Talk:Ethel Lynn Beers

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Ethel Lynn Beers, author, born in Goshen, Orange County, New York, 13 January 1827; died in Orange, New Jersey, 10 October 1879. Her maiden name was Ethelinda Eliot, and she was a descendant of John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. Her earliest writings bore the pen-name of "Ethel Lynn," and after her marriage with William H. Beers she wrote her name as it is now known. Her most noted poem is "All Quiet along the Potomac," suggested by an oft-repeated dispatch during the first year of the civil war. Its authorship was warmly disputed; but, as is usual in such cases, only one of the claimants had written other verses of equal merit. That was Mrs. Beers, and there is now no further doubt as to the genuineness of her title. The lines originally appeared in "Harper's Weekly "for 30 November 1861, with the caption "The Picket Guard." Mrs. Beers says in a private letter : "The poor' Picket' has had so many authentic claimants and willing sponsors, that I sometimes question myself whether I did really write it that cool September morning, after reading the stereotyped announcement ' All Quiet,' etc., to which was added in small type' A Picket Shot.'" The most popular of her other pieces are "Weighing the Baby," " Which shall it be ?" and "Baby looking out for Maine" She had long had a premonition that she would not survive the printing of her collected poems, and she died the same day the volume was issued, "All Quiet along the Potomac, and other Poems" (Philadelphia, 1879).