Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1872-10-16
heath of ssFanny Fern

Fanny Feru" Sarah Payson Willis
Parton-died on the lOth inst. in New
York. with scarcely any preliminary
announcement of her illness. She
was born in Portland Maine, IN 1911,
was married young, suffered rather
severe struggle with poverty and mis-
fortune, and had attained her widow
hood and arrived at nearly forty years
of age before she began to seek sup
uort for her children with her pen.
Her sketches in the Boston OtlUe
Branch, racy, tart, impudent, and
sometimes irreverent, but always COM
bining pathos with fun, were widely
copied, and in year she sprang into
notoriety in all parts of the land.
Fame brought her fortune also, or at
least competency and Independence.
Twelve or fifteen years ago she married
James Parton, and, though he was
eleven years her Junior, the marriage
has been an eminently happy one. One
of her daughters by her first husband
became the wife |of Mortimer Thompson
-"Doesticks now employed on the
Minneapolis Tribune.
Mrs. Parton has been a wonderful
industrious and fertile writer. 1t is
said that, for eighteen years, she has
never missed her weekly contribution
to Bonner's Ledger, and the very last
| number that came to hand contained
one of Ler characteristic articles-a
practical and sensible plea for the COM
Portable arrangement of school benches
and for the liberation of the little stu
dents from all book lessons out of school
The books that Mrs Parton has
published have wide circulation, both
in this country and England. They
are "Fern Leaves" "Little Ferns"
ruth Hall, "The Play Day Book, :"
"Fresh Leaves" "Rose Clark" and
others, and they were mainly compila-
tons of her newspaper articles.
Ruth Hall" was novel in which
the author was supposed to be the her,
oine, and her brother, N. P. Willis, to
be thinly disguised as "Hyacinthe,"
Ruth's brother. This book created a
wide sensation, and considerable
comment which took the form of a con-
troversy, of which the author was the
object the critics Directing that, even
if Nathaniel had abused, snubbed and
neglected her in her poverty, it was
in bad taste to lampoon him before the
eyes of the world and holding him up
as vain fop and dilletant, and heart
less, selfish brute.
The pseudonym of "Fanny Fern"
was always appended to some short,
spicy, sprightly, and sensible bit of
writing. which set forth in graphic and
forcible manner practible point in
human morals or manners that needed
improvement or reconstruction. Her
work in literature has been influential
and beneficial, reaching week by week
q wide class of readers through the
medium of the Ledger, to whose COL
umns she has been restricted by COR
tract with Mr.. Bonner for many years.
Personally, Mrs. Parton is described
as woman of great energy, geniality,
and refinement, the chief attraction in
a home which she made beautiful, hos
pitable, and endeared to its happy in
mates and favored guests. La early
life, we judge from the testimony of
her own pen, her intense and excitable
emotions v ere apt to run away with
her judgment, but as time and sex-
perience, the great moderators of op.
inion and feeling, gave her lessons in
the stern school of life, she sobered in
to the kindly, gracious, warm-hearted
earnest, and generous women whom an
ever widening circle of friends knew
but to admire and love-