User:Tricia Gilson/MySTB

Sarah T. Bolton (Sarah Tittle Bolton, née Barrett (18 December 1814–5 August 1893)), an American poet and Indiana's "pioneer poet," is best known for her poem “Paddle Your Own Canoe” (1850). An activist for women’s rights, she worked with Robert Dale Owen during Indiana's 1850–1851 Constitutional Convention to include the recognition of women's property rights. Her husband Nathaniel Bolton (25 July 1803–26 November 1858) co-founded Indianapolis’s first newspaper, the Gazette, and was Indiana State Librarian from 1851 to 1854.

Early life
Sarah T. Bolton was born Sarah Tittle Barrett on December 18, 1814 in Newport, Kentucky. She was the oldest child of Jonathan Belcher Barritt (1778–1855) and Esther Pendleton Barritt (b. 1790). Bolton’s parents were from the East Coast, and nothing is known about when they came to Kentucky. Her mother, Esther Pendleton (of Virginia), was the daughter of James Pendleton (b. 1751) and was U.S. President James Madison's first or second cousin. Bolton's father was born in Hagerstown, Maryland to Lemuel Barritt (1722–1814) and Sarah Tittle (1774–1814); he was named after Lemuel Barritt's friend Jonathan Belcher, the colonial governor of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.

Bolton was one of six children, and public records suggest only she and her sisters Beth Pendleton Barrett (1814–1893) and Missouri Tittle Barrett (1826–1883) survived to adulthood. When she was three years old, her family moved from the busy city and military post of Newport, Kentucky about 75 miles west to a homestead along Sixmile Creek near the city of Vernon in Jennings County, Indiana. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century accounts of Bolton’s life emphasize the rugged conditions in which her family lived, describing their family’s farm as belonging to the wilderness where the family saw almost no other people.

From 1817 to 1823, the family lived in this remote area where her father cleared the land for farming. Although they lived six miles from the town of Vernon, their life was not one of total isolation as some sources have suggested. Jonathan Barritt was an active member of the Vernon community serving first as Captain and later as Colonel of the local militia, and in 1819 he became an associate judge on the Jennings County Circuit Court. There were, however, no opportunities for the Barrett children to attend school, and so in 1823 they moved to Madison, Indiana, a city about 25 miles south of Vernon in Jefferson County. Located on the Ohio River, Madison was the state’s most “thriving” city. As Bolton recalled in 1888, the family’s move to Madison resulted in her father’s financial ruin after the business he had entered into on the advice of Milton Stapp, future Lieutenant Governor of Indiana, failed.

She was a remarkable student despite her late start and is said to have learned to read and write in eight weeks. Bolton attended Bumont Parks’s academy with future Lieutenant Governor of Indiana Jesse D. Bright. To supplement her studies, Jeremiah Sullivan, future Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, gave her access to his library. She studied Latin and was reading Virgil’s Aeneid until social pressures dictating that women should not have such literary aspirations forced her to abandon those studies. Her first published poem appeared in the Madison Banner when she was fourteen or fifteen. Every week she published a poem in newspapers in Madison and Cincinnati until she was married.

Nathaniel Bolton
Her poems drew the attention of Indianapolis newspaper editor Nathaniel Bolton, and they married in Jennings County, Indiana on October 16, 1831. Riding horseback some eighty miles, Nathaniel and Sarah Bolton moved to Indianapolis.

Nathaniel Bolton, born July 25, 1803 in Chillicothe, Ohio (then the capital of Ohio), was a printer by trade, and when he married Sarah, he had been the owner and editor of the Indianapolis Gazette since 1824. Bolton learned the printing trade from his step-father George Smith (d. 1836), and in 1820 they moved from Ohio to Corydon, Indiana, then the capital of Indiana. When the first land offerings were made in Indianapolis in 1821, Smith purchased two lots and moved to Indianapolis where he founded Indianapolis’ first newspaper the Gazette in the family’s cabin on Maryland Street at Missouri Street. Bolton who had stayed behind in New Albany to print the State’s laws joined Smith in Indianapolis after the first publication of the Gazette. Together Bolton and Smith ran the Gazette for three years until 1824 when Smith became a judge and Bolton, its sole owner.

In 1924 Bolton relocated the offices of the Gazette from the family’s house first to a house on the corner of Washington Street and Tennessee Street (now Capitol Avenue) on the State House square and then to the south side of Washington Street near the County Court House. In 1829, Bolton entered a partnership with George L. Kinnard, and they changed the name of the newspaper to Indiana State Gazette. Their partnership lasted only a short time, and in March 1930 Bolton sold his share in the paper to Alexander E. Morrison, state representative from Clark County and editor of Clark County Republican Statesman. Bolton moved to Madison, Indiana where he had been encouraged to found and manage a newspaper.

When Nathaniel and Sarah arrived in Indianapolis, Nathaniel began working for Alexander E. Morrison who had changed the name of Bolton’s former newspaper Indiana State Gazette to Indiana Democrat and State Gazette and then simply as Indiana Democrat. Eventually Bolton would become the editor of the Indiana Democrat. It is said that Indianapolis’s first printers’ rollers were made in the kitchen of their home. Nothing seems to be recorded about Sarah Bolton’s life and activities for the first years of her marriage.

The Boltons' Tavern
In 1836 Sarah gave birth to daughter Sarah Ada (Sallie), and Nathaniel Bolton’s stepfather George Smith died leaving his Mount Jackson homestead to Nathaniel Bolton. It was at that time the Boltons moved to Mt. Jackson on National Road (now West Washington Street) just outside the city. The following year Nathaniel Bolton lost all his property except for Mt. Jackson in the financial panic of 1837–1838. To pay his debts, Sarah suggested they turn their farm into a public tavern and charge those seeking lodging. The tavern, called either “Tavern by Nathaniel Bolton” or “Mount Jackson Tavern,” attracted many travelers since it was located on the National Road. When there were meetings of the Indiana General Assembly, the tavern was also the gathering place for state political leaders including Robert Dale Owen, Jesse D. Bright, and Michael G. Bright. When United States Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson visited Indianapolis in October 1840, Sarah wrote and presented a “poetical address.” The political and social connections both Boltons made while running the tavern would prove important to them when they returned to Indianapolis.

Indianapolis and "Paddle Your Own Canoe"
1846–1854 NB as Librarian purchased carpet from Shillito's in Cincinnati (JCHS clipping file). RDO & 1850 Constitutional Convention Third Presbytarian

A Grand Tour
1855–1858

Return to Indianapolis
Civil War, 1861–1865 1863: Reese 1871: move to Beech Bank

Return to Europe
1871–1873

Poems
Image of "Indiana" sheet music?

Reputation


where has my caption gone?

Selected list of works
• "Ralph Farnham's Last Dream." Harper's Weekly. 2 February 1861.