Caroline Lathrop Post
Caroline Lathrop Post
Caroline Lathrop Post (1824 – 1914) was born Caroline Lathrop in Ashford on November 27, 1824. She would leave town with her family and settle elsewhere in New England, traveling later to Texas, and settling for a significant portion of her life in Springfield, IL. Throughout her long and storied life, she rose to fame as a poet, a passion she developed as a young girl, and as the mother of C.W. Post, the inventor of the modern breakfast cereal.
Mrs. Post’s family was directly descendant from John Lathrop, one of the original settlers of Massachusetts, having arrived in 1632 with Thomas Hooker. The Magazine of Poetry described this in a 1892 publication as Mrs. Post being “born of good old Puritan stock”. Leaving Ashford with her family she settled first in Hartford, then in Pittsfield, MA. It was in Pittsfield that in 1844 she married her first husband, Abner L. Parsons, and later gave birth to her first child, Clarence Lathrop Parsons. By 1846, Mrs. Posts poems began being published many of the popular magazines of the era, including Sunday Magazine, Advance, Golden Rule, Life and Light, and Floral World.
After the tragic loss of her husband and young son in 1849, Mrs. Post returned to her family in Hartford, then ultimately moving to Springfield, IL, where she met and married Charles Rollin Post. The couple would go on to have three sons: Charles William, Aurelian, and Carroll. During this period of her life, Mrs. Post would raise her sons in the arts and the church, yet still find time to continue to write and publish her poetry. It as during this time period that she penned the majority of her literary works.
Mrs. Post had begun writing poetry as a young school girl no older than the age of seven. Between that time and the age of 12, she reports to have amassed quite a library of her own writings. An older sibling found a collection of her verses that were not intended to be read, and this embarrassed the young poet. She was apparently so mortified at having been discovered that she through the manuscript into the fire. Luckily this wasn’t the fate of her later work, and we have a collection of her works to still enjoy today.
In the late 1880’s, Caroline Lathrop Post again moved with her family, this time to Ft. Worth, TX. It was during this later period that she created many of her more lasting works. In 1892, the Magazine of Poetry published a bit of background on the aging poet, along with a small sample of her works. In 1909 she published her most famous work, Aunt Carrie’s Poems, a bound collection of her more than 60 years of arduous literary work. Having lost another sone earlier in the year, Mrs. Post died on October 17, 1914 at the age of 89. She was buried in Springfield, IL.
The following is a poem written by Caroline Lathrop Post and included in the aforementioned Magazine of Poetry. One can image a young women emerging from school after the day’s lessons and gazing out over the bucolic fields of early 19th century Ashford. Struck by the promise of growth and new life, moved to verse by that promise – a promise we still see every year, in those same fields, in that same town, that she knew so many years ago.
SPRING
Spring hath its tender green, its buds and bloom
Scattered o’er meadow lands, with ample room,
On verdant slopes and hill-top’s loftier height
For stronger growth and fruitage of delight
Sources and Additional Resources:
- hhttps://marykatemcmaster.org/WOC/items/show/109
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Lathrop_Post
- https://archive.org/details/magazinepoetrya05unkngoog/page/206/mode/2up
- https://books.google.com/books?id=sW9tNzHdGk4C&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q&f=false