The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1877-02-15
MOTHER GOOSE.
Her Biography.

At the Christmas festival.of the Sunday
school of the new Old South Church.
Boston, the Rev. j. NJ Manning made
an address, in the course of which he
stated the interesting fact that Mother
Goose" was not myth, but veritable
person, and a member of the Old South
Church. He said
There are many things in the hi;Sory
OF the Old South Church, BostsA, which
help to make it's name famous. There is
one thing which has not had the recogni-
ton it deserves.
In the list of admissions for the year
1898 occurs the immortal name of Eliza
beth Goose. I almost beg pardon of her
memory for saying Elizabeth, since,
by the unanimous verdict of the world.
in whose heart her name is inshrined.
she is known as Mother" Goose. So,
then, Mother Goose is no myth, as some
have thought, but once lived in Boston,
in veritable flesh and blood, as the records
OF the Old South Church clearly show.
The maiden name of this venerable
ady, mother of us all, was Elizabeth
Foster. She lived in Charlestown-
where she was born-until her marriage,
Then she came to Boston, where her
thrifty husband, Isaac Goose, had green
pasture ready for her, on what is now
Washington street, and including the
land in and about Temple place. She
was his second mate, and began her ma
ternal life as stepmother to ten children.
These all seem to have been lively little
goslings, and to their number she rapidly
added six more. One of these, her
daughter Elizabeth, became the wife of
Thomas Fleet And here is the fact to
which we owe it that her name and fame
are spread through the world. Thomas
Fleet was a printer, living in Pud-
ding lane, a place whose very name
had so savory taste in the dear
old lady's mouth that when Thomas
Fleet became a happy father she
insisted on going to live with him as
nurse of honor to his son and heir. No
doubt she would have been glad to save
Rome, as certain other geese once did
with their cackling, but, lacking the OPP
portunity to do this, she sang her ditties
from morning till night, upstairs and
downstairs and in my lady's chamber"
till her son-in-law became sensibly
alarmed at the fertility of her genius.
Sing she must, however, for was she not
poet, full of the divine fire which re-
fuses to be quenched?
And now it was not a Roman Senate.
but Boston printer, that her persistent
music awakened. A happy thought oc-
CURED to Thomas Fleet. He printed
and sold songs and ballads at his print
ing house in Pudding lane. Was it not
a sign of something good about to come
to him that this precious mother-in-law,
with her endless BOOKINGS and lullabies,
had put herself in his way? He stopped
asking the irrepressible songster to rock
less, and urged her to sing more. And
while she sat in her armchair, or shut
fled about the room lost in sweet dreams,
he carefully wrote down what he could
of rhymes which fell from her lips.
His notes rapidly accumulated, and in
little while he had enough of them to
make volume. These he now printed,
and bound them into book, which he
offered for sale under the following
title: ''Songs for the Nursery or,
Mother Goose's Melodies for Children.
Printed by T. Fleet, at his Printing
House, Pudding Lane, 1719. Price,
two coppers." This title page also bore
a large cut of veritable goose. with
wide-open mouth, showing that the pro-
verbal irreyerence Of sons-in-law is not
a thing Of recent origin.
Such is the true story of Mother
Goose. Her little book started forth on
it's errand. 1t grew and multiplied with
each new edition. It made her dear
name a household word wherever it
went. What shore or fastness has it
not visited Where is the home in
which it's loving rhymes are not sung :?
1t is one of the few books which cannot
grow stale Or be destroyed. Not Homer
or Shakespeare is so sure of immortal
fame as Mother Goose.