Martha Wintermute

Martha Wintermute (September 6, 1842 – January 1, 1918) was an American author and poet whose poems appeared in The Youth's Companion, as well as other papers and magazines.[1] She was a writer of some celebrity, and the author of a volume entitled Eleven Women and Thirteen Men.

Martha Wintermute (1887)

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Early years and education

Martha Vandermark (alternate spellings, Vandemark and Van Demark) was born in Berkshire, Ohio, September 6, 1842.[2][3] She was the daughter of Daniel Van Demark (1805-91) and Sophronia Hitchcock (1808-91), who had married in 1841.[4] Daniel was a son of Benjamin Van Demark, of Holland. He was a descendant of the Symmeses, of Holland, who at an early period settled upon the Island of Barbados, and acquired title to a large portion of it. Sophronia descended from the Puritan stock of New England, and was a member of one of the most distinguished families of Connecticut, being a sister of Samuel Hitchcock, of great celebrity, also of Alma Platt, a literary woman, and the mother of Orvil Hitchcock Platt, a United States Senator from Connecticut.[5] Sophronia's father, Benjamin Hitchcock, of Connecticut, entered the American Revolutionary Army at the age of seventeen years and served to the close of the war. He was the father of Samuel Hitchcock, the philanthropist, and of Benjamin Hitchcock, for many years an author and the editor of the New Haven, Connecticut Palladium. His oldest daughter became the wife of a son of Elbridge Gerry, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and also a Vice President of the United States. Roswell Dwight Hitchcock, the theologian, and Allen Hitchcock, the soldier and author, and Edward Hitchcock, the geologist, were of the same ancestors.[6][7]

Wintermute wrote verses at the age of ten. At the age of sixteen, she wrote a poem entitled "The Song of Delaware," which she brought before the public by reading it on her graduation from the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio.[6][7]

Career

Martha Wintermute, "A woman of the century"

That poem was soon followed by others, which were received with favor by the public. In 1863,[lower-alpha 1] she married Dr. Alfred Wintermute (b. 1825),[1][5] of Newark, Ohio, and for a number of years thereafter, she did not offer any poetry to the public.[6][7]

In 1888, she began the revision and publication of her writings. In 1890, she brought out in a volume entitled Eleven Women and Thirteen Men, a prose story in the interest of temperance, also containing approximately 100 pages of her poetry, revised and corrected.[8][3] After the publication of that volume, she published in the newspaper press a number of miscellaneous poems consisting of Easter Anthems, Decoration Day Poems, verses read before pioneer societies, and some on moral and religious topics.[6][7]

Personal life

The husband practiced medicine for two years at Berkshire and then removed to Newark. In the year 1869, they located on a farm near the old "Fort" within two miles of Newark, and were comfortably situated in a farm residence. They were members of the Baptist Church, and were the parents of four children, named Willard Clyde, Josephine Maud, John Adams and Charles Alfred. A few years later, they moved back to Newark.[5][6][3] Wintermute died January 1, 1918, in Newark.[2]

Selected works

• Eleven Women and Thirteen Men, 1887

Notes

1. According to Ohio Wesleyan University (1886), Martha and Alfred married on January 4, 1863.[1] According to J. P. Wintermute (1900), they married on June 4, 1863.[5]

References

Citations

1. Ohio Wesleyan University 1886, p. 102.
2. "Alfred WINTERMUTE\Martha VANDEMARK". www.windemuth.org. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
3. Herringshaw 1890, p. 153.
4. Daughters of the American Revolution 1925, p. 289.
5. Wintermute 1900, p. 81.
6. Willard & Livermore 1893, p. 792.
7. Moulton 1893, p. 212.
8. Herringshaw 1914, p. 745.

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Daughters of the American Revolution (1925). Lineage Book. The Society.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herringshaw, Thomas William (1890). Local and National Poets of America: With Biographical Sketches and Choice Selections from Over One Thousand Living American Poets (Public domain ed.). American publishers' association. p. 153.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herringshaw, Thomas William (1914). Herringshaw's National Library of American Biography: Contains Thirty-five Thousand Biographies of the Acknowledged Leaders of Life and Thought of the United States; Illustrated with Three Thousand Vignette Portraits ... (Public domain ed.). American Publishers' Association.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Moulton, Charles Wells (1893). The Magazine of Poetry and Literary Review. 5 (Public domain ed.). C.W. Moulton.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Ohio Wesleyan University (1886). Quinquennial Catalogue of the Ohio Wesleyan University, 1842–1886 (Public domain ed.). The University. p. 102.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (Public domain ed.). Charles Wells Moulton.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wintermute, J. P. (1900). The Wintermute Family History (Public domain ed.). Delaware, Ohio: J. P. Wintermute.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)