEP I HAD A VISION.
MONT BLANC.
LAKE LEMAN.
HOPE ON, HOPE EVER.