Author Kate Herrington

HERRINGTON, SMITH, TAYLOR, POLLARD

Posted By: Betty Hootman-Volunteer
Date: 2/25/2014 at 17:44:49

KATE HERRINGTON LIVED IN FARMINGTON, IOWA

One hundred years ago Farmington began to be known as the home of one of America’s most widely read writers, Kate Herrington. She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, Rebecca Herrington Smith. She began her literary work in Louisville, Ky., where she was a regular contributor to the Louisville Journal. In the early fifties she moved to Farmington and in 1858 married Oliver I. Taylor, a New York poet and editor.

After her marriage she moved to Keosauqua, whee(sic) she and her husband edited the forerunner of the State Line Democrat. Later she and her husband moved to Burlington and purchased the Burlington Argus. They immediately changed the name to the Burlington Gazette, a paper that continued until comparatively recent years.

After the death of Mr. Taylor, she returned to Farmington and taught a private school. In 1862, she married James Pollard of Bloomfield. Her methods were the forerunner of many of the present day ‘modern teaching methods’. One of her scholars said of her methods, ‘Who could forget volcanic action when a pot of boiling mush was prepared to illustrate it?’ The children planted gardens and studied the plants for experimentation. She was one of the first, if not the first user of a sand table in her teaching methods.

Many remember the Pollard spellers and readers. The methods outlined in these books influenced and augmented the then new methods of teaching these subjects and have carried over into modern teaching practice.

Her best known work was the book written at the age of twenty-five, “Emma Bartlett or Prejudice and Fanaticism”, a novel which was a fictional reply to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

During her later years she wrote many hymns, some of the becoming very popular, and used by evangelists, such as Ira D. Sankey. In her eightieth year she wrote a thirty-seven page poem, Athea, or The Morning Glory.

She died May 29, 1917 at the home of her son in Fort Madison. She will live as Kate Herrington, the name she always used as an author.

Source: Scrapbook of Unknown Origin, page 63