Lake City Grapic
Lake City, IA
September 14, 1893

LITTLE WOMEN

Death of the Original of Louise Alcott’s Well-Known “Meg” Although Mrs. Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt, who has just died in Concord, says the Boston Transcript, was never in any manner connected with public life and work as her famous sister and father were for many years, there is a sense in which she has been very closely connected with thousands who have never saw her. For she was the original of “Meg,” the sweet eldest one of the four “Little Woman” who have been like sisters to all the young girls of America since they first appeared in literature. And many women who used to know “Meg,” “Joe, “ “Beth, “ and “Amy” almost as well as their own sisters, and who rejoiced in “Meg’s” brave industry and endearing womanliness and happy home life, will feel a pang at the loss of a familiar flesh and blood friend of schoolgirl days, in learning that “Meg, “ too, has followed her sisters into that silent land. “Beth” died first, as in the story, then the bright and talented “Amy,” and only a few years ago Louise Alcott, at once the prototype and creator of “Jo, “ laid down her busy pen. The children of Mrs. Pratt were not the boy and girl who figure as “Daisy” and “Demi” in the stories of the Marches, but two sons, whose place of occupation in the world in the publishing house whence came “Little Men,” and the rest of Louise Alcott’s books. The younger one took the name of John Alcott legally in deference to Louise Alcott’s will. The eldest son is E. Alcott Pratt. His little son bears the name of Bronson Alcott, in accordance with the wish of his paternal grandmother. Mrs. Pratt, whose funeral recently was in Concord, the quiet town associated with so much of the fortunes of our American literature.