Edna Dean Proctor

Early in life, Proctor was a writer of poetry, but not until the Civil War —which aroused the patriotic element within her— were her verses known around the country when her national poems became dear to soldiers. "The Stripes and Stars," written in April, 1861; "Compromise," inscribed to Congress, July 4, 1861; "Who's Ready?" written in July, 1862, were characterized as national anthems. Her battle songs were later published in a volume of collected poems by Hurd & Houghton in 1867. A later collection was also published. Being financially well-off, she wrote only when inspired to do so.

• Name — Edna Dean Proctor • Born — 18 September 1829 • Birthplace — Henniker, New Hampshire, U.S. • Died — 18 December 1923 • Place of death — Framingham, Massachusetts • Resting Place — Edgell Grove Cemetery and Mausoleum, Framingham • Occupation — Author, poet • Language — English • Education — Mount Holyoke Seminary

Edna Dean Proctor was born September 18, 1829, in Henniker, New Hampshire, her father's family having gone there from Essex County, Massachusetts. Of English ancestry, her father, John Proctor, was a native of Manchester, Massachusetts, and a descendant of John Proctor of England, who came to Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1635, and whose eldest son, John Proctor, of Salem Village, was one of the victims in August 1692 of the Salem witchcraft delusion. The Goodhues, the Cogswells, the Appletons, and the Choates, of Essex County, were allied with this family. Her mother, Lucinda Gould of Henniker, represented the Goulds who had come from Massachusetts to the newer settlement and the Prescotts and Hiltons of Hampton and Exeter, New Hampshire. The Proctor family removed from Manchester to Henniker, and chose their home upon a hill overlooking the Contoocook River valley, the "pine-crowned hill" of her poem, "Contoocook River". Her brothers included Francis Proctor, E. Allen Proctor, and John C. Proctor. With the exception of less than a year at Mount Holyoke Seminary (1847), her schools were those of her native village and of Concord, New Hampshire. Her early environment left a vivid impression and was an attributed force in her writing. She was thoroughly educated and trained; she often said that her best education was had in reading with her mother.

Several years of teaching in New Haven, Connecticut, and Brooklyn, New York, followed the completion of her education. In the latter city, she made a collection of extracts from the sermons of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher —a book entitled Life Thoughts— which was very popular at home and abroad. Meanwhile, she was deeply interested in national affairs. Upon the day of John Brown's execution, her poem, "The Virginia Scaffold", was read at a large meeting in New York City, and its prophecy in the stanza: was fulfilled. During the American Civil War, her poems, "Who's Ready?" "Heroes," "The Mississippi," and others, were marked and influential. Her first small volume of verse was published by Hurd & Houghton in 1867. Then came two years of foreign travel, an outcome of which was A Russian Journey. Of this book, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: — "I like it better than 'Eothen.'" Its chapter upon Sebastopol was said to have caused the neglected English cemeteries for veterans to receive better care. Upon the completion of the railway to the Pacific in 1869, Proctor went with friends to California, and her letters, "From the Narrows to the Golden Gate," in the New York Independent, were pronounced by many the best account of the continental journey. A second collection of her poems was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1890, and two years later, the same house issued her Song of the Ancient People, which was inspired by the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition. For the Columbian year of 1892, she wrote the poem, "Columbia's Banner," which was read and recited throughout the schools of the country on Columbus Day. Proctor started a movement to make corn Columbia's emblem, and a resolution endorsing this idea was proposed. This was emphasized when Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon, the leader of the Rodman Wanamaker expedition to the Indians, returned from his trip after covering 25000 mi and visiting 189 tribes or sub-tribes of Native Americans. In September 1892, her song, "Columbia's Emblem," celebrating maize as the U.S. national floral emblem, appeared in The Century Magazine. This song was widely read and sung. As a reviewer said of it, "It has gone straight to the heart of the American people,... a song which will be more potent than law to give the Indian corn its representative place in the republic." Most of the year 1897 she spent in Mexico and South America. In 1899, she wrote the poem, "The Hills are Home", for the first Old Home Week in New Hampshire, and in 1900, published her New Hampshire verse in a volume entitled The Mountain Maid. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used many of Proctor's poems in his Poems of Places, and expressed regret that her poem "Holy Russia" had not been written in time for his book, saying, "It would have been a splendid prelude to the volume." He greatly admired Proctor's Russian Journey (1872), as a book of surpassing interest. This was her second volume of prose, and it was written after a prolonged tour in Europe and a stay of many months in that country.

• Illustration — Edna Dean Proctor Bridge Never married and childless, she died December 18, 1923, in Framingham, Massachusetts, and was buried at that city's Edgell Grove Cemetery and Mausoleum. The Edna Dean Proctor Bridge, which spans the Contoocook, at State Route 114, in Henniker, was named in her honor.

• [A] flower for Massachusetts • New Hampshire: a poem • Oh, the goal of the world is joy: words for the central movement of Chopin's Funeral march. • Save the forests • The president's proclamation: John Brown song (1861–65) • Hymns and songs for the celebration of West-India emancipation, at Abington, Aug. 1, 1863. (1863) • Poems (1867) • A Russian journey (1871) • O loved and lost! (1881) • The Virginia mother (1892) • The address for Columbus Day (1892) • The song of the ancient people (1893) • The Mountain Maid and Other Poems of New Hampshire (1900) • Our national floral emblem (1901) • Columbia's emblem (1901) • Welcome (1902) • Songs of America, and other poems (1905) • To-morrow (1910) • The Glory of Toil: And Other Poems (1916) • Illustration — Poems (1890) • Illustration — The song of the ancient people (1893) • Illustration — A Russian journey (1900)

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