Caroline Kirkland
Caroline Kirkland was born in New
York City in 1801, the oldest of eleven children
of Samuel and Eliza Alexander Stansbury. Her mother
was herself a poet and fiction writer, and Kirkland
grew up in a secure middle-class home. She was able
to attend a school headed by her aunt and then,
by becoming a teacher there, to contribute substantially
to her family's income. When her father died in
1822, she in fact became the most important family
provider. At this time she moved her mother and
siblings to Clinton, in upstate New York, where
she was teaching and where she had already met her
future husband, William Kirkland. He was a tutor
at nearby Hamilton College, and with their marriage
in 1828, they began a balanced union of shared interests
and endeavors unusual for its time. They eventually
had seven children, four of whom survived early
childhood.
In 1835 the Kirklands took the adventurous
step of moving to Detroit, at that time little more
than a western frontier town, to head a female academy.
Then, in 1837, William Kirkland bought 800 acres
of land and moved with Caroline and their three
young children to a frontier village, Pinkney, which
he founded and named. The experiment in settling
the frontier was a financial failure, yet it did
provide material for Caroline Kirkland's first book,
an account of settlement life titled A New Home-Who'll
Follow? Appearing in 1839, it found immediate
popularity. The book was a partly satirical look
at the trials of traveling to the West and adjusting
to life in a village like Pinkney told in the voice
of "Mary Clavers." A New Home drew praise
from critics for its 
frankness,
a quality that, unfortunately, her neighbors did
not appreciate. By 1842, following many admiring
reviews, including one by Edgar Allan Poe, the book
had been given two more printings, yet insulted
neighbors, along with worsening finances, made the
Kirklands decide to return to New York City. They
felt, no doubt, some of the disgrace that Kirkland's
character, Harriet Bangle, experienced in "The Schoolmaster's
Progress." Two other books on western life followed
Kirkland's first success: A Forest Life (1842)
and Western Clearings (1845), a collection
of stories that earned especially high marks from
Poe.
In New York the Kirklands moved in
high literary circles, with William becoming an
editor of the New York Mirror and Caroline
opening a girl's school while continuing to write
for the major magazines of the day. William Kirkland's
tragic death by drowning in 1846 left Caroline Kirkland
even more dependent on her writing. The Union
Magazine of Literature and Art, which hired
her as editor in 1847, published through her efforts
some of the most important writers of the day. Her
articles for this magazine and others throughout
the 1840s and 1850s represent an important chronicle
of American society and art. During the 1850s she
published a biography of George Washington for children
and helped her own son, Joseph Kirkland, establish
a literary career. She died of a stroke in 1864.
She had been a quiet champion of women's rights
and a strong opponent of slavery, and at the time
of her death was deeply committed to the Union effort
through her work for the U.S. Sanitary Commission.
-Lucinda H. MacKethan
Photograph courtesy of the Michigan
Historical Society
[Back
to Top]
