Sarah Josepha Hale
American writer and editor (1788–1889)
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 24, 1788 – April 30, 1879) was an American writer, activist, and editor of the most widely circulated magazine in the period before the Civil War, Godey's Lady's Book. She was the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Hale famously campaigned for the creation of the American Thanksgiving holiday and for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Early life and family
Sarah Josepha Buell was born in Newport, New Hampshire on October 24, 1788, to Captain Gordon Buell, a Revolutionary War veteran, and Martha Whittlesay Buell. Her parents believed in equal education for girls. Home-schooled by her mother and elder brother Horatio (who had attended Dartmouth), Hale was otherwise an autodidact.
As Sarah Buell grew up and became a local schoolteacher, in 1811 her father opened a tavern called The Rising Sun in Newport. Sarah met lawyer David Hale the same year. The couple married at The Rising Sun on October 23, 1813, and ultimately had five children: David (1815), Horatio (1817), Frances (1819), Sarah (1820) and William (1822). David Hale died in 1822, and Sarah Josepha Hale wore black for the rest of her life as a sign of perpetual mourning.
“Sarah Josepha Hale” enters the record as american writer and editor (1788–1889). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sarah, Josepha and Hale can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Sarah Josepha Hale” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sarah, Josepha and Hale provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q430639. VIAF identifies the subject as 72222129. The Library of Congress control number is n50018810. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1788, 1879, 1811 and 1813.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sarah Josepha Hale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.