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Ada Langworthy Collier

COLLIER, LANGWORTHY, BEECHER

Posted By: Sharyl Ferrall
Date: 3/3/2010 at 01:23:15

Collier, Mrs. Ada Langworthy, poet, born in Dubuque, Iowa, 23rd December, 1843, in the first frame house ever built within the present bounds of the State of Iowa.

Her father, a descendant of New England pioneers, was among the very first to explore the lead regions of Iowa, and he was one of the founders of the city of Dubuque. Her mother was a member of an old Baltimore family.

None of the hardships and privation that go with pioneer life were known to the little Ada. The lead mines were a source of wealth to her father and his brothers, and soon a group of spacious brick mansions arose on a beautiful bluff above the city, wherein dwelt the Langworthy households. In one of these Ada grew up, a strong, vigorous, attractive child. In early girlhood she was for a time a pupil in a girls' school taught by Miss Catherine Beecher in Dubuque. Afterward she went to Lasell Seminary, Auburndale, Mass. Having always found she could accomplish anything she chose to undertake, she there thought she could do the last two years' work in one year, and had nearly succeeded, when she was taken ill of brain fever. In spite of that she was graduated in 1861, at the early age of seventeen.

In 1868 she became the wife of Robert Collier, and has since lived in Dubuque. She has one son.

She began to write for periodicals in her girlhood. She is the author of many sketches, tales and short poems, of several novels, and of one long, narrative poem, "Lilith" (Boston, 1885). The last is her greatest work, nor can there be any doubt that she should be accounted a poet rather than a novelist.

~ A woman of the century: fourteen hundred-seventy biographical sketches accompanied by portraits of leading American women in all walks of life; Portraits and biographies of prominent American women; F.E. Willard & M.A.R. Livermore; 1893; pg 192


 

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